Friday 11 October saw the UK Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) vessel Lyme Bay arrive in the Port of Cape Town for a logistics stop and personnel transfers.
Excitement and confusion soon spread, as according to Marine Traffic, the ship’s transponder was reflecting its position as that of the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy.
Nonetheless, we soon confirmed it was not the HMS Queen Elizabeth, but the RFA Lyme Bay. Lyme Bay and its sister ship, the RFA Argus, which made its own stop in Cape Town in September, have been deployed to the Indian and Pacific oceans as part of the United Kingdom’s Littoral Response Group South, an amphibious task group intended to react to crises east of the Suez Canal.
In July, both ships partook in exercise Predators Run in Australia, and embarked with detachments of the Royal Marines’ 40 Commando.
Lyme Bay has a full load displacement of 16 160 tons, and measures 176.6 metres in length, with a beam of 26.4 metres and a draught of 5.8 metres. With a top speed of 18 knots (33km/h), and a range of 8 000 nautical miles (15 000km), Lyme Bay can transport 356 Marines and has 1 150 linear metres of vehicle space, allowing for the transport of up to 150 light vehicles or 24 Challenger 2 tanks.
After being refuelled, Lyme Bay will disembark and continue with its deployment to the Indian Ocean.
Lyme Bay is a Bay-class auxiliary dock landing ship (LSD(A)). Ordered from Swan Hunter in 2000, the ship was launched in 2005 and entered service in late 2007 as the last ship of the class to join the RFA.
