County class destroyer

HMS Glamorgan
Class overview
Builders:	Cammell Laird Swan Hunter Vickers Armstrong
Operators:	Royal Navy Chilean Navy Pakistan Navy
Preceded by:	Daring class
Succeeded by:	Type 82
Subclasses:	Batch 1 Batch 2
In commission:	16 November 1962 - 22 September 2006
Completed:	8
Cancelled:	2
Laid up:	Almirante Cochrane ex Antrim Capitán Prat ex Norfolk
Lost:	HMS Devonshire (as target) Almirante Latorre (accident)
General characteristics
Displacement:	6,200 tons
Length:	520.16 ft (158.54 m)
Beam:	54 ft (16 m)
Draught:	21 ft (6.4 m)
Propulsion:	COSAG on 2 shafts; 2× Babcock & Wilcox boilers, geared steam turbines, 30,000 shp 4× Metrovick G6 gas turbines, 30,000 shp
Speed:	30 knots
Range:	3,500 nm
Complement:	471 (33 officers, 438 ratings)
Armament:	2× Fore-mounted twin-gunned turret with 4.5 inch (114 mm) guns Mark N6 (Batch 2's turret "B" was later replaced by 4× MM38 Exocet missile launchers) 2× mountings for Oerlikon 20 mm cannon 1× Aft-mounted Seaslug GWS.1 or GWS.2 SAM (24 missiles) 2× mountings (port & starboard) for Seacat GWS-22 SAM 2× triple-tube launchers for shipborne torpedoes
Aircraft carried:	1× Wessex HAS Mk 3 helicopter
Aviation facilities:	Flight deck and enclosed hangar for embarking one helicopter

The County class was a class of guided missile destroyers, the first such vessels built by the Royal Navy. Designed specifically around the Sea Slug anti-aircraft missile system, the primary role of these ships was area air-defence around the aircraft carrier task force in the nuclear-war environment.

Design features

Batch 1 ship HMS Devonshire. Observe the single row of the Type 965 AKE-1 antenna and the short foremast carrying the Type 992P "cheese" antenna and a topmast supporting the ECM/ESM arrays.

The County class were designed around the GWS1 Sea Slug beam riding anti-aircraft missile system. Sea Slug was a first generation surface to air missile intended to hit high-flying nuclear-armed bombers. As such it had a range of some 27 km with a ceiling of 17,000 m travelling at a speed of over 1,000 km/h. Everything about the Sea Slug was on a grand scale, from the missile itself (six meters long and weighing two tons) to its handling arrangements and electronics systems; even fitting a single system aboard a ship the size of the "Counties" was a challenge. The enormous missile was stowed horizontally in a large magazine that took up a great deal of internal space. On the last four ships, some of the missiles were stored partly disassembled in the forward end of the magazine to enable the complement of missiles to be increased. These missiles had their wings and fins reattached before being moved into the aft sections of the handling spaces and eventually loaded onto the large twin launcher for firing. The electronics required for the Sea Slug were the large Type 901 fire-control radar and the Type 965 air-search radar. These required a great deal of weight to be carried high up on the ship, further defining the design. Sea Slug could also be used in the surface to surface role, and was a highly effective system in its day^{[citation needed]}.

Short range air-defence was provided by the Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile, which made the "Counties" the first Royal Navy warships to be armed with two different types of guided missile.

As constructed, the County-class ships were armed with a pair of twin 4.5in gun mountings. The second batch of four ships (Antrim, Fife, Glamorgan and Norfolk) were refitted in the mid 1970s - this saw their 'B' position turrets removed and replaced by four single MM38 Exocet launcher boxes. This made the County-class ships the only Royal Navy ships to be fitted with three separate types of guided missile. It also left the un-refitted ships as the last Royal Navy vessels to be able to fire a broadside from multiple main armament turrets. The last multi-turreted broadside was fired from London on her return from deployment in the West Indies in 1981 prior to handover to the Pakistani Navy.

Antrim and Glamorgan both served in the Falklands conflict; Antrim was the flagship of Operation Paraquet, the recovery of South Georgia in April 1982. Her helicopter, the Westland Wessex HAS.Mk3, nicknamed "Humphrey", was responsible for the remarkable rescue of 16 SAS men from Fortuna Glacier and the subsequent detection and disabling of the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe. Whilst at San Carlos Water, a 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb hit Antrim, but did not explode. Glamorgan, after many days on the "gun line" bombarding Port Stanley airfield, suffered a land-based Exocet strike at the end of the conflict, which destroyed her aircraft hangar and the port Sea Cat mounting.

Ships of the class

Eight vessels were built, in two batches between 1959 and 1970, the later four vessels carrying the improved Sea Slug GWS2 and updated electronics requiring rearranged mastheads. The major identifying feature was the prominent "double bedstead" AKE-2 antennas of the Type 965 air-search radar and a taller foremast carrying the Type 992Q low-angle search radar on Batch 2.

