County Class (1959)
| County class | |
|---|---|
_HNLMS_De-Ruyter_DN-SC-82-08446.jpg) Norfolk (D21), further back the Braunschweig (F225) |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | destroyer |
| units | 8th |
| Shipyard |
Cammell, Laird , Birkenhead |
| Namesake | Counties |
| period of service |
1962–1987 United Kingdom 1982–1993 Pakistan 1982–2006 Chile |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
6200 ts |
| length |
157.96 m |
| width |
16.00 m |
| Draft |
6.40 m |
| crew |
471 men |
| drive |
2 × steam turbines |
| speed |
30 kn |
| Range |
3,500 nm |
| Armament |
24 × GWS.1 Sea Slug air target missiles |
| Board helicopter | |
The County class , the second after an eponymous class of heavy cruisers from the interwar period , was a destroyer class of the Royal Navy and the Navy of Chile and Pakistan. They were the UK's first guided missile destroyers .
history
The Royal Navy needed after the start of the Cold War, a ship type with the primary task of air defense of carrier battle groups in the context of a possible nuclear conflict in that time. For the first time, the anti- aircraft defense should be done mainly by surface-to-air missiles, but anti-aircraft cannons were intended as secondary armament.
A total of eight ships in two lots were ordered from 1956. The ships in the modified second batch were ordered from 1961. A quasi third heavily modified construction lot was the Bristol class , of which only the type ship, HMS Bristol , was completed.
During their active service time, the units were regularly assigned to NATO maneuvers in addition to national tasks , which also included participation in the permanent North Atlantic flotilla STANAVFORLANT . The destroyers also patrolled overseas, for example in the Caribbean , the Persian Gulf and Southeast Asia , where the United Kingdom still had a strong presence in the 1960s.
The ships were modernized several times during their service life.
The destroyers in the first batch were all decommissioned around 1980, with the youngest ship being given to Pakistan. There the Babur was replaced in the early 1990s by a frigate of the same name from the British Amazon class .
Two of the ships in the second batch took part in the Falklands War at the end of their service life in the Royal Navy in the South Atlantic , where they were both damaged by enemy action. For details, see the pages of the participating units HMS Antrim and HMS Glamorgan . In the further course of the 1980s, the remaining ships were also decommissioned. The successors were the Sheffield class destroyers, which were also running in several lots .
All four destroyers of the second construction lot were acquired by Chile, where the last were in service until the first decade of the 21st century. With the arrival of two frigates from the Jacob van Heemskerck class and two from the Karel Doorman class from the Netherlands as well as three from the Duke class of the Royal Navy , the destroyers were finally retired.
technology
The ships were built around their main operational weapon system, the GWS.1 Seaslug air target missile system. The Seaslug system was supplemented by the SeaCat system. The first drafts from 1954 envisaged a 3550 t ship with a twin launcher for the Seaslug. In the following two years the draft was revised several times. The final draft was frozen in 1956, the size of the ships had increased significantly to 5980 tons. In addition to guns, an on- board helicopter was now also planned.
The rocket magazine was housed in the foredeck and was transported through a tunnel to the launch device in the rear area, where final checks were carried out and the control surfaces and wings were installed. Initially planned as a purely air target missile, it could later, only slightly modified, be used against sea targets on impact due to its mass and kinetic energy.
The drive, a combination of steam and gas turbines, combined steam and gas (COSAG), the on-board helicopter and the later armament of Exocet marine target missiles were other first-time applications on a British warship. They were the only ships equipped with the Seaslug missile. The two second ships of the first and the second construction lot received some modifications, including the Mk. 2 series of the Seaslug.
The destroyers of the second construction lot were modernized during their active time. Two 20-mm anti-aircraft guns, Corvus radar decoys ( Chaff ) launchers and the aforementioned Exocet missiles replaced one of the 114-mm turrets. The electronics have also been modernized. These included a Type 278 fire control radar for air targets and a Type 992Q navigation radar.
units
The ships are named after different counties. Naval bases were located in four of the counties: Devonshire ( Devonport , Plymouth ), Hampshire ( Portsmouth ), Kent ( Chatham ) and Fife ( Rosyth ). Glamorgan and Antrim are the counties in Wales and Northern Ireland with the most important ports, which are also the respective state capitals, namely Cardiff and Belfast , as well as London, which is also the capital of the English part of the country. Norfolk is the home county of Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson , with the formerly important port cities of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn . Four of the names already had units of the cruiser class mentioned above.
Batch 1
| Identifier | Surname | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | In service | Off-duty | Whereabouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D02 | HMS Devonshire | Cammell, Laird | March 9, 1959 | June 10, 1960 | June 15, 1962 | 1978 | sunk on June 17, 1984 as a target ship |
| D06 | HMS Hampshire | John Brown | March 26, 1959 | March 16, 1961 | March 15, 1963 | 1976 | scrapped after 1979 |
| D12 | HMS Kent | Harland & Wolff | March 1, 1960 | September 27, 1961 | 15th August 1963 | 1980 | scrapped after 1980 |
| D16 | HMS London | Swan Hunter | February 26, 1960 | 7th December 1961 | 4th November 1963 | December 1981 | to Pakistan, Babur |
Batch 2
| Identifier | Surname | Shipyard | Keel laying | Launch | In service | Off-duty | Whereabouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D18 | HMS Antrim | Upper Clyde | 20th January 1966 | October 19, 1967 | July 14, 1970 | 1984 | to Chile, Almirante Cochrane (DLH-12) |
| D19 | HMS Glamorgan | Vickers-Armstrong | September 13, 1962 | July 9, 1964 | October 11, 1966 | 1986 | to Chile, Almirante Latorre (DLH-14) |
| D20 | HMS Fife | Fairfield | June 1, 1962 | July 9, 1964 | June 21, 1966 | June 1987 | to Chile, Blanco Encalada (DLH-15) |
| D21 | HMS Norfolk | Swan Hunter | March 15, 1966 | November 16, 1967 | March 7, 1970 | 1981 | to Chile, Capitán Prat (DLH-11) |
Between 1982, the year of the Falklands War, and 1987, Chile acquired all four ships of the second construction lot and put them into service, named after naval officers. They were based in Valparaíso .
| Identifier | Surname | Commissioning | Decommissioning | Whereabouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DLH-11 | Captain Prat | 1982 | August 11, 2006 | scrapped after 2008 |
| DLH-12 | Almirante Cochrane | June 22, 1984 | December 7, 2006 | launched in Talcahuano (status 2010 at the time of the tsunami ) |
| DLH-14 | Almirante Latorre | 1986 | 1998 | cannibalized and sunk on April 11, 2005 |
| DLH-15 | Blanco Encalada | 1988 | December 12, 2003 | scrapped after 2005 |
Pakistan acquired the former HMS London from the former mother country in March 1982 . The Pakistani Navy puts the ship back into service under the name Babur . After the final decommissioning in 1993, the destroyer was scrapped after 1995.
Web links
- P. Antill on the County Class on historyofwar.org (February 6, 2001)
- County class on hazegray.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ David and Hugh Lyon; Siegfried Greiner: Warships from 1900 to today, technology and use . Buch und Zeit Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne 1979, p. 66 .