ARA Drummond (P-31)


ARA Drummond
Career (South Africa)
Class and type: D'Estienne d'Orves class Aviso
Namesake: Cape of Good Hope
Ordered: February 1976[1]
Builder: Lorient, France
Laid down: 12 March 1976
Launched: 05 March 1977
Christened: SAS Good Hope
Out of service: 17 November 1977
Fate: Delivery blocked by UNSCR 418 during sea trials in France
Career (Argentina)
Namesake: Francisco Drummond
Operator:  Argentine Navy
Ordered: 1978
Commissioned: 09 November 1978
In service: 9 November 1978
Renamed: ARA Drummond
Homeport: Mar del Plata
Fate: active service as of 2010
General characteristics
Class and type: Type A69 Drummond class corvette
Displacement: 1,170 tons
Length: 80 m
Beam: 10.3 m
Draught: 3.55 m
Propulsion: 2 Diesel engines
12,000 shp (8,900 kW)
2 shafts/propellers
Speed: 23 knots (43 km/h)
Range: 4,500 nautical miles (8,330 km) at 16 knots (30 km/h)
Complement: 95
Armament: 4 Exocet anti-ship missiles
1 100 mm dual purpose gun
4 40 mm anti-aircraft guns
2 .50cal machine guns
2 .20 mm automatic guns
6 324 mm torpedo tubes
Aircraft carried: ? helicopter

ARA Drummond (P-31) is the lead ship of the Drummond class of three corvettes of the Argentine Navy. She is the second vessel to be named after Navy Sgt Francisco Drummond.

Contents

Service history

Drummond was built in 1977 in France for the South African Navy to be named SAS Good Hope but was embargoed at the last minute due the apartheid by United Nations Security Council Resolution 418. It was sold to Argentina instead and delivered on November 9, 1978.

She carried the P-1 pennant number until the introduction of the Espora class corvettes in 1985 when she became P-31.

In 1982 she served with her sister ships in the Falklands War ( Spanish: Guerra de Malvinas ).

On 7 October 1983, during a live fire exercise, sunk the old destroyer Almirante Domecq Garcia with a MM38 Exocet missile.[2]

On 1994, from her temporary base at Roosevelt Roads Naval Station, she participated on the blockade of Haiti during Operation Uphold Democracy.[3]

She had also served as support ship of the Buenos Aires-Rio de Janeiro tall ships races.

She is currently based at Mar del Plata and routinely conducts fishery patrol duties in the Argentine Exclusive Economic Zone having captured several trawlers in recent years [4]

The Sun incident

On 25 February 2010 the British tabloid The Sun reported that the Drummond had been intercepted and shepherded away by the Royal Navy destroyer HMS York in the vicinity of the Falklands Islands. The story was published in the middle of a diplomatic dispute between the United Kingdom and Argentina about oil drilling, escalating the crisis as the "first head-to-head of the Falklands row".[5] The British Ministry of Defence quickly issued a denial. A spokesman said the incident had occurred a month earlier, before the oil dispute began; both ships were in the same zone in international waters during rough weather at night, and, after a friendly dialogue by radio, each had continued on its own exercise.[6][7][8][9]

References

Portions based on a translation from Spanish Wikipedia.

Further reading

External links