RFA ''Tidespring'' is a replenishment tanker of the British

Royal Fleet Auxiliary The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) is a naval auxiliary fleet owned by the UK's Ministry of Defence. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service and provides logistical and operational support to the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. The RF ...

(RFA). Built by

DSME Hanwha Ocean Co., Ltd. (), formerly known as Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering (DSME; ), is one of the "Big Three" shipbuilders of South Korea, along with Hyundai and Samsung. History On 21 February 2011, the A. P. Moller-Maersk G ...

in 2016, the ship entered service with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary in November 2017.

Construction

The construction of ''Tidespring'' was carried out by

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

with her steel first being cut by RFA Commodore Rob Dorey on 24 June 2014. The ship was laid down on 22 December 2014 and launched four months later on 25 April 2015. A series of builders sea trials commenced from 29 March 2015 and were completed by 1 July 2016. The finalisation of electrical elements and the installation of Multi-Cable Transit insulation, as per new legislative regulations, caused a delay in the ship's delivery to the UK. On 5 February 2017, the ship departed South Korea for delivery to the UK, making stopovers at

Yokosuka, Japan is a city in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the city has a population of 373,797, and a population density of . The total area is . Yokosuka is the 11th-most populous city in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the 12th in the Kantō region. The city is ...

and

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the Rec ...

. The ship transited the

Panama Canal The Panama Canal () is an artificial waterway in Panama that connects the Caribbean Sea with the Pacific Ocean. It cuts across the narrowest point of the Isthmus of Panama, and is a Channel (geography), conduit for maritime trade between th ...

into the Atlantic Ocean and arrived in

Falmouth, England Falmouth ( ; ) is a town, civil parish and port on the River Fal on the south coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Falmouth was founded in 1613 by the Killigrew family on a site near the existing Pendennis Castle. It developed as a po ...

on 31 March 2017. The ship was drydocked in

Falmouth Docks Falmouth Docks are a deep-water docks of the town of Falmouth in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. The docks are the southern shore of the Fal Estuary which is the third largest natural harbour in the world and the deepest in Europe. They ext ...

for fitting out to be carried out by

A&P Group A&P Group Ltd is the largest ship repair and conversion company in the UK, with three shipyards located in Hebburn, Middlesbrough and Falmouth, Cornwall, Falmouth. The company undertakes a wide variety of maintenance and repair work on commerci ...

on 27 April 2017. On 10 May 2017, a crane collapsed beside the ship whilst she was drydocked, however the vessel was not damaged in the incident. ''Tidespring'' sailed from Falmouth for final evaluation trials on 1 September 2017 which included her first visit to

Gibraltar Gibraltar ( , ) is a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory and British overseas cities, city located at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, on the Bay of Gibraltar, near the exit of the Mediterranean Sea into the A ...

, first of class flying trials and her first

replenishment at sea Underway replenishment (UNREP) ( U.S. Navy) or replenishment at sea (RAS) (North Atlantic Treaty Organization/Commonwealth of Nations) is a method of transferring fuel, munitions, and stores from one ship to another while under way. First devel ...

(RAS) with . She was officially accepted into the RFA on 27 November 2017.

Operational history

The ship's first scheduled replenishment at sea was planned to be with on 26 February 2018, however the full procedure — which was the first ever RAS for both ships — had to be abandoned due to bad weather. ''Tidespring'' and ''Queen Elizabeth'' instead carried out a full simulation of the scenario. In April, the ship participated in the bi-annual

Exercise Joint Warrior Exercise Joint Warrior is a major wikt:biannual, biannual multi-national military exercise which takes place in the United Kingdom, predominately in north west Scotland. It is the successor of the Neptune Warrior exercises and Joint Maritime C ...

, a large-scale

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...

military exercise held off the coast of Scotland. The ship underwent a maintenance refit at

Cammell Laird Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, ...

's shipyard in

Birkenhead Birkenhead () is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral, Merseyside, England. The town is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite Liverpool. It lies within the Historic counties of England, historic co ...

in March 2019. A year later, the ship was involved in the largest Royal Navy response to a fleet of Russian warships in the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. A sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian Se ...

. In September 2020, the ship accompanied during sea drills in the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; , ; ) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian territorial waters.World Wildlife Fund, 2008. It was known earlier among Russi ...

alongside ships of the Danish, Norwegian and American navies. In 2025, ''RFA Tidespring'', embarking a Merlin HC2 helicopter of 814 Squadron and Puma UAVs from 700 Squadron, joined the Royal Navy's

carrier strike group A carrier strike group (CSG) is a type of carrier battle group of the United States Navy. It is an operational formation composed of roughly 7,500 personnel, usually an aircraft carrier, at least one cruiser, a destroyer Squadron (naval), squad ...

as part of Operation HIGHMAST in a deployment to the Indo-Pacific region. While the main body of the task group sailed to the Indian Ocean through the Mediterranean and the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...

, ''Tidespring'' herself sailed around the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tidespring Tide-class tankers 2015 ships Ships built by Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering

Construction

Operational history

See also

References

External links