Batch 1

• Devonshire
• Hampshire
• Kent
• London (To Pakistan as Babur 1982-96)

Batch 2

• Antrim (To Chile as Almirante Cochrane, 1984–2006)
• Glamorgan (To Chile as Almirante Latorre, 1986–98)
• Fife (To Chile as Blanco Encalada, 1987–2005)
• Norfolk (To Chile as Capitán Prat, 1982–2006)

Four of the "Counties" took names used by the 1926 County-class cruisers: London, Norfolk, Devonshire and Kent. (The last of these, HMS Cumberland, had survived until 1959). Devonshire, Hampshire, Antrim and Kent had also been armoured cruisers during WW1.

Four of the new ships were named after counties containing a Royal Navy Dockyard; these were: Devonshire (Devonport Dockyard, Plymouth), Hampshire (Portsmouth), Kent (Chatham), and Fife (Rosyth). Glamorgan and Antrim were named after the counties in Wales and Northern Ireland which contain the port cities and regional capitals of Cardiff and Belfast, (by analogy to London, England). Norfolk commemorated the county of Nelson's birth, and the important 19th century ports of Great Yarmouth and King's Lynn.

All eight of the class had short Royal Navy careers, only serving on average less than 16 years. Only the London of the first batch was transferred (to Pakistan) and served further, while the other three batch 1 ships were decommissioned by 1980. The four ships of the batch 2 however, lived on for a further 20 years after sale to the Chilean Navy where they all received extensive upgrades and modernization.

Construction programme

Pennant	Name	(a) Hull builder (b) Main machinery manufacturers	Ordered	Laid down	Launched	Accepted into service	Commissioned	Estimated building cost
D02	Devonshire	(a) Cammell Laird and Co (Shipbuilders and Engineers) Ltd, Birkenhead (b) Cammell Laird and Co (Shipbuilders and Engineers) Ltd, Birkenhead (steam turbines and gearing) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd, Manchester (steam turbines, gas turbines and gearing)	24 January 1956	9 March 1959	10 June 1960	November 1962	15 November 1962	£14,080,000
D06	Hampshire	(a) John Brown & Co Ltd, Clydebank (b) John Brown & Co Ltd, Clydebank (steam turbines and gearing) (b) Yarrow and Co Ltd, Glasgow (gas turbines) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd, Manchester (gas turbines)	27 January 1956	26 March 1959	16 March 1961	March 1963	15 March 1963	£12,625,000
D12	Kent	(a) Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast (b) Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast (steam turbines, gas turbines and gearing) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd, Manchester (steam turbines and gearing)	6 February 1957	1 March 1960	27 September 1961	August 1963	15 August 1963	£13,650,000
D16	London	(a) Swan, Hunter and Wigham Richardson Ltd, Wallsend-on-Tyne (b) The Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Co Ltd, Wallsend-on-Tyne (steam turbines) (b) Parsons Marine Turbine Co Ltd, Wallsend-on-Tyne (gearing) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd, Manchester (gas turbine) (b) JI Thorneycroft and Co Ltd, Southampton (gas turbine)	6 February 1957	26 February 1960	7 December 1961	November 1963	14 November 1963	£13,900,000
D20	Fife	(a) Fairfields (Glasgow) Ltd (b) Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast (steam and gas turbines) (b) Fairfields (Glasgow) Ltd (gearing)	26 September 1961	1 June 1962	9 July 1964	June 1966	21 June 1966	£15,250,000
D19	Glamorgan	(a) Vickers Ltd, Shipbuilding Group, Newcastle (b) Parsons Marine Turbine Co Ltd, Wallsend-on-Tyne (steam turbines and gearing) (b) Yarrow & Co Ltd, Glasgow (gas turbines)	26 September 1961	13 September 1962	9 July 1964	October 1966	11 October 1966	£14,100,000
D21	Norfolk	(a) Swan Hunter & Tyne Shipbuilders Ltd (b) Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast (steam turbines) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd Yarrow & Co Ltd, Glasgow (gas turbines) (b) John Brown & Co Ltd, Clydebank (gearing)	5 January 1965	15 March 1966	16 November 1967	February 1970	7 March 1970	£16,900,000
D18	Antrim	(a) Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Ltd,(Govan Division) (b) Harland & Wolff Ltd, Belfast (steam turbines) (b) Associated Electrical Industries Ltd (b) Yarrow & Co Ltd, Glasgow (gas turbines) (b) John Brown & Co Ltd, Clydebank (gearing)	5 January 1965	20 January 1966	19 October 1967	November 1970	14 July 1970	£16,350,000

Cost of ownership

Running costs

Date	Running cost	What is included	Citation
1972-73	£500,000	Average annual maintenance cost per vessel for County-class destroyers
1981-82	£7.0 million	Average annual running cost of County-class destroyers at average 1981–82 prices and including associated aircraft costs but excluding the costs of major refits.

Cost of major refits

Date	Running cost	What is included	Citation
	£5½ million - £8 million	Cost of recently completed major refits for County-class destroyers.

References

Notes