Paying Off and Sinking
Despite being the most recently refitted Iroquois-class destroyer, defence cutbacks during the late 1990s saw Huron placed in mothball status due to a personnel shortage in 2000. In 2005 she was paid off from the CF and awaited disposal at Esquimalt.
In 2006 MARPAC decided to use Huron in what would become the first sink-exercise that Maritime Command (MARCOM) had ever conducted. The sink-ex was named Operation TRIDENT FURY and was planned to use a variety of MARPAC ships, US Navy and AIRCOM aircraft to bombard Huron with artillery, missiles, strafing fire, and finally be sunk by a torpedo launched from a submarine.
Huron was stripped of armaments and all environmentally harmful contaminants and fuel in winter 2006-2007. On 14 May 2007 Huron was towed to the MARPAC offshore weapons range west of Vancouver Island. Despite being damaged by a Sea Sparrow surface to air missile and several other weapons, it was naval gunfire from sister HMCS Algonquin (DDG 283) that was responsible for sinking the hulk of Huron. Ironically, the main gun used by Algonquin was originally installed on Huron, meaning that Huron was sunk by one of its own weapons. This sinking marked the first Canadian warship to be operationally sunk in Canadian waters.
The sinking was the subject of a 2007 History Television documentary "Sinking a Destroyer".
Read more about this topic: HMCS Huron (DDG 281)
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