Barber of New Zealand Press Association on Otago, saw it as an "angry... red fireball" and rising white mushroom cloud. In operations Otago needed the support of an RAN tanker due to the relatively short range of the Type 12 frigates which was just sufficient for a one way trip from Auckland to Mururora or to operate for 36 hours at in all-out anti-submarine operations in the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. The Rothesays were designed for such sweeps and as aircraft carrier escorts with fleet tankers in the group sprinting and searching. A solution became possible when the redesign of the Leander for the NZ in 1968-69 for HMNZS Canterbury; removal of the anti-submarine mortars giving more internal space below deck. Proposals to fit a hangar and landing pad to Otago without complete reconstruction were rejected by RNZN CNS in the 1970s as jeopardizing the RNZN case for a new combat ship. The Limbo mortars were finally removed after last firing on a recruitment cruise off Timaru in mid-1979, immediately before the frigates July 1979-November 80 mid-life refit. Otago continued as the third combat ship in the three frigate fleet designated by the 1978 Defence Review. In the second half of 1979, the ship had another extensive refit, with its Seacat missile system repaired by using stored parts from HMNZS Taranakis system. In early 1980, the ship deployed to Pearl Harbor and later the West Coast of the United States and Canada for extensive exercises with the United States Navy and Canadian Maritime Command firing hundreds of rounds of 4.5-inch shells. Under the command of Cmdr Karl Moen, who described Otago as the "one true fighting ship in the RNZN" with Ltd Cmdr Robert Martin as his second. Martin assumed command during a final six-month refit, leaving the ship on 7 April 1982. Even at the time of the Falklands War, the Captain of Otago and the Minister of Defence, David Thomson, declared the ship to still be fully combat capable. Notes References Further reading External links HMNZS Otago Association Mururoa Veterans Rothesay-class frigates of the Royal New Zealand Navy 1958 ships Ships built by John I. Thornycroft & Company