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Type 42 class destroyer, Manchester class
HMS Gloucester along side at Portsmouth. Picture kindly provided by Trevor Thornton.
The Manchester class of destroyers are the final batch of the type 42's. Built to the original design specification, the Manchester class is some 15meters longer then previous City class type 42's.
The added length, gives the ships very long bows, some 50ft. According to some sources this increases the ships magazine for the Sea Dart air to surface missile, to 44 missiles, aposed to 22 missiles of previous batches. A strengthing beam is added along the sides, making the class also 2ft wider then the previous ships.
These are capable air defence ships, the ship is capable of guiding upto 16 missiles in the air, at seperate targets and capable of conducting 4 terminal engagements at the same time. Sea Dart is a dual puropse missile. Its main task is to destroy airbourne targets, but it can also engage surface targets. However, this is limited to targets on of before the horizion.
HMS Gloucester was made famous during the Gulf war, by shooting down, 1 possibly 2 Iraqi Silkworm anti ship missiles.
"The Royal Navy's mine-hunters - once again the closest Allied ships to the Kuwaiti coast - watched open mouthed as two balls of fire hurtled their way. But the silkworms each the siz of a Volkswagen and weighing three tons - skimmed over them and carried on towards the heart of the main force, straight for the Amercian battleship USS Missouri and HMS London.
Commodore Craig watched the enemy missiles tracks as they sped across her radar screens, fascinated rather then afraid . Luckily the type 42 destroyer HMS Gloucester got a good lock on and destroyed one of the Silkworms. Debris from the missile landed just 500 yards astern of HMS London.
It was the first and so far only, interception of a missile by a warship launched missile in the history of naval warfare."
The above passage is from Warships International Fleet Review magazine.
The ships are to be replaced by the Daring class, type 45 destroyer from 2010 onwards.
HMS Manchester
Click here for infomation about the City class destroyers
Click here for the Manchester image gallery
| Ship type: |
Air defence destroyers |
| Class: | Type 42 destroyers, Manchester Class |
| Active: | 4 |
| Names: |
Manchester (D95), Gloucester (D96), Edinburgh (D97) and York (D98) |
| Displacement: | 4,900 tons |
| Length: | 462ft (141.1m) |
| Beam: | 49ft (14.9m) |
| Speed: | 32+kts |
| Range: | 4,000miles at 18kts |
| Missiles: | 1 Dual launcher for BAe Sea dart (44 missiles in total) |
| Guns: |
1 4.5" (114mm) Vickers MK8 gun 2 or 4 20mm Oerlikon 2 20mm Vulcan Phalanx |
| Torpedoes: |
2 324mm Plessey STWS MK3 triple tubes for Marconi Stingray |
| Decoys: |
4 Marconi Sea Gnat 6 barrel launchers Graseby type 182 towed torpedo decoy |
| Radar's: |
Air search - Marconi/Signaal type 1022 Air/surface search - Plessey type 996 Navigation - Kelvin Hughes type 1007 or Racal Decca type 1008 Fire control - 2 Marconi type 909 or 901 mod 1 |
| Sonars: |
Ferranti type 2050 hull mounted Kelvin Hughes - 162M hull mounted |
| Helicopters: | 1 Westland Lynx HM8 for anti submarine warfare and anti surface warfare. |
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