HMS Cardiff

This morning we passed a remarkable transport. A small tug towing an old warship. When coming closer i could see her name on the stern, hardly visible. It showed 'Cardiff'. H.m.s 'Cardiff' is a British type 42 Destroyer and the third ship of the Royal Navy to be named in honour of the Welsh capital city of Cardiff. HMS 'Cardiff' was launched at the Swan Hunter yard on 22 February 1974. During her career, Cardiff served in the Falklands War, where she shot down the last Argentine aircraft of the conflict and accepted the surrender of a 700-strong garrison in the settlement of Port Howard. During the 1991 Gulf War, her Lynx helicopter sank two Iraqi minesweepers. Cardiff was decommissioned in July 2005, having earned two battle honours for service in the Falklands and Gulf wars. Here you can see her being towed by the Panamanian tug 'Wizard' to her last resting place in Turkey. Despite calls by former servicemen for her to be preserved as a museum ship and local tourist attraction in Cardiff, she will be scrapped there. A sad ending for a honourable vessel.