HMS Cardiff (D108)

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See HMS Cardiff for other ships of the name.

Career

Ordered:
Laid down:	6 November 1972
Launched:	22 February 1974
Commissioned:	24 September 1979
Decommissioned:	14 July 2005
Fate:	Awaiting Disposal
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	4,820 tonnes
Length:	125 m (410 ft)
Beam:	14.3 m (47 ft)
Draught:	5.8 m
Propulsion:	COGAG (Combined Gas and Gas) turbines, 2 shafts 2 turbines producing 36 MW
Speed:	30 knots (56 km/h)
Range:
Complement:	287–301
Armament:	2 x Sea Dart missile launcher 4.5 inch (114 millimetres) Mk 8 gun 2 x 20 mm Oerlikon guns 2 x Phalanx (CIWS) 2 x triple anti-submarine torpedo tubes NATO Seagnat and DLF3 decoy launchers
Aircraft:	Lynx HMA8
Motto:	Acris in cardine rerum

The third and present HMS Cardiff (D108) is a Type 42 (Batch 1) destroyer of the Royal Navy.

Cardiff was built by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, launched in 1974 by Lady Caroline Gilmore and commissioned in 1979. When decommissioned, she was one of the last ships in the Royal Navy to have been involved in the Falklands War.

She was under the command of Captain M. G. T. Harris for the duration of the Falklands War in 1982. During the conflict, owing to an information exchange failure between the army and the navy, Cardiff's Sea Dart missile system accidentally shot down an Army Air Corps Gazelle helicopter in a blue-on-blue incident; four people were killed. Cardiff made it through the conflict unscathed, while two of her sister-ships - Sheffield and Coventry - were sunk (and Glasgow damaged).

In 1991, Cardiff was deployed to the Persian Gulf as part of a Royal Navy taskforce sent to take part in the Gulf War. On 24 January, Cardiff sighted three Iraqi vessels operating from the occupied Kuwaiti island of Qaruh. Her Lynx helicopter destroyed two of the vessels, which later turned out to be minesweepers.

In 2003, Cardiff returned to the Persian Gulf on a six-month deployment as Armilla Patrol ship. She returned home in August 2003.

It was announced in July 2004, as part of the Delivering Security in a Changing World review, that Cardiff would be decommissoned in August 2005. Decommissoned July 2005 in Portsmouth.

Type 42 destroyer

Royal Navy