HMS Dragon has returned home from the WESTLANT19 deployment.

The vessel sailed with aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Northumberland and RFA Tideforce.

The MoD say that the WESTLANT19 deployment aimed at ‘end-to-end’ testing of the aircraft and personnel to ensure the aircraft are compatible with the carrier and that UK assets have experience in escorting and working with aircraft carriers when deployment.

HMS Dragon is the fourth Type 45 Destroyers built for the Royal Navy. The ship was launched in November 2008 and commissioned on 20 April 2012.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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40 COMMENTS

  1. Welcome back HMS Dragon. Job well done. Get some well deserved R&R.
    Anyone know when HMS Queen Elizabeth will be returning into Portsmouth?
    M@

  2. Why does she carry the Dragon symbol?

    What was the reasoning for allowing it, and is this unique in the history of the RN?

  4. Aren’t they such beautiful ships… From the stern I think they look outstanding. The contrasting black masts and their angular shape makes them look particularly menacing!

  5. It’s so hard to believe we only have 6 destroyers and 13 frigates these days!! Shameful Numbers for the once mighty Royal Navy. I remember an old Royal Navy Ww2 vet being amazed that we don’t have cruisers these days either he couldn’t believe it!.

    • To be fare destroyers these days are close to the size of cruisers certainly nothing like the destroyers I picture from wartime or post war. Ships the size of cruisers beyond these present destroyers, unless they are absolutely gold standard (which we certainly can’t afford) would be a liability and a juicy target with little added specfic ability just a more all round capability due to extra space. The days when the bigger the ship the bigger the punch it could deliver started to go out with those big guns so the philosophy of naval design has very much changed towards specialisation and being immensely capable within that specialisation especially in the UK. Trouble is that that true capability as with the T45 is too often not fulfilled.

      • True, but I still wonder how well a modern missile would do against 12-14 inchies of armoured sides and 6-8 inchies of armoured deck plus all the internal armoured protection. Then when the enemy mast over the horizon would a modern destroyer withstand 8 15 inch radar controlled guns? Something tells me that come within 20-25 km against HMS Vangaurd BB a modern warship is in deep doo doo.

        • Russian ASM’s have 1000 kg warheads, not sure if that would cause significant damage to a WWll BS. I think the crew would no they’d been hit!

          • The nearest comparison would when HMS Warspite was bombed off Salerno supporting the Sicily invasion. She was hit by a Fritz X radio control glider bomb. She was hit and the bomb passed through a number of decks before exploding in the boiler room. The explosion also caused a large hole to be blown out of her double bottom. She also had a near miss from a second bomb that damaged her torpedo bulge and blew a hole in the side. Thankfully she survived and after repairs went on to support the Normandy landings. However, this damage was done with only 320kg of explosive with the weapons dive speed governed by height and the kinetic energy imparted by the launch aircraft. Not sure what an AS4 Kitchen with a 1000kg warhead and travelling at Mach 4 would do to the belt armour of a battleship, as the missile was designed to kill carriers with next to no armour.

  6. Welcome back indeed and hopefully to a newly elected government that will provide the RN with latest anti-ship missiles and much more besides!

    • I do like an optimist!! I am afraid I am not holding my breath on any of them doing anything other than kick the problem cans down the road.

        • Trump going back West and making a prat of himself as usual, Erdogan going back to Russia and buying more S400’s and all the rest of them flapping like wet hens and saying how well it all went.
          But don’t worry, it will all be tickety boo when that nice Mr Corbyn takes over, after all a man who makes his own jam and has an allotment is really who we want on the world stage!

          • You’re quite right much better a serial cheat who can’t tell the truth to his wives or family than a man who makes jam and has a garden.

            Disagree with Corbyns policies all you want but saying he’s unfit for the world stage because he makes jam is just bizarre. If we’re judging hobbies Johnsons alleged bus painting is far stranger than having a garden…

          • My reply to Robert above has not yet posted, sorry. I was intending to be ironic, but appear to have missed the target. ( which in my chequered gunnery career happened rather often) The fact is that Corbyn’s world view is very strange, at least to me, and I very much hope he gets nowhere near the levers of power. That said, I am no fan of any of the other parties and policies on offer, and as a lifelong Conservative at present I am at a complete loss as to how I may vote next week.
            Assuming the ghastly Johnson gets in we will start the process of leaving Europe, which we all know will take years before the process is complete. This will please some but not others, as we all know from posts here. But we will now have to look more to our own defence, and in my cynical view I am not sure that very many of our keen Parliamentarians have the first clue about how long it takes to design and buy kit, or how long it takes to recruit and train personnel. To them foreign affairs are a weekend away with their secretary in Le Touquet while their wife is visiting her mother. Except for the man Johnson, who seems to have a thing about pole dancing Americans…..

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