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Praise for RFA ship Lyme Bay as she completes epic 13-month mission
28 November 2024
The heads of the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary flew to Gibraltar to thank sailors for their efforts on a mammoth deployment to Australia and back over 13 months.
The participation of amphibious support ship RFA Lyme Bay has been essential to the success of the mission of the Littoral Response Group (South) – a small, mobile task group formed to act as a springboard for raids by Royal Marine Commandos in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Indo-Pacific regions.
That mission ended with the Bay-class vessel’s arrival in Gibraltar, where she’ll undergo a comprehensive maintenance package over the winter before resuming her duties.
Before her crew mostly disperse, First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Ben Key and Commodore Sam Shattock, Commodore RFA, clambered up the gangway to meet crew, discuss the deployment and thank all for their resolve and commitment.
“It is a great privilege to bring RFA Lyme Bay and her team back to European waters following a deployment of such importance to Defence,” said Lyme Bay’s Commanding Officer Captain Chris Ovens RFA.
“Having been attached to the ship since her regeneration I have seen first-hand the dedication and hard work my ship’s company of all cap badges have shown – from high readiness in the Mediterranean, amphibious ops ‘Down Under’ and high-level defence engagement; the ability to operate and exercise alongside our overseas counterparts; honing skills, improving capability and demonstrating our interoperability has been extremely valuable.
“To have this recognised on arrival by the First Sea Lord and our own Head of Service is a credit to all who have served in Lyme Bay over the last 13-plus months.”
The ship left the UK on October 9 2023 as one half of the Littoral Response Group, acting as command ship, alongside RFA Argus.
And 414 days later she arrived in Gibraltar, mission complete, having sailed 40,458 nautical miles (nearly twice around the Earth).
Her date of departure is significant – two days after the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel, sparking the ongoing conflict/crisis in the Middle East.
As a result, Lyme Bay and Argus spent the autumn-winter of 2023/24 not conducting amphibious training east of Suez largely as planned, but held at high-readiness around Cyprus, ready to evacuate entitled civilians from the Israel-Lebanon area should the security situation deteriorate.
To have this recognised on arrival by the First Sea Lord and our own Head of Service is a credit to all who have served in Lyme Bay over the last 13-plus months.
In the end the duo were not needed for that mission, though Lyme Bay did deliver 80 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza.
When tensions in the eastern Mediterranean relaxed sufficiently, the ships passed through Suez and into the Indian Ocean to get the LRG (South) element of the deployment under way belatedly.
Lyme Bay’s ‘party trick’ is her ability to ‘dock down’ – flood the stern dock sufficiently for landing craft to move in and out and ferry personnel and equipment from the ship to shore and back again.
She was called upon to do so on 14 occasions, most recently just before entering the naval base at Gibraltar to allow Royal Marines to offload some heavy equipment.
The dock was most heavily used off Australia’s sparsely-populated northern coast during the summer as Royal Marines swept into the Northern Territory alongside their Commonwealth hosts and the US military.
Exercise Predators Run, which ran for around a month, saw 40 Commando push deep into the barren Outback – some 400 miles from the initial beachheads Lyme Bay helped them establish.
Since then – mid-August – the Response Group has gradually made its way back to the UK (Argus arrived home in October), on a 15,000-mile odyssey via the Cape of Good Hope and several stops/exercises/goodwill visits to countries in West Africa: Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Senegal, in particular working with partner navies and law enforcement agencies in the Gulf of Guinea to hone counter-piracy/smuggling/terrorism drills.
In all, the ship has visited 22 ports in 18 countries, crossing two oceans and seven seas and passing over the Equator on four occasions.
Among other food items, the crew – the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship’s company is around 60 strong, bolstered by Royal Navy sailors and Royal Marines on operations – have seen off 142,600 sausages and, as treats, 12,544 bars of Dairy Milk (other chocolate is available).
Her crew changes every three to four months so, although no-one has been aboard for the duration, some sailors have done more than one stint since she sailed from the UK.