HMAS Advance (P 83) - Operational History

Operational History

Advance operated out of HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin, Northern Territory between 1968 and 1980. As well as the standard duties for her class, Advance was also used for surveillance, search-and-rescue, and hydrographic survey (in company with the survey ship HMAS Moresby).

During 1968, Advance and sister ship Attack shadowed the Soviet trawler Van Gogh, which operated in the Gulf of Carpenteria for two months.

Advance and three other patrol boats were in Darwin Harbour on 25 December 1974, when Cyclone Tracy hit. Advance and Assail managed to escape serious damage, but Attack was forced aground and suffered hull damage, and Arrow collided with Stoke's Hill Wharf and sank.

During 1975 and 1976, Advance regularly operated as part of Operation Trochus: a concentrated effort to respond to illegal fishing vessels in northern Australian waters.

From late 1977, the patrol boat was assigned to HMAS Waterhen in Sydney for patrols along Australia's eastern coast, but was redeployed elsewhere when necessary.

In 1979, Advance was one of two Attack class vessels used to portray the fictional HMAS Ambush; setting of the ABC television series Patrol Boat.

On 30 May 1980, Advance, along with sister ships Attack and Buccaneer, commenced the RAN's first anti-terrorism patrols of the oil rigs in the North West Shelf area.

Following her replacement by a Fremantle class patrol boat in 1980, Advance was reassigned as a training ship. She was assigned to the Sydney Port Division of the Royal Australian Navy Reserve in February 1982.

The patrol boat participated in the 1986 Naval Review.