HMS Zulu (F124)

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 Alexander Stephen and Sons 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.

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 site, where the helicopter crew found five dead bodies. All fourteen of the aircraft'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 HMS 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 fired the last "full" broadside in the Royal Navy before being decommissioned and subsequently sold to Indonesia along with two of her sister-ships. Zulu was renamed Martha Kristina Tiyahahu, a female hero from Maluku, who fought against Dutch Colonials under Kapitan Pattimura's command. Martha Kristina Tiyahahu was struck from the Indonesian Naval Vessel Register in 1984 and currently awaits scrapping.