ARA Almirante Irízar (Q 5)

Background

The ship was named after Julián Irízar. In 1903, when he held the rank of Lieutenant, he commanded the Argentine corvette ARA Uruguay during a successful mission to rescue the Swedish Antarctic Expedition of Professor Otto Nordenskjöld, after the expedition had been trapped by the Antarctic winter.

The vessel was built at the Wärtsilä Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, under a contract signed in 1975 between the Argentine Navy and the shipyard. Irízar was launched in February 1978 and was formally commissioned on December that year, arriving in Argentina on 1979-3-23. She replaced the elderly icebreaker ARA General San Martín, which was then retired from active service.

Almirante Irízar's peacetime missions include annual campaigns to resupply and rotate the personnel assigned to the Argentine Antarctic outposts, as well as conducting and supporting scientific endeavors in Antarctica. She has also conducted several passenger tours to Patagonia and the Antarctic.

The ship's homeport is at the Argentine Navy's Buenos Aires Naval Anchorage (Spanish: Apostadero Naval Buenos Aires) in the capital city of Buenos Aires.

Service

During the Falklands War (Spanish: Guerra de Malvinas) the vessel served as a troop transport and then as a hospital ship, a role for which her crew included medical personnel from the Argentine Army in addition to the naval medical staff. After the end of the war, she was used to return Argentine injured personnel back to the continent.

The ship gained attention in 2002, when she attempted to rescue the trapped supply vessel Magdalena Oldendorff. Even though Irízar failed to break the Magdalena Oldendorff free, she managed to move it to a safety position and resupply the ship with food, medicine and medical personnel until the ice melted and Magdalena Oldendorff could return to open sea.

2004 Incident

On 15/16 March 2004, the ship entered a maritime area designated as conservation zones under the jurisdiction of the Falkland Islands and issued demands for other ships to identify themselves. This prompted a protest from the British government to the Argentine government over its policing of seas under Falkland jurisdiction. The diplomatic note also re-asserted British sovereignty over the islands.

2007 Fire

On 10 April 2007 at 22:00 UTC−03:00, a fire broke out in the auxiliary generator compartment. By midnight, the captain Guillermo Tarapow had ordered the evacuation. Argentine Navy and Argentine Coast Guard aircraft, including P-3 Orion and Hercules C-130 aircraft, operated to keep track of the 24 lifeboats. The 296 persons aboard the icebreaker —including civilians of the Antarctic bases— were helped by the nearest ships, the Panamanian tanker Scarlet Ibis and a Uruguayan fishing vessel. The icebreaker was returning from its annual Antarctic summer campaign, and the incident took place some 140 miles (230 km) east of Puerto Madryn.

The crew arrived safely in Puerto Madryn on 12 April. There were no casualties.

The vessel's captain remained aboard alone for almost 24 hours after seeing his crew safely evacuated from the ship. Starting 11 April, destroyer ARA Almirante Brown, corvettes ARA Granville, and ARA Robinson, avisos ARA Gurruchaga, ARA Suboficial Castillo, and ARA Teniente Oliveri, and Coast Guard PNA Thompson, surrounded the Icebreaker and began rescue operations. Buzos Tacticos and members of the Rescue Team (Spanish: Servicio de Salvamento) of the Argentine Navy boarded the ship and extinguished the fire. On 18 April, the ship started being towed to the Puerto Belgrano naval base. Irizar finally arrived to Puerto Belgrano on 20 April.

The fire caused the loss of the two Sea King helicopters stored in their hangar, worth US$18 million each. These have been replaced by four Sea Kings transferred from the US government.

Following this incident the British government offered to supply Argentine bases in Antarctica in support of scientific missions, using HMS Endurance. This offer was turned down by the Argentine government, instead they leased the Russian icebreaker Vasily Golovnin for the subsequent Antarctic summer campaigns at a cost of US$2m/month. Dutch vessel Timca was hired for the 2012/3 campaign. The Russian ship Vasily Golovnin will again carry out the following Antarctic campaign.

Upgrade

After a long period in Puerto Belgrano due to legal issues surrounding the incident, the Irizar finally arrived in Buenos Aires on 2008-9-3 to be taken to Tandanor's shipyard for repairs. Repairs were expected to be completed in 2010 but they have continued into 2011, and are supervised by Norwegian shipyard Aker Yards. As of November 2012, the refit had costed over US$100 million and the ship was not expected to be ready until late 2013. In April 2013 (2013-04), it was disclosed that the ship was still awaiting the necessary repairs and that sea trials had been delayed by a year, with oppositors claiming the money spent —some US$200 million plus another US$75 million in contracting supplying vessels— could have been used to buy a new ship; a month later, it was announced that work regarding control panels was still pending.

The Tandanor shipyard is not just repairing the fire damage but also reconfiguring the vessel to increase laboratory space from 74 m² (800 sq ft) up to 415 square metres (4,470 sq ft). This will allow it to be used primarily as a research vessel in addition to its role of resupplying the southernmost Antarctic base Belgrano II. The diesel engines will be replaced by two new ones purchased from MAN, in October 2011. The main radar of the Irizar is also being repaired in Argentina by CITEDEF Work was estimated to be finished by November 2011 but is still ongoing.