Royal Navy County-class destroyer HMS Fife (D20) gunnery exercise. Extract from ‘Action Navy’ (COI 1254) 1975. Official govt film uploaded as fair use.
County class DDGs definitely had Anti Ship Warfare advantages over the Type 42 and Type 45 especially in Gunnery range. Good ships...would have been great to see them if they had Sea Slug replaced by Sea Dart
Brilliant warships, replacing a 4.5 turret with Exocet was a logical thing to do but the further aft you went the more these ships armaments turned into a joke. 2Omm Oerlikons, Seacat bonfire night rockets and a Seaslug missile system which had taken for ever to develop the RAF Bloodhound for warship use, and was an absolute damage control nightmare. In fact HMS Fife was the closest any of the County Class came to being lost due in part to the absurdity of the missile loading and storage system. As for a side loading helicopter hangar, well just who on earth thought that one up?
Sea Slug was an outright liability, at least Seacat had a guidance system that worked within littoral combat when Radars of the day had handicaps with clutter (San Carlos Bay specifically). I have often wondered why Slug was never replaced with Sea Dart or even another pair of Quad Seacat launchers or Bofors
Mi padre estuvo en la dotacion que fue a a buscar el HMS FIFE a Inglaterra en 1987, despues DLH Blanco encalada fue remodelado 92-93 y dado de baja el 2003 en Chile.
WW2 era light cruiser gunnery in 1975... can you say post-war malaise? The first thing they did was tear out those guns and put in Exocet launchers (once they learned from the Argies what they could do).
The exocets were there prior to the the Falklands and she never went down South. She was in refit in '82. Glamorgan and Antrim were the batch 2 GMD's that went. As for ww2 design, the County class was a breakthrough. 4 gas turbines and 2 steam running through 2 shafts. WW2 my ass.
@@johnandhayleysmart5651 ,well said , fine looking ships at that to. Many people like to criticise with hindsight. Pity they were not upgraded with the emerging technology and weapons, but as you rightly say these ships were a breakthrough and brought the Royal Navy into the missile age , when many other navies were still reliant on traditional methods.
@@iceman7975 The County Class were great ships.....They could slap a Type 42 Silly in a Gunnery fight especially pre-exocet refit. Plenty of room for upgrades, damage resilient considering how Glamorgan took an Exocet and still made it home, they were very well rounded with AAW, ASuW and ASW....something that Type 42 and Type 45 have not achieved fully (Type 42 Lacked a Dedicated Anti Ship missile and until very very recently the Type 45 was a 1 trick AAW pony because the 1985 dated Harpoons had to be removed) TBHJ Seaslug from what I have read would be a better Anti Ship or Land Attack missile than a SAM
