HMS Hermione (F58): The Frigate That Played HMS Hero on Television

Built on Two Yards

HMS Hermione was begun by Alexander Stephen and Sons but completed by Yarrow Shipbuilders, launched on 26 April 1967 and commissioned on 11 July 1969, a Leander-class general purpose frigate, one of the most successful and numerous frigate designs the Royal Navy ever operated.

She deployed to the Far East and Pacific in 1970, part of the steady rhythm of worldwide deployment that characterised so much Leander-class service through the 1970s.

Leading the Fleet at the Jubilee

HMS Hermione served as leader of the 5th Frigate Squadron during the Queen's Silver Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead in 1977, a notably prestigious role placing her at the head of one of the assembled squadrons for one of the great set-piece naval occasions of the decade.

A Star of Stage and Screen

HMS Hermione found an entirely unexpected form of fame during this period, appearing in the BBC drama series Warship as the fictional HMS Hero, giving television audiences a rare, if fictionalised, glimpse of life aboard a working Royal Navy frigate, and a small but genuine claim to cultural recognition well beyond the usual audience for naval history.

Missiles Instead of Guns

HMS Hermione underwent substantial modernisation at Chatham Naval Dockyard between January 1980 and 1983, receiving the Sea Wolf point defence missile system and Exocet anti-ship missiles in place of her original twin 4.5-inch gun turrets, a significant upgrade that considerably sharpened her capabilities for the sort of modern naval combat the Falklands War, fought just as her refit was underway, had shown was now a real possibility rather than a theoretical one.

The Tanker War and the Gulf

HMS Hermione joined the 8th Frigate Squadron following her refit and saw service in the Middle East, including involvement in the so-called Tanker War, the campaign of attacks on merchant shipping that formed a dangerous side conflict of the wider Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s, protecting international shipping in the Persian Gulf from mines and missile attack.

She returned to the region in 1991 for a further Armilla Patrol deployment, continuing the Royal Navy's long-standing commitment to maintaining a presence in Gulf waters.

The End

HMS Hermione was decommissioned in 1992, and sold to India for scrap in 1997, closing out the career of a frigate whose service, spanning the Cold War, the Tanker War and the aftermath of the Gulf War, had also included a remarkably memorable turn in front of the television cameras as a fictional warship of her own.