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Navy News INSIDE THIS MONTH Left: When HMS Fearless returned to Portsmouth last month, Megan Armstrong, daughter of the ship's amphibious operations officer Maj Roger Armstrong, hit just the right fashion note. The assault ship was back from a Joint Maritime Course off the coasts of Scotland — the biggest for many years. See centre pages. Right: The new Lynx Mk 8 Helicopter Maritime Attack hovers over the bows of the Type 23 frigate HMS Marlborough during a sea training exercise off Portland Bill. See page 3.
Lusty's hover fliers HMS ILLUSTRIOUS'S visit to Barcelona — where 120 family reunions were planned —had to be cancelled when heavy fighting erupted in Bosnia last month. Projects by men and women of the carrier's ship's company to help the local population rebuild their infrastructure were also on hold because of the renewed violence ashore. The pilot of an RAF Jaguar fighter which crashed into the Adriatic was rescued unhurt by a Sea King helicopter of B Flight 849 Naval Air Squadron flying from Illustrious. The Jaguar pilot ejected after getting into trouble during a training flight from his base in Italy. Illustrious has been stationed in the Adriatic since early February, leading the Task Group of RFAs Olna and Fort Austin and HMS Boxer, the Type 22 frigate that relieved HMS Coventry. She provides the new FA2 Sea Harrier to Operation Deny Flight and helicopters to assist ships from NATO and the Western European Union enforcing the UN embargo Operation Sharp Guard. She is expected to return to the UK early next month for leave and maintenance before deploying again in November. Right: all in the hover mode, 'Lusty's' new FA2 Sea Harrier and Airborne Early Warning and Anti-Submarine Warfare Sea King helicopters.
"OUR SHOES might pinch around the toes and heel — but they do just fit." The outgoing First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Benjamin Bathurst has noted that the Royal Navy's destroyers and frigates are working harder on more overseas tasks than they had five years ago — and there are 30 per cent less of them to spread around.
Admiral Bathurst
In a farewell address to the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, "The Royal Navy — Taking Maritime Power into the New Millenium", he described how "time and again they have proved to
be on hand at the initial response to an emerging crisis." In the past 12 months alone he cited HMS Cornwall off Kuwait, HMS Marlborough standing by off Sierra Leone on passage to the South Atlantic, and HMS Monmouth assisting the
Governor of the Turks and Caicos islands (see pages 8-9). "I see an ever-present need for the United Kingdom, as one
of the democracies most ably fitted, to respond to low-intensity challenges at little or no notice. . . we are currently oper-
ating at levels exceeded only in wartime and to meet these de• Turn to page 11