NAVY NEWS, MAY 2010

5

oor, your huddled masses...’

deck, 200 people on camp beds. Every space on Albion was filled. “It’s been a unique experience.”

Albion was one of three warships mobilised under Operation Cunningham to assist with the repatriation of Britons trapped abroad by the eruption in Iceland.

Warrior exercises in Scotland to make for the Channel, while HMS Ocean was also put on stand-by. Ark was released from tasking and told to resume preparations for her Auriga 10 deployment (see overleaf) while Ocean was still awaiting instructions as Navy News went to press. The flight ban imposed following the drift of the gigantic ash cloud into European skies severely curtailed much of the aerial activity in Joint Warrior, including operations by the Naval Strike Wing aboard HMS Ark Royal. But not everything Fleet Air Arm was kept on the ground by the volcano crisis: a Search and Rescue crew from HMS Gannet faced a 700-mile round trip to carry a critically-ill patient from Scotland to London. Gannet’s Sea King was the

only aircraft in UK airspace able to make the flight at the time, carrying the sick woman from its base at Prestwick to Regent’s Park in London, where she was transferred by ambulance to University College Hospital.

HMS Ark Royal broke off Joint

l “Every space on Albion was filled”... (Above) The ship’s vehicle deck serves as a makeshift barracks for Service personnel returning from Afghanistan and (right) sailors and Royal Marines help Kenneth Koranteng ashore in Portsmouth; the youngster broke his ankle just 20 minutes into a football tour of Spain and (below) Albion’s ship’s company assist stranded holidaymakers in Santander

New ’lands in the south and Middle East

THOSE would be Portland and Northumberland respectively. The two sister Type 23s – both based in Devonport – have left UK shores for lengthy deployments which will keep them away from Blighty until the tail end of 2010. Portland is bound for the

Falkands for the next six or so months, taking over from HMS York, interspersed with visits to Brazil and West African nations. The frigate was sent on her

way by Commander Operations, Rear Admiral Mark Anderson, who visited Portland before her departure to reinforce the importance of the deployment and wish her 180 men and women well. Just a fortnight earlier Portland completed a six-week spell of OST which reached its climax off the ship’s namesake island. Northumberland meanwhile left Plymouth to the swirling strains of pipes played by Andy Grant and Stuart Kay of Morpeth Pipe Band. Northumberland faces more than seven months away, most of those in the Gulf of Aden and waters off Oman. She’s replacing HMS Lancaster in the international effort to prevent piracy/drug smuggling/people trafficking and other illegal activities in waters east of Suez. Before departing, the ship hosted her sponsor Lady Kerr who presented the trophy named after her, awarded annually to the group of sailors who pulled the stops out in the preceding 12 months. The 2010 winners are the marine engineering department who replaced a diesel engine in record time – in Salalah, Oman.

The best

pictures: la(phots) luron wright, hms albion, jay allen and keith morgan, frpu east

to help fellow humans...’

l Troops manoeuvre RFA Largs Bay’s Mexeflote towards the mother ship off Gonaïves during the month-long Haitian relief mission

LA(Phot) Pete Smith, FRPU East

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