On Wednesday 13th October, 2021 the German Navy Type 122 Class Frigate FGS BREMEN F 207 left Wilhelmshaven for the last time and last voyage towed to the breakers at Aliaga, Turkey by tug ONYX which passed off Malta on the 7th November 2021.
She was the lead ship of the class known as the Bremen Class, and the second surface warship to serve with one of the navies of Germany to be named after the city of Bremen, in the state of Bremen. Her predecessor was the cruiser SMS BREMEN of the Imperial German Navy, one of the Bremen class. She was commissioned on 7th May, 1982 and was assigned to the 4th Frigate Squadron and was also the first warship in the Navy to carry a helicopter.
She was removed from active service on 30th September 2013, and was decommissioned on 28th March 2014 at Wilhelmshaven by her final commander, Ingolf Schlobinsky. By this time she had been in service for 32 years, and had sailed over 1.5 million kilometres, under the command of 16 different captains. She was laid up in Wilhelmshaven as a source of spare parts for the remaining BREMEN Class frigates in service.
FGS BREMEN F 207 participated in various international missions during her career. She was frequently deployed to participate in NATO permanent monitoring missions in the Mediterranean during the Gulf War in 1991. In late January 1992 she escorted the German cargo ship GODEWIND into Cartagena, Spain after she been intercepted in the Mediterranean by the destroyer FGS MOLDERS D 186 while transporting Czechoslovak T-72 tanks from Poland to Syria in violation of the German law. From 1992 to 1996 FGS BREMEN was active in the Adriatic Sea as part of NATO’s Operation Sharp Guard, the maritime blockade of the former Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav Wars. From 2002 she served in the counter-terrorism Operation Enduring Freedom. In 2009 she joined Operation Atalanta, the EU’s anti-piracy mission off the Horn of Africa. On 14th August 2009 she deployed her helicopter to counter a pirate attack on the Turkish-flagged merchant ship ELGIZNUR CEBI. On encountering a pirate skiff and six pirates, the helicopter fired warning shots to force it to stop. The skiff was then seized by the Greek frigate HS NAVARINON which found weapons and boarding ladders. In May 2012 she was again deployed with Operation Atalanta, taking over from the replenishment oiler FGS BERLIN A 1411 in a ceremony attended by German Secretary of State Thomas Kossendey.
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Published – Thursday 18th November ,2021
