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Photo Essay: Navy’s longest serving ship completes successful final mission

Photo Essay: Navy’s longest serving ship completes successful final mission
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Following the completion of the final voyage for the Royal Australian Navy’s longest serving ship, HMAS Success (II), Defence Connect will showcase some of her esteemed history during her 33 years service to Australia.

Following the completion of the final voyage for the Royal Australian Navy’s longest serving ship, HMAS Success (II), Defence Connect will showcase some of her esteemed history during her 33 years service to Australia.

Commissioned in 1986, Success has steamed over 1 million nautical miles, participated in a world record 11 Rim of the Pacific exercises, earned battle honours for service during the 1991 Gulf War and East Timor in 1999, and helped search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

The last vessel built for the RAN at Sydney's Cockatoo Island dockyard, Success is an 18,000-tonne auxiliary oiler replenishment ship almost 160 metres in length, and is known as 'The Battle Tanker'.

HMAS Success will be decommissioned at a formal ceremony at Fleet Base East in Sydney on Saturday, 29 June 2019. Plans for Success after this event are under consideration by the Australian government.

The 23rd and final Commanding Officer of HMAS Success, Captain Darren Grogan, said he was not surprised by the level of admiration the ship still attracts from current and former officers and sailors.

"Success will be missed. She has been such an integral part of Navy over the past 33 years that most of our people today will not know the fleet without her," CAPT Grogan said. 

For a glimpse at some of the moments in her history, scroll through the photo gallery above.