Naples Comes to Northwood – the cuts are not only affecting the Royal Navy – the NATO Maritime Headquarters in Naples is now closed, after six decades of service.   The Allied Maritime Command Naples, a mainstay of peacekeeping operations since the early 1970s, closed at the end of March.     There is now a single Allied Maritime Headquarters at Northwood (Middlesex).   The Northwood Headquarters “stood up” (in the jargon) and after a period of transition has taken over the ongoing Operation Active Endeavour (which started in 2001), the fight against crime, terrorism, drug and people trafficking in the Mediterranean.    

Royal Navy personnel have served at the Naples Headquarters in its various guises throughout its lifespan and can trace its history back to NATO HQ Allied Forces Mediterranean, opened in Malta in March 1953, led by Earl Mountbatten of Burma.      With Greece and Turkey joining the NATO alliance and France, Italy and the UK already members, the Mediterranean became an integral part of NATO’s defensive structure.    It moved to Italy in 1971 as HQ Allied Naval Forces Southern Europe, firstly in temporary accommodation, then to a permanent home on the island of Nisida – an inactive volcano with a flooded crater just west of Naples.