The humble 2,800-ton modified Type 12 (Rothesay Class) frigate HMS Yarmouth (F 101) was the oldest of the 24 escorts sent to the South Atlantic to retake the Falklands in 1982.
Laid down in 1957, she entered service in March 1960, and the only surface warship older than her in the 43-vessel task force was the light carrier HMS Hermes, which had commissioned just four months earlier in November 1959.
The Type 12 Frigate HMS Yarmouth (F101), photographed shortly before the Falklands Conflict. IWM (FKD 590)
When the orders came to join Operation Corporate in April 1982, Yarmouth was in the Mediterranean, headed to the Far East, and many of her crew’s wives and families had gone ahead to Singapore to greet them there.
Singapore would have to wait.
HMS Hermes (R12), HMS Broadsword (F88), and HMS Yarmouth (F101) anchored off Ascension Island and conducted VERTREP on April 17th, 1982, while en route to the Falkland Islands.
Nicknamed the “Crazy Y” and “The Rubber Duck,” Yarmouth was seemingly everywhere in the Falklands theatre over the next four months and did everything.
She conducted anti-submarine patrols, naval gunfire support for troops ashore (she fired 1,441 rounds from her twin 4.5″/45 Mark 6 turret at Argentine positions), and anti-air warfare (her Seacat launcher is credited with a kill against A-4C Skyhawk C-319, flown by Teniente Tomás Lucero, over “Bomb Alley” in San Carlos on 25 May).
Yarmouth lobbed 58 warshot Limbo mortar rounds against sonar contacts, including at the ARA San Luis on 1 May
Photo taken from HMS Yarmouth (F101), a Type 12 Frigate, at San Carlos. An Argentine A4 Skyhawk flies by during an attack on the British ships.
She landed SBS and Royal Artillery observers who promptly sneaked ashore to call in fire.
Yarmouth famously came to the assistance of the Exocet-stricken destroyer HMS Sheffield and took her under tow, only to have to cut the line.
HMS Yarmouth attempts to tow the damaged HMS Sheffield to South Georgia for repairs. During the voyage, the weather worsened, and early in the morning of 10th May, Sheffield had to be abandoned – 1982 (IWM)
She also came alongside the bomb-stricken frigate HMS Ardent and the Exocet-damaged Glamorgan.
HMS Yarmouth (right) comes alongside the sinking HMS Ardent to take off her crew. HMS Broadsword is behind HMS Ardent while a Sea King 4 helicopter approaches her starboard side. IWM (FKD 69)
Survivors of HMS Ardent wearing “once-only” survival suits, on the flight deck of HMS Yarmouth after abandoning ship in San Carlos Water on 21 May. HMS Ardent had been damaged in two Argentine air attacks. Note Yarmouth’s Seacat launcher over her hangar, credited with shooting down an Argentine Seahawk four days later. IWM (FKD 145)
Yarmouth also fought a surface action against the Argentine armed coaster ARA Monsunen, engaging the 300-ton vessel with her 4.5-inch guns west of Lively Island until the latter ran aground in the shallows in a failed escape attempt in what is now remembered as the Battle of Seal Cove.
She usually conducted NGFS at night. Among her fire missions were 300 4.5-inch shells in the hills around Port Howard on 27 May, 187 shells into Argentine positions in the mountains and around Stanley and Moody Brook on 7 June, 124 on 8 June, and another 164 the next night. On the final push for Stanley on 13/14 June, she supported the assaults on Mounts Harriet by 42 Commando and Tumbledown by the Scots Guards with 261 rounds of 4.5inch.
She fired the last angry shots of the war, being sent 1,200 miles further south as the “muscle” of Operation Keyhole with the guard ship HMS Endurance, oiler RFA Olmeda, and the tug Salvageman to the South Sandwich Islands, where Argentina had established a small military base in South Thule in 1976, the week after the liberation of the Falklands.
Following a demonstrational bombardment among the icebergs by her 4.5s, the 10-member Argentine naval detachment threw in the towel on 20 June without firing a shot, taken into custody by Royal Marines.
Operation Keyhole 19-20 June 1982, recapture of disputed South Thule Island by RM and SBS, bringing the Falkland campaign to a close
Sea King helicopter from oiler RFA Olmeda, Operation Keyhole 19-20 June 1982, landing Commandos on South Thule Island
June 20th 1982: Lieutenant Enrique Martinez, Argentine Navy, signs the formal act of surrender of South Thule on board HMS Yarmouth.
On the way back, the short-legged Yarmouth was refueled at sea by Olmeda (her 50th of the campaign!) noted as perhaps the most southernly such evolution in Royal Navy history, performed just two days sail from the Antarctic coast.
In the end, she fired more shells than any of the 14 British frigates and destroyers that released their main battery during the conflict.
Yarmouth, “The Fighting 101,” returned to her home port of Rosyth on July 28 after 120 days at sea, a bit rusty but unscathed and with no casualties to report.
The frigate was decommissioned in 1986 and disposed of in a SINKEX the following year.
Her skipper during the epic Falklands deployment, Capt. Antony Morton, DSC, passed recently, aged 84.
Originally a pilot with the Fleet Air Arm, Morton was a Buccaneer driver and c/o of 809 Naval Air Squadron aboard HMS Ark Royal, then went to Yarmouth after his carrier was decommissioned, the Royal Navy out of the Buccaneer game.
Post-Falklands, he went on to be naval attaché in Paris and captained the Broadsword-class frigate HMS Beaver (F93) in the Persian Gulf, where he was remembered as “a calm presence but also demanding in terms of the standards he set and expected from others.”
As noted of his time on Yarmouth in the Falklands, he said it was all a matter of good fortune:
“A lot of ships were hit around us. We had seen quite a lot of disasters, and obviously, people were worried, but generally, morale was amazingly good.”
Pour one out for Capt. Morton, and the ghost of the Crazy Y, an example to frigates and frigatemen eternal.
