HMS Coventry (F98)

Last updated

HMS Coventry F98.jpg
HMS Coventry
History
Naval Ensign of the United Kingdom.svgUnited Kingdom
Name: HMS Coventry
Operator: Royal Navy
Builder: Swan Hunter
Laid down: 29 March 1984
Launched: 8 April 1986
Commissioned: 14 October 1988
Decommissioned: 17 January 2002
Identification: Pennant number: F98
Fate: Sold to Romania on 14 January 2003
General characteristics
Class and type: Type 22 frigate
Displacement: 4,800 tons
Length: 146.5 m (481 ft)
Beam: 14.8 m (49 ft)
Draught: 6.4 m (21 ft)
Propulsion:
Speed:
  • 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) (cruise)
  • 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) (max)
Range: 8,000 nautical miles (15,000 km; 9,200 mi)
Complement: 273
Armament:
Aircraft carried: 2 × Lynx MK 8 helicopters
Naval Jack of Romania.svg Romania
Name:Regele Ferdinand
Namesake: King Ferdinand of Romania
Laid down: 29 March 1984
Launched: 8 April 1986
Acquired: 14 January 2003
Commissioned: 9 September 2004
Identification: F221
Status: In active service
General characteristics
Class and type: Type 22 frigate
Displacement: 5,300 tons
Length: 148.1 m (486 ft)
Beam: 14.8 m (49 ft)
Draught: 6.4 m (21 ft)
Propulsion: 4 x Rolls Royce gas turbine engines
Speed:
  • 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) (cruise)
  • 30 knots (56 km/h; 35 mph) (max)
Range: 4,500 nautical miles (8,300 km; 5,200 mi)
Complement: 250
Armament: 76/62 Oto Melara Super-Rapid gun
Aircraft carried: IAR-330 Puma Naval

HMS Coventry was a Type 22 frigate of the Royal Navy. She was originally intended to be named Boadicea but was named Coventry in honour of the previous Coventry, a Type 42 destroyer sunk in the Falklands War. Following service in the Royal Navy she was sold to the Romanian Navy in 2003.

Type 22 frigate class of frigates

The Type 22 Broadsword class was a class of frigate built for the British Royal Navy. Fourteen of the class were built in total, with production divided into three batches. HMS Cornwall was the last Royal Navy Type 22 frigate, retired from service on 30 June 2011.

Frigate Type of warship

A frigate is a type of warship, having various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.

Royal Navy Maritime warfare branch of the United Kingdoms military

The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against the Kingdom of France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is known as the Senior Service.

Contents

Operational Service

Royal Navy

Between 1990 and 1996 Coventry was the leader of the 1st Frigate Squadron.

The 1st Frigate Squadron was an naval unit of the Royal Navy from 1972 to 2001.

Romanian Navy

Regele Ferdinand in 2005 Regele Ferdinand Frigate 22.jpg
Regele Ferdinand in 2005

She was purchased from the United Kingdom by the Romanian Navy on 14 January 2003, and renamed Regele Ferdinand (King Ferdinand) after Ferdinand I of Romania. The ship was handed over to Romania on 19 August 2004, and underwent sea trials at the same time. Regele Ferdinand was commissioned into the Romanian Navy on 9 September 2004 with the pennant number F221, and is the current flagship of the Romanian Navy. There has since been some controversy over the price at which she was bought. [1]

United Kingdom Country in Europe

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country located off the north­western coast of the European mainland. The United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, the north­eastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state, the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the United Kingdom is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east, the English Channel to the south and the Celtic Sea to the south-west, giving it the 12th-longest coastline in the world. The Irish Sea separates Great Britain and Ireland. The United Kingdom's 242,500 square kilometres (93,600 sq mi) were home to an estimated 66.0 million inhabitants in 2017.

Ferdinand I of Romania King of Romania

Ferdinand I, nicknamed Întregitorul, was King of Romania from 1914 until 1927. Although a member of the Swabian branch of Germany's ruling House of Hohenzollern, Ferdinand sided against the Central Powers in World War I. Thus, at the war’s end, Romania emerged as a much-enlarged kingdom, including Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transylvania, and Ferdinand was crowned king of "Greater Romania" in a grand ceremony in 1922. He died from cancer in 1927, succeeded by his grandson Michael under a regency.

Romania Sovereign state in Europe

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It has borders with the Black Sea to the southeast, Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, and Moldova to the east. It has a predominantly temperate-continental climate. With a total area of 238,397 square kilometers, Romania is the 12th largest country and also the 7th most populous member state of the European Union, having almost 20 million inhabitants. Its capital and largest city is Bucharest, and other major urban areas include Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara, Iași, Constanța, Craiova, Brașov, and Galați.

On 22 March 2011, President of Romania Traian Băsescu said, after a CSAT meeting, that Romania will send the frigate Regele Ferdinand with 205 mariners and two officers on board to enforce an arms embargo in the Mediterranean Sea, as part of the 2011 military intervention in Libya - Operation Unified Protector. [2] During their run in the NATO naval group acting on Operation Unified Protector - 2011, the frigate has traveled over 17,400 nautical miles (32,200 km) and carried out around 770 specific tasks. [3]

Traian Băsescu Romanian politician, 4th president of Romania

Traian Băsescu is a Romanian politician who served as President of Romania from 2004 to 2014.

