HMS Cardiff (D108)

HMS Cardiff was a British Type 42 destroyer and the third ship of the Royal Navy to be named in honour of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff. She served in the Falklands War, where she shot down the last Argentine aircraft of the conflict. During the 1991 Gulf War, her Lynx helicopter sank two Iraqi minesweepers. She later participated in the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of the Navy’s constant Armilla patrol. Cardiff was decommissioned in July 2005, and sent to Turkey for scrapping despite calls by former servicemen for her to be preserved as a museum ship and local tourist attraction in Cardiff.

About HMS Cardiff (D108) in brief

HMS Cardiff was a British Type 42 destroyer and the third ship of the Royal Navy to be named in honour of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff. Cardiff served in the Falklands War, where she shot down the last Argentine aircraft of the conflict and accepted the surrender of a 700-strong garrison in Port Howard. During the 1991 Gulf War, her Lynx helicopter sank two Iraqi minesweepers. She later participated in the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as part of the Navy’s constant Armilla patrol. Cardiff was decommissioned in July 2005, and sent to Turkey for scrapping despite calls by former servicemen for her to be preserved as a museum ship and local tourist attraction in Cardiff. The Type 42 destroyers were designed as anti-aircraft vessels primarily equipped with the Sea Dart, a surface-to-air missile system capable of hitting targets up to 56 kilometres away. Cardiff’s secondary weapon system was a 4. 5 inch Mark 8 naval gun, capable of firing 21-kilogram shells to a range of 22 kilometres. She was launched on 22 February 1974 by Lady Caroline Gilmour, and commissioned on 24 September 1979 under command of Captain Barry Wilson. In November 1979, Cardiff coordinated the search for survivors of the MV Pool Fisher, which sank off the Isle of Wight with the loss of most of her crew. In 1980, she attended the annual Navy Days event at Portsmouth and Portland Harbour, receiving a total of 17,300 visitors. In October of the same year, she ventured abroad for the first time on a visit to Ghent, Belgium.

She followed this with a fortnight of Sea Dart exercises on a range off Aberporth, in South Wales. In the spirit of establishing a firm association, Cardiff visited her namesake city and welcomed more than 7,000 people on board. Her crew raised over £1,000 for local charities by participating in sponsored bicycle rides and dinghy rows from Portsmouth and Newcastle upon Tyne. BBC Radio Wales based an entire programme on her and she appeared on the BBC and ITV national television channels. The battles fought on land, at sea, and in the air had cost the lives of some 900 British and Argentine servicemen. She sailed alone on the effort to recapture the Falkland Islands alone on 23 April 1982. Just over a month before the start of the war, Cardiff had begun a six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf with the Armilla Patrol. She relieved her sister Sheffield class lead Sheffield, but was herself redeployed to Gibraltar and rendvoused on 14 May with the Bristol group of British warships already heading to the islands. On 22 May, an Argentine reconnaissance Boeing 707, Aereo Transporte 1,077, and Grupo de Transporte Aereo 1, were sunk by the British Royal Navy. This would allow the Argentine Navy to distinguish them from the two Type 42s. All British’s Type 42’s involved in the war were instructed to paint two vertical black stripes down the middle of their ships.

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