Tag Archives: Armilla patrol

Jellicoe weeps and Nelson isn’t taking calls any more

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With the hectic week in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea, the absence of the Royal Navy in a region that was a British lake for generations was noticed.

Then, with Iranian drones hitting the RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, a response was needed from the Admiralty.

Then news came that only two of six Type 45 destroyers are operational, and the one that can get to Cyprus the quickest, HMS Dragon, can’t leave port until next week at the earliest. At least Dragon will deploy with two Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters armed with Martlet drone-busting missiles.

“HMS Dragon’s helicopter fires infrared flares during an exercise over the Type 45 destroyer. MOD Photo

Both of the country’s carriers are sidelined for extended maintenance, as are four of seven Type 23 frigates. Meanwhile, all of the RN’s Astute-class submarines are in port, and none are likely to head to sea anytime soon.

Graphics from the Daily Mail.

This is a far cry from the old Armilla Patrol, which kept a couple of escorts deployed in the region in the 1980s and 90s (with two RNZN frigates sent by the Kiwis to take over the duty during the Falklands).

Then there was Operation Kipion, which kept 4 minesweepers (No. 9 Mine Countermeasures Squadron), an RFA support ship, and a rotational frigate, but this stood down recently with the last minesweeper, HMS Middleton (M34), now back in the UK after being carried home on a heavy lift vessel.

Royal Navy Bahrain, February 2021, when they had the frigate HMS Montrose, minehunters Brocklesby, Chiddingfold, Shoreham, Penzance, and the RFA Cardigan Bay. The Brits have no naval forces in the region currently

The United Kingdom Naval Support Facility (UKNSF), formerly the ‘stone frigate’ HMS Jufair in Bahrain, was established in 1935 and, as of a few weeks ago, was no longer running, one last vestige of colonial power shelved.

The RAF is a little better, as a few F-35Bs, supported by RAF Typhoon fighters and a Voyager air-to-air refueling aircraft, have been deployed to police the airspace over Qatar and Jordan and have reportedly shot down uncrewed aerial systems over the latter– the first time an RAF F-35 has shot down a target in combat.

Further, a British Typhoon operating with the joint UK-Qatar 12 Squadron shot down an Iranian one-way attack drone directed at Qatar using an air-to-air missile on Monday.

Hugh Dowding is no doubt giving his navy pals hell.

The mighty five-ship Kiwi battle force

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Here we see the full Royal New Zealand Navy Task Group back in the day off Hauraki Gulf, sometime in the early to 1990s, with four aging but well-maintained steam-powered frigates clustered around the fleet’s new oiler. Note the three airborne Wasp helicopters.


The ships are the HMNZS Canterbury (F421), HMNZS Southland (F104)— formerly HMS Dido, HMNZS Endeavour (A11), HMNZS Waikato (F55), and HMNZS Wellington (F69)— formerly HMS Bacchante.

The four frigates are Leander-class vessels, which proved the backbone of the RN and Commonwealth fleets in the Cold War. Waikato and Canterbury were purpose-built Batch 3 Leanders to replace WWII-era NZ ships such as the old light cruiser Royalist. Notably, these two Kiwi frigates relieved British ships of the Persian Gulf Armilla Patrol during the 1982 Falklands conflict, freeing British ships for deployment.

This latter fact led to the RN transferring HMS Dido and HMS Bacchante to New Zealand in 1983 as payback.

All four of these frigates were retired post-Cold War, replaced two-for-one by a pair of more modern ANZAC-class ships of a modified German MEKO 200 design (although they had been offered two FFG-7s shorthulls of 15–17 years age for a song.) The two Australian-built frigates arrived between 1997-99 and the New Zealand navy has stuck to a two-frigate force since then.

Ex- HMNZS Wellington (F69) prior to sinking as an artificial reef, Nov 2005

*HMS Dido/HMNZS Southland was decommissioned 1995 and scrapped at Goa.
*HMNZS Waikato was decommissioned in 1998 and sunk as an artificial reef off the coast of Tutukaka.
*HMS Bacchante/HMNZS Wellington was decommissioned 1999 and sunk in Wellington Harbour as a reef in 2005.
*HMNZS Canterbury decommissioned 2005 and was herself reefed in 2007.

The 12,300-ton Endeavour, a commercial design from South Korea commissioned 8 April 1988, is still active and is a common sight during RIMPAC exercises. She deployed to East Timor as part of the Australian-led INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce twice.  She is the last of the vessels in the image above still afloat.