Mediterranean Sea Sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean between Europe, Africa and Asia

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa and on the east by the Levant. Although the sea is sometimes considered a part of the Atlantic Ocean, it is usually referred to as a separate body of water. Geological evidence indicates that around 5.9 million years ago, the Mediterranean was cut off from the Atlantic and was partly or completely desiccated over a period of some 600,000 years before being refilled by the Zanclean flood about 5.3 million years ago.

2011 military intervention in Libya 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya

On 19 March 2011, a multi-state NATO-led coalition began a military intervention in Libya, ostensibly to implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The United Nations' intent and voting was to have "an immediate ceasefire in Libya, including an end to the current attacks against civilians, which it said might constitute crimes against humanity ... imposing a ban on all flights in the country's airspace – a no-fly zone – and tightened sanctions on the [Muammar] Gaddafi regime and its supporters." The resolution was taken in response to events during the Libyan Civil War, and military operations began, with American and British naval forces firing over 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles, the French Air Force, British Royal Air Force, and Royal Canadian Air Force undertaking sorties across Libya and a naval blockade by Coalition forces. French jets launched air strikes against Libyan Army tanks and vehicles. Despite the use of foreign airstrikes, the intervention did not consist of foreign ground troops. The Libyan government response to the campaign was totally ineffectual, with Gaddafi's forces not managing to shoot down a single NATO plane despite the country possessing 30 heavy SAM batteries, 17 medium SAM batteries, 55 light SAM batteries, and 440–600 short-ranged air-defense guns. The official names for the interventions by the coalition members are Opération Harmattan by France; Operation Ellamy by the United Kingdom; Operation Mobile for the Canadian participation and Operation Odyssey Dawn for the United States. Italy initially opposed the intervention but then offered to take part in the operations on the condition that NATO took the leadership of the mission instead of individual countries. As this condition was later met, Italy shared its bases and intelligence with the allies.

Since entry into service of the Romanian Navy, Regele Ferdinand has performed a series of tasks among which the most important are deployments to Operation Active Endeavour in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2010 in the Mediterranean Sea, the exercise in Bulgaria "Breeze -CertExam" 2007, 2008, the exercise "Noble Midas" in Croatia in 2007 and 2008 in Italy. [3]

Operation Active Endeavour was a maritime operation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It operated in the Mediterranean Sea and was designed to prevent the movement of terrorists or weapons of mass destruction. It had collateral benefits in enhanced security of shipping in general. It was one of the first military actions taken by NATO in response to an invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which provides for collective defense and the first ever operation conducted by the Alliance in direct application of the defence clause of the Treaty. In November 2016 it was replaced by the non-Article-5 Operation Sea Guardian.

Since 13 September 2012 Regele Ferdinand has participated in Operation Atalanta. The ship embarked naval commandos of Grupul Naval de Forțe pentru Operații Speciale (GNFOS). [4]

Operation Atalanta military operation

Operation Atalanta, formally European Union Naval ForceSomalia, is a current counter-piracy military operation at sea off the Horn of Africa and in the Western Indian Ocean, that is the first naval operation conducted by the European Union (EU). The operational headquarters is currently located at the Spanish Operation Headquarters (ESOHQ) at Naval Station Rota in Spain as a result of the impending British withdrawal from the EU.

In August 2014, Regele Ferdinand sailed alongside Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 Task Unit 2 which operated in the Black Sea as part of Exercise Sea Breeze. [5]

In July 2019, the Romanian authorities announced the selection of Naval Group and its partner Santierul Naval Constanta (SNC) for the programme to build four new Gowind multi-mission corvettes and to modernise the T22 frigates.

Commanding officers

Royal Navy captains [6]
FromToCaptain
19881990Captain Edward Hackett RN
19901991Captain Roger C. Lane-Nott RN
19911993Captain Stephen E. Saunders RN
19931994Captain Christopher D. Stanford
19941996Captain Thomas Morton RN
19992001Captain Philip Jones RN

See also

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References

  1. Evans, Rob; Leigh, David (13 June 2006). "We paid three times too much for UK frigates, Romania says". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2015.
  2. "Traian Basescu: Romania va trimite fregata Regele Ferdinand cu 205 militari in Mediterana pentru operatiuni de blocare a oricarei nave suspecte ca transporta armament" (in Romanian). HotNews.ro. 22 March 2011. Retrieved 7 January 2015.
  3. 1 2 Archived 20 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Martinescu, Darius (12 September 2012). ""Regele Ferdinand" a plecat la război în Golful Aden". Romania Libera (in Romanian). Retrieved 7 January 2015.
  5. Pugliese, David (6 January 2015). "HMCS Fredericton arrives in Portugal, HMCS Toronto to be back in Canada in late January". Defence Watch. Ottawa Citizen. Retrieved 7 January 2015.
  6. Mackie, Colin. "II: Royal Navy- Captains Commanding Warships". British Armed Forces (1900–). Retrieved 19 January 2014.