HMS Zulu (F124)
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| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Ordered: | |
| Laid down: | 13 December 1960 |
| Launched: | 3 July 1962 |
| Commissioned: | 17 April 1964 |
| Decommissioned: | 1984 |
| Fate: | Sold to Indonesia. |
| Struck: | |
| Motto: | |
- This is a page about an individual ship, for general information please see: Tribal class frigate
HMS Zulu (F124) was a Tribal-class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was the third ship bearing the name of HMS Zulu, having been named after an ethnic group located primarily in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa. Zulu was built by Alex Stephens & Sons Shipbuilders of Govan. She was launched on the on 3 July 1962 and commissioned on the on 17 April 1964.
Zulu was the only Tribal built with Seacat missiles; her six sister frigates were built with two 40 mm Bofors guns and fitted with Seacat during later refits.
[edit] Operational history
In 1972, a United States Navy P-3 Orion aircraft crashed on a mountain in northern Morocco. Zulu sent her Westland Wasp helicopter to the wreckage sight, where the helicopter sadly found five dead bodies. All fourteen of the aeroplane's crew were killed. In 1974, Zulu deployed to the West Indies. In 1975, while in the western hemisphere, Zulu patrolled the coast of Belize, which was at that time threatened by its neighbours, specifically Guatemala, who had desires to annex a large amount of Belizean territory.
In 1977, Zulu took part in the last, at the time, Fleet Review of the Royal Navy. It took place in honour of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee. Later that year, Zulu, along with her sister-ship Mohawk, was part of the eight-ship Group 6 deployment, led by the cruiser HMS Tiger, that deployed to the Far East, visiting a variety of ports in fly-the-flag visits, as-well as performing naval exercises. Zulu returned home, along with the rest of the Group, in 1978, via the Mediterranean, where the group, minus Mohawk, which had suffered slight hull damage in an accident in Malta, performed naval exercises before returning to the UK.
In 1979, Zulu was placed in Reserve, the Standby Squadron, and then placed on the disposal list in 1981. The following year, in response to the Falklands War, Zulu was taken out of Reserve, so that she could fill in the gaps in Home Waters created by the many warships that had deployed to the South Atlantic to take part in the war. The following year, Zulu became the Gibraltar Guardship. In 1984, Zulu was decommissioned and subsequently sold to Indonesia along with two of her sister-ships. Zulu was renamed Martha Kristina Tiyahahu. Martha Kristina Tiyahahu remains in service with the Indonesian Navy.
| Tribal-class frigate |
| Ashanti | Eskimo | Gurkha | Mohawk | Nubian | Tartar | Zulu |
List of frigates of the Royal Navy |
