RUSI Photo Essay: HMS Liverpool, Part III: The Falklands
Jun 2006, Vol. 151, No. 3
By Susan Schulman
The first and second phases of HMS Liverpool’s deployment could not have been more different, visually or operationally. Having left the searing heat of West Africa, Liverpool sailed south for the Falklands, via a brief top at Ascension Island, to join around a thousand service personnel who are permanently based there.Whilst deployed as the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Patrol Task (South) unit, Liverpool will spend approximately half her time away from the UK operating in and around the Falklands, with the aim of deterring aggression against the UK’s South Atlantic Overseas Territories.
In the final instalment of this photo essay on Liverpool, photographer Susan Schulman captures the variety of both the operational activity and life on board, set against the stark beauty of the South Atlantic. Having a Destroyer or Frigate in the South Atlantic gives the Commander British Forces a significant range of extra capabilities, some of which were demonstrated during Purple Strike, a joint exercise held bi-annually around the islands. Liverpool transported a platoon of the Roulement Infantry Company to West Falkland, landed them ashore using an organic Lynx helicopter, and then provided both naval gunfire and airborne strafing runs to support their advance. Not long afterwards they sailed east, in company with the on-station tanker, Royal Fleet Auxiliary Gold Rover, into the Antarctic
convergence zone to visit South Georgia. This beautiful glacial island is overflowing with wildlife and surrounded by rich and carefully managed fishing grounds. Liverpool’s visit was a tangible demonstration of UK commitment both to the island and to the wider Antarctic region.
Back in the Falklands, signs of the conflict are everywhere, even twenty-four years later, and many of the ship’s company were able to visit the battlefields and the cemeteries. The numbers of personnel still serving who fought in the Falklands Conflict are dwindling fast. And though many of the younger sailors have no memory of the events of 1982, the issue has not gone way. As such, educating the next generation of Service leaders in both their history and the nature of operations in the South Atlantic was a key part of Liverpool’s deployment, and one that Schulman’s photographs poignantly convey.
RUSI thanks Lieutenant Conor O’Neill Royal Navy, one of Liverpool’s navigation watchkeepers and the Assistant Public Relations Officer, for his assistance with this introduction.
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By Susan Schulman
The first and second phases of HMS Liverpool’s deployment could not have been more different, visually or operationally. Having left the searing heat of West Africa, Liverpool sailed south for the Falklands, via a brief top at Ascension Island, to join around a thousand service personnel who are permanently based there.Whilst deployed as the Royal Navy’s Atlantic Patrol Task (South) unit, Liverpool will spend approximately half her time away from the UK operating in and around the Falklands, with the aim of deterring aggression against the UK’s South Atlantic Overseas Territories.
In the final instalment of this photo essay on Liverpool, photographer Susan Schulman captures the variety of both the operational activity and life on board, set against the stark beauty of the South Atlantic. Having a Destroyer or Frigate in the South Atlantic gives the Commander British Forces a significant range of extra capabilities, some of which were demonstrated during Purple Strike, a joint exercise held bi-annually around the islands. Liverpool transported a platoon of the Roulement Infantry Company to West Falkland, landed them ashore using an organic Lynx helicopter, and then provided both naval gunfire and airborne strafing runs to support their advance. Not long afterwards they sailed east, in company with the on-station tanker, Royal Fleet Auxiliary Gold Rover, into the Antarctic
convergence zone to visit South Georgia. This beautiful glacial island is overflowing with wildlife and surrounded by rich and carefully managed fishing grounds. Liverpool’s visit was a tangible demonstration of UK commitment both to the island and to the wider Antarctic region.
Back in the Falklands, signs of the conflict are everywhere, even twenty-four years later, and many of the ship’s company were able to visit the battlefields and the cemeteries. The numbers of personnel still serving who fought in the Falklands Conflict are dwindling fast. And though many of the younger sailors have no memory of the events of 1982, the issue has not gone way. As such, educating the next generation of Service leaders in both their history and the nature of operations in the South Atlantic was a key part of Liverpool’s deployment, and one that Schulman’s photographs poignantly convey.
RUSI thanks Lieutenant Conor O’Neill Royal Navy, one of Liverpool’s navigation watchkeepers and the Assistant Public Relations Officer, for his assistance with this introduction.
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