BRITAIN’S flagship and her biggest warship will both be used to provide a shield of security for next year’s Olympics.

HMS Ocean will be moored at Greenwich as a helicopter base for Lynx and Pumas, while assault ship HMS Bulwark will be in Weymouth Bay for the duration of the Olympics and Paralympics as a floating command centre for protecting sailing events.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond today announced widespread military involvement in security arrangements for next year’s sporting spectacular which will see up to 13,500 personnel involved at its peak.

Mr Hammond told MPs that although the police would be in overall charge of security arrangement, the Government had agreed that the Armed Forces should provide significant support from participation in ceremonial events and logistical assistance to wide-ranging security duties.

To that end, the Forces involvement in the Games includes:

• 5,000 personnel supporting the police and other civilian authorities such as bomb disposal teams, military working dogs and RN support to maritime policing;
• 1,000-strong unarmed ‘contingency force’ to be deployed in the event of a civil emergency during the Games;
• 1,000 personnel providing logistical support
• up to 7,500 personnel providing venue security
• up to four dozen Naval personnel representing the Senior Service as flag bearer parties at opening and closing ceremonies, plus medal presentations
• HMS Ocean will be moored on the Thames at Greenwich to provide accommodation and logistical support while her flight deck will accommodate RAF Pumas and Army and Fleet Air Arm Lynx which will work with RAF Typhoon jets, based temporarily at RAF Northolt, to provide airspace security;
• flagship HMS Bulwark off Weymouth will provide a maritime command centre for the security effort. She’ll also be used by helicopters and as a base for small boats.

Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsular can be inhospitable, a place of extremes, its bleak but beautiful landscape scorched brown in summer, scoured by bitter winds and frosts in winter.  No part of the peninsular is more exposed than the headland at its southern tip where for ninety years the Helles Memorial has stood overlooking the waters of the Dardenelles.  In that time the weather has taken its toll on the memorial eroding many of its name panels, and underground tremblings from seismic activity have unsettled its very foundations.   This year the Commission begins a major project to refurbish the memorial that will include the replacement of huge amounts of stonework and more than 550 name panels.  The work, to be undertaken in stages, is expected to take five years.

Making preparations

A project of this size needs a great deal of planning and preparations have been underway for some time.  The work must be staged to cause least inconvenience to visitors and to make the best use of the Gallipoli working season.  Craftsmen and stonemasons must be found and engaged and materials – in this case huge quantities of stone – must be secured in advance.  But stone types used when the memorial was first constructed are no longer available. The original name panels were in Hopton Wood, a British limestone that cannot be quarried today in the sizes required, so a replacement, Italian Nebrasina, has been sourced and enough secured to make the 551 replacement panels.  Ilgadare a limestone quarried locally on the peninsular originally used for construction, copings and facings, is to be replaced with an alternative quarried near Antalya in southern Turkey, although it is expected that once redressed at our own cutting yard a certain amount of the Ilgadare will be reused as cladding.

The work

The memorial consists of a 30 metre high obelisk which stands on a terrace enclosed by a 3 to 4 metre high parapet wall on which the commemorative name panels are fixed. The work involves the parapet wall.

Phase one of the project will concern the front, south-east corner, of the parapet wall.  This section has suffered movement over the years and needs the most work.  The existing wall will be dismantled, panel by panel and stone by stone, down to the foundations and a new concrete wall, with a drainage system and soakaway, constructed in its place.  The new wall will then be faced with stone and the replacement name panels attached with stainless steel fixings, a new system which will allow the wall a degree of movement without causing damage to the panels.  Stonemasons will then build new stonework up to where the name panels start.

Phases two and three concern the east, north, west and south-western elevations where the walls will be taken down to the level of the sub-structure (the bottom edge of the panels) and built up from there.

Unavoidably, while each phase of the work is underway there can be no public access to the panels being replaced and for this we apologise. The timings of each phase and panels affected are as follows;

Phase one: The first phase of the work began in the summer of 2010 and will last until November.
External face panels 23-50 (top and bottom), Internal face panels 335-325

Phase two: 3 May- November 2011
External face panels 51-159 (top and bottom), Internal face panels 324-262

Phase three: 7 May- November 2012
External face panels 160-215 (top and bottom) and 1-22 (top and bottom), Internal face panels 261-216

The memorial

The Helles Memorial commemorates 21,000 British, Indian and Australian dead from the 1915 Gallipoli campaign who have no known grave.  See the information sheet for more about the Commonwealth cemeteries and memorials of Gallipoli.