war of 1982. During the Armilla patrols in 1982–83, the RNZN ships were not able to fully support the RN frigates Arrow and Galatea they were patrolling with in the Indian Ocean, because Prime Minister Muldoon refused to allow them to enter the Persian Gulf due to sensitivities with relations with Bahrain, The Arrow and Galatea were partly equipped for the missile age with computer datalinks and anti-missile decoy systems which fitting to RNZN frigates was delayed. Nevertheless, Canterbury and Galatea were later jointly awarded the Wilkinson Sword of Peace for the tour. Canterbury was halfway across the Tasman in February 1985 when relations broke down with the US Government over nuclear ship visits. She visited the US later that year while en route to Canada for the 75th Anniversary of the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) (port visits were made to Hawaii, San Diego and San Francisco. 1990s Canterbury attended the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Crete in May 1991. During that deployment, Canterbury became the last ship in the Royal New Zealand Navy to ever wear the distinctive white funnel stripe denoting the fact that she was the senior ship within the 11th Frigate Squadron when Captain Alasdair Clayton-Greene departed the ship in Lumut, Malaysia in April 1991. It was determined that only when a captain commanded a frigate (as the senior officer afloat) would this insignia be displayed – which never occurred again in the Royal New Zealand Navy. In 1996, Canterbury was one of the ships tasked with enforcing the embargo against Iraq in Operation Delphic (under US Navy Control). She also was the first New Zealand Navy ship to visit China (in 1987), and has participated in a number of humanitarian and peace-keeping missions, for example to Samoa, Fiji or New Guinea. Canterbury was deployed to East Timor as part of the Australian-led INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce. She conducted four patrols between 26 September to 12 December 1999. The patrols were tense, with the ship being approached by Indonesian naval vessels and Hawk jets. Her duties included escorting landing craft through territory disputed with Indonesia, being the Dili guard ship and patrolling East Timor's waters. Canterbury escorted the landing craft HMAS Tobruk when it landed a New Zealand infantry battalion in East Timor. During the deployment the ship achieved a remarkable 92% systems availability rate and had few mechanical defects, a considerable achievement for a ship