Sailing Home For Christmas After Middle East Mission

Royal Navy Type 45 destroyer HMS Duncan is back at home in the U.K. after a six-month deployment keeping shipping safe in the Red Sea and bolstering NATO's presence in the eastern Mediterranean.

The destroyer had been scheduled for an earlier return after a stint replacing HMS Diamond in the Red Sea, where she played a key role in Operation Prosperity Guardian, the wider multinational effort to safeguard merchant shipping from continued attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. She acted as main escort providing air defence to the USS Wasp task group, making good use of her cutting-edge radars and Sea Viper missile system.

But following the end of that mission Duncan was ordered to stay on in the eastern Mediterranean after regional tensions escalated in the light of the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah conflicts. The warship had also previously spent six months of 2023 in the eastern Mediterranean.

As per a recent Royal Navy press statement, during her more recent extended deployment Duncan sailed more than 36,000 nautical miles and operated with 21 allied warships. The ship’s flight deck was used for roughly 400 landings — including 20 U.S., French and German aircraft — and the Wildcat helicopter embarked on the Duncan flew almost 90 separate sorties.

At the weekend nearly 1,000 nearest and dearest braved Storm Darragh to welcome Duncan's crew home to Portsmouth.

• You can read more details about her return on the Royal Navy website