HMS Broadsword (F88)
 HMS Broadsword in 1994 |
|
| Career (UK) |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | HMS Broadsword |
| Operator: | Royal Navy |
| Builder: | Yarrow Shipbuilders |
| Laid down: | 7 February 1975 |
| Launched: | 12 May 1976 |
| Commissioned: | 4 May 1979 |
| Decommissioned: | 31 March 1995 |
| Fate: | Sold to Brazil 30 June 1995 |
| Career (Brazil) |  |
| Name: | Greenhalgh (F-46) |
| Operator: | Brazilian Navy |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Type 22 frigate |
| Displacement: | 4,400 tons |
| Length: | 131.2 m (430 ft) |
| Beam: | 14.8 m (48 ft) |
| Draught: | 6.1 m (20 ft) |
| Propulsion: |
2 shafts, COGOG |
| Speed: | 18 knots (33 km/h) cruise 30 knots (56 km/h) top speed |
| Complement: | 222 |
| Armament: | 2 × 2x torpedo tubes for Mk-46 torpedoes 2 ×6 GWS25 Seawolf SAM launchers 4 × 1 Exocet SSM launchers 2 × 40 mm Bofors AA guns |
| Aircraft carried: | 2 × Lynx MK 8 helicopters |
HMS Broadsword was the lead ship and first Batch 1 unit of the Type 22 frigates of the Royal Navy.
[edit] Service
While on sea trials, Broadsword was called into service as the command ship during the large rescue operation required after storms struck the 1979 Fastnet race.[1]
Broadsword took part in the 1982 Falklands War where, on 25 May 1982, she was providing air defence support to HMS Coventry. A technical fault in her Sea Wolf missile system allowed two Argentine Skyhawks to sink the Coventry.[2] Broadsword was hit by one bomb, which bounced up through the helicopter deck and put out of action a Lynx helicopter, before exiting and exploding harmlessly. She subsequently rescued 170 of the sunken Coventry's crew. She shot down one IAI Dagger of FAA Grupo 6 & shared an A-4C Skyhawk kill with HMS Antelope's Sea Cat, land-based Rapiers and Blowpipe SAMs.[3]
In 1993 Broadsword took part in the naval operation in support of Operation Grapple (Yugoslavia), in the Adriatic Sea. Upon completion on 8 July 1993, a fire broke out in the Aft Auxiliary Machinery Room (AAMR). This resulted in the deaths of two on-watch engineers; LMEM(M) Mark Hunt, age 30, and MEM(M) Roy Ware, age 22.[4]
She was decommissioned on 31 March 1995 and was sold to the Brazilian Navy on 30 June 1995 and renamed Greenhalgh.
[edit] References
- ^ Rousmaniere, John. "Fastnet, The Deadliest Storm in the History of Modern Sailing". Norton (1993). ISBN 978-0-393-30865-5
- ^ Hart Dyke, David. Four Weeks in May: The Loss of "HMS Coventry". Atlantic Books (2007). ISBN 978-1843545903
- ^ "List of Argentine Aircraft Destroyed". http://www.naval-history.net/F64argaircraftlost.htm. Retrieved 19 December 2009.
- ^ "Two killed in frigate fire". The Independent (London). 9 July 1993. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/two-killed-in-frigate-fire-1483701.html. Retrieved 12 August 2010.
[edit] External links
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