German frigate Rheinland-Pfalz (F209)
1980 Bremen-class frigate
Rheinland-Pfalz was a Bremen-class frigate of the German Navy.
Construction and commissioning
Rheinland-Pfalz was laid down in 1979 at the yards of Blohm+Voss, Hamburg and launched in September 1980. After undergoing trials she was commissioned on 9 May 1983.
Service
Early deployments
Rheinland-Pfalz was involved in several foreign missions since her commissioning. From 1992 to 1996 she was deployed several times in the Adriatic Sea as part of Operation Sharp Guard, blockading the former Yugoslavia. In 1999 she supported Operation Allied Force, the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In 2001 she was part of a Destroyer Exercise (DESEX), followed by a deployment in 2004 with Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa, and in the Gulf of Aden. Rheinland-Pfalz took part in Operation Active Endeavour in the Mediterranean in 2005, and in 2006 joined the South African naval exercises Good Hope II. In early 2009 she was briefly once more part of Operation Active Endeavour, before departing for the waters off the Horn of Africa to participate in Operation Atalanta, combatting piracy off the coast of Somalia. She relieved her sister ship Karlsruhe on patrol on 22 January 2009.
Operation Atalanta 2009
On 3 March at 7:12 local time, the 14,969 ton Antigua and Barbuda-registered container ship MV Courier, owned by a Bremen-based shipping company and crewed by Filipino sailors, sent a distress message reporting the attack of pirates on board a small vessel.
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This entry incorporates text from “German frigate Rheinland-Pfalz (F209)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.