HMS Exeter (D89): Three Kills in the Falklands, Then Guarding Battleships in the Gulf

Built on the Tyne

HMS Exeter was built by Swan Hunter on the Tyne, with construction beginning on 22 July 1976 and the ship launched on 25 April 1978, sponsored by Lady Joan Mulley. A Type 42 destroyer of the Batch 2A variant, the first of the modified Batch 2 design, she displaced 4,820 tonnes, measured 125 metres in length, and could reach a top speed of 28.7 knots powered by a combined gas-or-gas turbine arrangement of Rolls-Royce Olympus and Tyne engines producing 36 megawatts. Her armament centred on the Sea Dart missile system alongside a 4.5-inch gun, Phalanx close-in weapon systems and Stingray torpedoes, backed by a Lynx helicopter, and she carried the distinction of being the first British warship to combine the 1022, 992Q and 1006 radar systems in a single fit. She commissioned on 19 September 1980, and briefly sported an experimental turquoise hull coating below the waterline during her early service, later repainted in the standard brick red and black following the Falklands conflict.

Rushed South After Sheffield

HMS Exeter was deployed from the Caribbean to the South Atlantic during the Falklands War as a direct replacement for HMS Sheffield, lost to an Exocet missile strike earlier in the conflict, a grim reminder of exactly what kind of threat she would be facing. Under the command of Captain Hugh Balfour, HMS Exeter operated on the outer ring of the carrier battle group's screen, providing area air defence using her Type 1022 radar and Sea Dart missile system.

Her combat record proved genuinely formidable. On 30 May 1982, HMS Exeter engaged an Argentine strike force targeting HMS Invincible, downing two A-4C Skyhawk attack aircraft with Sea Dart missiles, and also engaged an incoming Exocet missile during the same attack, though the precise outcome of that particular engagement remains disputed among historians. On 7 June, she destroyed a Learjet 35A that had been shadowing the task force on a reconnaissance mission, denying the Argentine military valuable intelligence on the British fleet's movements. On 13 June, in one of her most significant single actions, HMS Exeter shot down an Argentine Canberra B.62 bomber west of Stanley using Sea Dart, a genuinely impressive tally of confirmed kills for a single destroyer across barely two weeks of active combat.

Shielding American Battleships in the Gulf

HMS Exeter returned to front-line combat service nearly a decade later, taking part in Operation Granby, Britain's contribution to the 1991 Gulf War, under the command of Captain Nigel Essenhigh. Her role this time involved providing defensive air cover for American battleships and the mine-hunter group operating in the northern Persian Gulf, protecting them from hostile aircraft and missile threats using the same Sea Dart system that had proven so effective in the South Atlantic nearly a decade earlier, a genuinely striking demonstration of just how much continued value the Type 42 design still offered in a completely different theatre and a completely different kind of coalition warfare.

The Last Falklands Veteran

HMS Exeter continued in service through routine NATO deployments across the 1980s and 1990s, and underwent a major refit at Rosyth in the autumn of 1998, covering machinery overhaul, hull repairs, and upgrades to her radar, sensors and Sea Dart weapons system. She deployed on Armilla Patrol duty in the Persian Gulf between September 1999 and February 2000, continuing the long tradition of Royal Navy presence in the region.

By the mid-2000s, HMS Exeter had become the very last remaining Royal Navy ship in commission to have served in the Falklands War, a distinction she carried with evident pride, attending the 25th anniversary commemorations at Newquay in Cornwall in 2007. She also served as the centrepiece for the launch of the James Bond novel Devil May Care in May 2008, a considerably lighter duty than her earlier combat record but a genuinely fitting one for a ship that had, by then, become something of a national institution in her own right.

Decommissioning and a Quiet Controversy

HMS Exeter was placed in extended readiness at Portsmouth on 30 July 2008 and formally decommissioned on 27 May 2009, closing out nearly three decades of service that had included two of the most significant British military operations of the late twentieth century. She was put up for auction on 28 March 2011 and towed to the Leyal Ship Recycling facility in Turkey on 23 September 2011 for scrapping. Her disposal was not without controversy: a number of her former crew members protested the Ministry of Defence's failure to properly inform them the ship was being scrapped, feeling that a vessel with such a distinguished combat record, and such personal significance to the men who had served aboard her, deserved rather better notice than a quiet administrative announcement.