Scourge of Tirpitz and terrorists

VICTORY has Trafalgar, Gloucester has Crete and HMS Campbeltown holds the St Nazaire Raid up as its proudest battle honour.

Labelled ‘the greatest raid of all’, the attack on the docks of the French port at a stroke scuppered any hope of Hitler’s flagship Tirpitz sortieing in the Atlantic.

Today’s Campbeltown too prides herself on being a thorn in the side of fanatics, in the 21st Century not dictators but terrorists.

The core of the Type 22 frigate’s operations in the past 12 months have been focused in the Arabian Gulf in the ongoing war on terror.

In her spell east of Suez last year, Campbeltown hailed 3,000 ships and her boarding party searched 20 vessels as Allied nations attempted to build up a comprehensive picture of movements on the Seven Seas.

Having returned from the Gulf region in December, the ship entered maintenance before returning to sea to undergo Operational Sea Training.

With that completed, the Devonport warship left home last month to conduct a six-month tour of duty in the Gulf.

Surprisingly for a Scottish town with such a rich heritage, its name has only been borne by two of Her Majesty’s warships.

The first was acquired by the Senior Service under the lend-lease agreement struck with President Roosevelt.

A flush deck destroyer commissioned in the US Navy as USS Buchanan, following the 1940 agreement she was handed over to Britain for refit in Devonport.

The lend-lease deal was intended to provide the Royal Navy with much-needed escorts for the struggle against the U-boats.
Instead, Campbeltown ultimately found herself selected for a daring assault on St Nazaire.

The dry dock at the French port was the only one capable of accommodating the battleship Tirpitz, then very much a threat to Allied convoy traffic.

On March 28 1942, accompanied by numerous small craft, Campbeltown rammed the lock gates as commandos stormed the dock facilities.

When the fighting died down, German troops inspected the destroyer, but failed to notice the false bulkhead hiding four tons of high explosive.

The timed charge went off as planned, wrecking the lock gates and thus rendering the dry dock useless. Tirpitz never operated in the expanses of the Atlantic.

Five Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions that day and it’s not surprising that today’s Campbeltown maintains strong links with the St Nazaire Society.

There’s been nothing quite so dramatic involving the second HMS Campbeltown.

She arrived on the scene in 1989, having been laid down in late 1985 at Cammell Laird’s yard on Merseyside.

The frigate is now enjoying her second commission, after a refit in 1998 and, more recently, a £10m ‘mini refit’ in 2003.

Affiliations actively supported by today’s ship company include the namesake town in western Scotland – the ship paid her first visit there in four years in 2004 – and, more unusually, Campbelltown (with two ‘l’s) in Pennsylvania, USA.

Other affiliations include J Battery Royal Horse Artillery, 1 Battalion Welsh Guards, 24 Sqn RAF, the Worshipful Company of Wax Chandlers, Springbank Distillery in Campbeltown, Birmingham Nautical Club, and the Sea Cadets of TS Campbeltown in Bridgwater and Alberta, Canada.

Good causes to benefit from the continued support of the ship are Children’s Hospice South West and Woodford Children’s Ward in Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital, the chosen charity of the petty officers’ mess.

Facts and Figures
Class:	Batch 3 Type 22 Frigate
Pennant Number:	F86
Builder:	Cammell Laird, Birkenhead
Launched:	October 7 1987
Commissioned:	May 27 1989
Length:	148 metres
Beam:	14.8 metres
Draft:	6.4 metres
Top Speed:	30 kts
Range:	4,500 nautical miles at 18 kts
Displacement:	4,850 tonnes
Complement:	255
Engines:	2 x Rolls Royce Spey gas turbines; 2 x Rolls Royce Tyne gas turbines
Weapons Systems:	Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Seawolf anti-air missiles, 1 x 4.5in gun, 2 x 20mm guns, 1 x Goalkeeper automated air defence gun, 4 x Seagnat decoy launchers, 4 x DLF3 decoy launchers
Aircraft:	Up to two Lynx, or one Sea King
Additional features:	CSS Command Support System, Data Link Systems 11 and 14, DFA7 Computer-Assisted Command System

(Ship of the Month August 2005)

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