HMS Glasgow (D88): Punched Through by a Bomb That Never Exploded

Built at Swan Hunter

HMS Glasgow was built at Swan Hunter's yard in Wallsend, the sixth and final Batch 1 Type 42 destroyer, displacing 4,820 tonnes and powered by combined gas or gas turbines giving her genuine speed and flexibility. She carried the Sea Dart surface-to-air missile system, a 4.5-inch gun and, later, Phalanx close-in weapon systems, alongside torpedo tubes. She was launched on 14 April 1976 by Lady Kirstie Treacher, wife of Admiral Sir John Treacher, though her construction was marked by genuine tragedy: on 23 September 1976, while being fitted out, a fire aboard killed eight men and injured six more, a devastating loss of life before the ship had even entered service. HMS Glasgow finally commissioned on 25 May 1979, the eighth Royal Navy ship to carry the name.

Rammed by a Soviet Cruiser

HMS Glasgow's early Cold War service included a genuinely dramatic confrontation: on 27 May 1981, while operating in the Barents Sea gathering intelligence on Soviet naval equipment, she was rammed by the Soviet cruiser Admiral Isakov, a stark reminder of just how close and confrontational Cold War intelligence-gathering operations could become, even without either side actually being at war.

The Falklands War

HMS Glasgow deployed to the South Atlantic following Argentina's invasion of the Falkland Islands on 2 April 1982, one of five Type 42 destroyers sent as part of the task force to retake the islands. On 2 May, her Lynx helicopter severely damaged the Argentine vessel ARA Alférez Sobral, and four days later, on 6 May, HMS Glasgow detected an incoming Exocet missile threat and warned the fleet, though her warning tragically failed to reach HMS Sheffield in time, which was struck and ultimately lost.

A Bomb That Passed Straight Through

HMS Glasgow's own brush with disaster came on 12 May 1982, while conducting shore bombardment operations alongside the frigate HMS Brilliant. Argentine A-4B Skyhawks attacked in two waves, and during the second, a bomb dropped by Lieutenant Fausto Gavazzi struck HMS Glasgow approximately three feet above the waterline on her starboard side. Remarkably, the bomb passed clean through her aft engine room without exploding, a genuinely extraordinary stroke of fortune given the damage an actual detonation would almost certainly have caused. Even without exploding, the bomb still damaged her fuel systems and disabled both of her Tyne cruising engines, reducing her speed to just 10 knots and significantly limiting her ability to continue combat operations.

HMS Glasgow returned to the main task force and became the first warship involved in Operation Corporate to return home, arriving back in Britain on 19 June 1982, where she underwent repairs at Portsmouth Dockyard, a genuinely fortunate outcome for a ship that had, quite literally, had a bomb pass straight through her.

A Long Postwar Career

HMS Glasgow resumed normal operations after her repairs, serving as West Indies Guard Ship in 1987, and underwent a major refit at Rosyth between 1991 and 1992 that included significant machinery replacements and weapons upgrades, replacing her older Oerlikon guns with modern Phalanx systems. She deployed to the Persian Gulf for Armilla Patrol duty in 1991 following the Gulf War, joined NATO's Standing Naval Force Mediterranean in 1992, and continued a genuinely active career with deployments to East Timor in September 1999 and Atlantic Patrol South duties in early 2004.

The End

HMS Glasgow's decommissioning was announced in July 2004, and she was formally decommissioned on 1 February 2005. She remained laid up at Portsmouth for several years before finally being towed to Turkey for breaking up on 7 January 2009, closing out the career of a destroyer whose Falklands War experience, surviving an unexploded bomb passing directly through her hull, remains one of the more remarkable individual episodes of the entire conflict.