The Spanish Navy shows how it sank the transport ship 'Martín Posadillo'

@DefAviation ES 7·19·2023 · 20:58 0

On June 29, the former transport ship "Martín Posadillo" A-04 was destroyed and sunk by the Spanish Navy during an exercise.

The last photos of the Spanish ship 'Martín Posadillo' before being sunk with missiles
The photos of the Spanish aircraft carrier 'Príncipe de Asturias' that are kept in the US

The ship, launched in 1973 and acquired by the Army in 1990, was withdrawn from service in September 2020. She was sunk as part of the Sinkex 23 exercise, through the coordinated launch of anti-ship missiles from the frigates "Méndez Núñez" and "Canarias" and from an SH-60B Seahawk helicopter from the 10th Squadron.

Until now, the Spanish Navy had spread images of the towing of the "Martín Posadillo" by the offshore tugboat "Mar Caribe" A-101 to the area where it was melted down, south of the Canary Islands, but in these weeks no images of the sinking had been shown. Only videos of the launch of missiles by the aforementioned frigates were disseminated, but not a single image of the "Martín Posadillo" sinking. Today, finally, the Navy has published a tweet showing a video of the frigate "Canarias" with images of the sinking of the "Martín Posadillo":

You can see here some screenshots of the video published by the Spanish Navy.

The video begins with the launch of an RGM-84 Harpoon anti-ship missile from the Mk 13 launcher of the "Canarias" F-86 frigate, of the Santa María class.

As we can see, the missile was launched towards the starboard side, that is, the frigate located to the north of the target.

Here we see another image of the shot, and then there are pixelated images of "Martín Posadillo" (a sign that the Navy does not want to reveal certain details of the exercise). Here we see the first image of the attacked ship after being hit. She's listing to starboard.

Here we see the "Martín Posadillo" almost inverted, during its sinking process.

The ship sank on its stern. The last thing seen on the video is the bow rising above the surface before sinking.