Three of the Royal Navy’s minehunting quartet in the Gulf joined their American and Japanese counterparts for the first combined exercise together in two decades.
HMS Pembroke was the UK’s initial contributor to Unified Shield, a large exercise involving two US minesweepers, Gladiator and Dextrous, Japan’s Tsushima, and the 8,000-tonne support ship Uraga.
It fell to Pembroke to lead the quintet to sea for the first week of the fortnight-long exercise. Once in the open waters of the Gulf, a successful set of combined manoeuvres involving the five ships, overseen by the Sandown-class minehunter, allowed the respective navies to integrate at a basic level before commencing co-ordinated mine countermeasures training in the second week.
A week of combined exercises and serials (including in-company navigation, exchanges of personnel between ships, mine hunting and recovery procedures, diving, and communications exercises) kept the ships busy, with each taking it in turn to take the lead.
As a ‘first’ between Japanese and UK mine warfare units, Pembroke ‘rafted’ alongside the Uraga – basically ‘parking’ next to the Japanese ship in the middle of the sea – to prove the Briton could take fuel or stores from her Japanese colleague.
Despite an early morning start, both ship’s companies were up, ready and raring to pull off the challenging piece of seamanship. As a result, Pembroke glided effortlessly into place to allow Uraga literally to ‘take the reins’ of the minehunter’s ropes.
Once complete, there was just time for the Royal Navy sailors to pass a bottle of red over the guardrails for Uraga’s commanding officer – complete with a Pembroke cap tally.
“Very few of our Japanese counterparts in Tsushima and Uraga speak English – and certainly no-one aboard Pembroke speaks Japanese,” said Pembroke’s navigator S/Lt Martyn Mayger.
“In saying that, however, it has not presented a problem. The ability of the Japanese to integrate with us and our American allies at sea was very impressive.
“Everything from their communication skills through to their ship handling and seamanship abilities was top class.”
The group were joined in week two of Unified Shield by two more of the Royal Navy’s Bahrain-based minehunters Ramsey and Quorn (the fourth RN minehunter in the region, but not taking part, is HMS Middleton), with the focus being on mine warfare training. Being very warm and shallow, the Gulf provides particularly testing waters for minehunters to train their crews in.
Pembroke’s Commanding Officer, Lt Cdr Richard Hutchings , said:
“This is the first time in twenty years that Japanese Maritime Self Defence Force, US Navy and Royal Navy minehunters have operated here together, so the exercise was a fantastic opportunity to see how two other world-class navies work when faced by the challenging environmental conditions in which we train.”
[mappress]
Source: royalnavy, December 21, 2011