Jul 04 - HMS Diamond To Make Short Visit Tomorrow
HMS DIAMOND arrives in Gibraltar this Saturday for a short visit as she heads back to the UK following a busy six month operational deployment.
The Type 45 destroyer has completed her role escorting ships carrying Syria's chemical weapons stock for disposal.
HMS Diamond joined the Danish, Norwegian and British task group in February to provide maritime force protection to merchant vessels transporting chemical agents from Syria.
The operation followed diplomatic efforts to eliminate chemical weapons from the Syrian regime and the adoption of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2118, which calls for the destruction of the Syrian chemical weapons programme.
Commander Andy Ingham, commanding officer of HMS Diamond, said: “This has been an operationally-intense deployment which required us to be at high readiness at all times. While this has meant the crew have worked hard to maintain this, we were able to balance the maintenance of the ship with a sustained edge, whilst ensuring internal routines maintained high morale.”
HMS DIAMOND had a brief rendezvous at sea earlier this week with sister ship HMS DEFENDER (see photo) which recently visited Gibraltar and held a very popular open event for the public.
HMS Diamond was launched on the Clyde by her sponsor, Lady Johns, in November 2007; the ship arrived in Portsmouth in the autumn of 2010 and was commissioned in the spring of 2011.
