County-class destroyer

The County class was a class of guided missile destroyer, 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.

The class represented a merging of the cruiser and destroyer role on a displacement of about that of the Second World War era Dido-class cruiser, but with modern combined gas turbine and steam turbine propulsion and, although short on the support and logistic spares stocks of a traditional cruiser, able to fulfil traditional flagship and admiral's barge functions in the 1960s—the last decade when the UK oversaw significant colonial territory ("East of Suez"). Its missile capability was overtaken by aircraft development by 1962–63, when HMS Devonshire and Hampshire entered service, but in the early and mid-1960s the modern lines of these guided-missile destroyers, with their traditional RN cruiser style and their impressive-looking missiles, enabled the overstretched Royal Navy to project sufficient power to close down the threat of a militant, left-leaning Indonesia to Malaysia and Borneo during the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation.

Design features
The County class was 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 and shadowing surveillance aircraft like the Tupolev Tu-95 "Bear", which could direct strikes against the British fleet from missile destroyers and cruise missile-armed submarines. Bears were formidable targets for a missile like Sea Slug; the long-range Soviet turboprop aircraft flew at an altitude of 7.5 miles, at 572 mph and were barely within the engagement capability of Sea Slug. The Sea Slug system was a large weapon. From the missile itself-6 m-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 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 affecting ship layout. According to the Royal Navy architect, "Sea Slug did not live up to expectations" and was obsolete by 1957. Its ineffectiveness and dangerous missile fuel degraded the value of the class, which had potential as command ships, having more operations room space than later Type 42 destroyer and ADAWS and the MIL-STD-6011 communications system. Following problems with the original version, a reworked Action Data Automation Weapon System (ADAWS) was successfully trialled on HMS Norfolk in 1970. In the mid-1960s the County missile destroyers were assets, their impressive appearance and data links, feeding off the carriers' Type 984 radar, projected effective capability during the Indonesia–Malaysia confrontation. The Mark 1 Seaslug was operationally reliable and proved useful as a missile target for the new Sea Dart missiles in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (The supersonic Mark 2 version proved less effective for this.) There are questions as to whether it was ever fully operational and there were problems with missiles breaking up when the boosters separated. Inaccuracy, primitive beam-riding guidance and lack of infra red homing or a proximity fuse in the Mk 1 made it of limited value.

Short-range air defence was provided by the GWS-22 Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile system, 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 QF 4.5-inch gun mountings. The second batch of four ships (Antrim, Fife, Glamorgan and Norfolk) were refitted in the mid-1970s – their 'B'-position turrets were removed and replaced by four single MM38 Exocet surface-to-surface anti-ship-missile launcher boxes. This was partly to counter the continuing threat of Soviet gun- and missile-armed cruisers, but also because the two twin 4.5 mountings, located forward on the County-class, were cramped and hot to fire, with the heat from firing the upper gun being felt by the gun crew in the turret below; and, the forward twin turrets had space for only small magazines – only 225 shells for each gun, two-thirds of the magazine capacity for the same guns in the Leander (Type 12L) frigates. 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 HMS London on her return from deployment in the West Indies in 1981, prior to her hand-over to the Pakistani Navy.

Antrim and Glamorgan both served in the Falklands War; Antrim was the flagship of Operation Paraquet, the recovery of South Georgia in April 1982. Her helicopter, a Westland Wessex HAS Mk 3, nicknamed "Humphrey", was responsible for the remarkable rescue of 16 Special Air Service operators from Fortuna Glacier and the subsequent detection and disabling of the Argentinian submarine Santa Fe. In San Carlos Water, Antrim was hit by a 1,000 lb (450 kg) bomb which failed to explode. Glamorgan, after many days on the "gun line" bombarding Port Stanley airfield, was hit by an Exocet launched from land at the end of the conflict. It destroyed her aircraft hangar and the port Sea Cat mounting. Fortunately, her captain's prompt reaction to visual detection of the incoming Exocet narrowly averted a hit on the Sea Slug magazine, which could have destroyed the ship.

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 Batch 2 vessels' prominent "double-bedstead" AKE-2 antennas of the Type 965 air-search radar, and their taller foremast carrying the Type 992Q low-angle search radar.

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, 1986–1998)
 * Fife (To Chile as Blanco Encalada, 1987–2003)
 * 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 inherited names of armoured cruisers of the First World War.

Four of the new ships were named after counties containing a Royal Navy Dockyard; these were: Devonshire (HMNB Devonport), Hampshire (HMNB Portsmouth), Kent (Chatham Dockyard), and Fife (Rosyth dockyard). 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, serving on average less than 16 years. Only London of the first batch was transferred (to Pakistan) and served further, while the other three Batch 1 ships were decommissioned by 1980. However, the four ships of Batch 2 operated for 20 more years after sale to the Chilean Navy, in which they all received extensive upgrades and modernisation.

Construction programme
The ships were built at the major UK yards, with some of the machinery coming from Associated Electrical Industries of Manchester, Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company of Wallsend-on-Tyne, John I. Thornycroft & Company of Southampton, Yarrows of Glasgow, and the Wallsend Slipway and Engineering Company, Wallsend-on-Tyne.

Appearances in media
Extensive stock footage of HMS Hampshire on exercise was used in the 1970 UK science fiction series UFO, episode 1–11, "Destruction".