Falkland Islands Deployment

If you're fed up of my drivel on this blog, you can always read the official Gloucester news on the main royal navy website, or just click this link: http://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/operations-and-support/surface-fleet/type-42-destroyers/hms-gloucester/news/

You'll be able to see all the things the ship shoves into the limelight. Unfortunately I'm not in any of them... yet! There's some different photos too. I didn't realise I could tell you we should be back in December. I'll do a bit of research and find out what else is in the realms of "not too classified to blog about"... -like for instance, our tasking, or mission (that sounds a lot better), is a joint effort with the commander who looks after all these islands down here, RFA Gold Rover and HMS Clyde. Clyde is a small patrol ship (which I haven't seen yet since we've been here), and Gold Rover is basically our support. We use her for fresh water in an emergency, replenishing fuel, and just generally anything we need. She's not armed. Then there's us, the big daddy with all the guns (well, 1 big one, which, although old, is immense if you want to bombard someone, loads of little and big machine guns, torpedo launchers and defence mechanisms are littered along either side of the ship, and of course, there's our missile system. Apparently Gloucester's the only ship to have used it in anger... Oh and we carry a Lynx helicopter which fires machine guns, torpedoes and allsorts...) ... (...yeah, we fire sweets at people...). The commander's also got a host of RAF planes down here at his disposal too. So, you'd have thought, anyone with a common bit of sense would leave this place well alone. And we can all get along peacefully...

more to come shortly...