Operational History
Toowoomba hit a navigation marker off Gladstone in March 2006 and was repaired at Williamstown, Victoria.
Toowoomba began her first deployment to the Middle East Area of Operations (MEAO) as part of Operation Slipper on 4 January 2007.
On 18 June 2008, the frigate became the first RAN warship to fire an MU90 Impact anti-submarine torpedo, after they replaced the American Mark 46 anti-submarine torpedoes originally fitted.
In June 2009, Toowoomba sailed from Fleet Base West, Western Australia to embark upon the ship's second MEAO deployment. In September, the frigate was assigned to Combined Task Force 151 (CTF-151); Toowoomba was the first Australian warship to work with CTF-151, a US-led, multinational force tasked with protecting merchant vessels from pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia. Toowoomba was assigned to escort merchant shipping and conduct overt patrols in the International Recommended Transit Corridor (IRTC), a shipping lane extending the Gulf of Aden towards the Somali Basin and the Horn of Africa, in support of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1846 and 1851. The frigate was also the first to operate with the counter-terrorism Combined Task Force 150 (CTF-150) in the Arabian Sea.
On 20 September 2009, Toowoomba responded to a call for assistance from the merchant vessel BBC Portugal, and successfully prevented an act of high-seas piracy. A Japanese P-3 Orion aircraft and a naval helicopter from the German frigate Bremen provided surveillance support while Toowoomba closed in. A boarding party from Toowoomba confiscated several weapons from the attackers, including a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, six AK-47 assault rifles, and a G3 assault rifle, before the skiff was directed to leave the IRTC.
Toowoomba returned to Fleet Base West on 7 December 2009, having been relieved in the MEAO by HMAS Stuart. The ship and her company were awarded with a "Certificate for Exceptional Services Rendered to Shipping and Mankind" by the International Maritime Organization in November 2009. The deployment is the subject of Australian Pirate Patrol, a four-episode documentary series produced by Prospero Productions, and first aired on the National Geographic Channel on 18 October 2010.
Read more about this topic: HMAS Toowoomba (FFH 156)
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