County class destroyer

HMS Kent at Portsmouth in 1989
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 on way to scrap)
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 (56 km/h; 35 mph)
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 destroyer, the first such vessels built by the Royal Navy. Designed specifically around the Seaslug 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 was designed as a hybrid cruiser-destroyer, with a much larger displacement (similar to that of the Dido-class cruiser) than its predecessor, the Daring class. During the final design period in 1956 - 1958 a full gun armament was envisaged, based on a modern combined gas turbine and steam turbine ('COSAG') propulsion unit, as enlarged Daring fleet escorts, armed with 2 twin Mk 6 4.5, 2 twin L/70 40mm and a twin 3 inch/70. Only as late as 1958 was the decision made to fit the ships with guided missiles on the insistence of the First Sea Lord, Admiral Mountbatten and the Cabinet, despite staff reports over missile unreliability and inaccuracy, and the vulnerability of the above-waterline missile magazine. Lord Mountbatten believed that describing the County class as destroyers rather than cruisers, and demonstrating the apparently impressive performance of Seaslug on the missile range against Gloster Meteor UC15 drones, he could justify a modern Royal Navy and a large number of County class 'destroyers'. While short on the support and logistic spares stocks of a traditional cruiser, they were still envisaged by the DNC as being 'probably' used in the cruiser role with space for Flag staff offices, and admiral's barge accommodation in the 1960s: the last decade when the UK oversaw significant colonial territory ("East of Suez"). Its missile capability had been 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.