History | |
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Canada | |
Name: | Micmac |
Namesake: | Mi'kmaq nation |
Ordered: | 4 January 1941 |
Builder: | Halifax Shipyards |
Cost: | $8,500,000.00 CAD |
Yard number: | 12 |
Laid down: | 20 May 1942 |
Launched: | 18 September 1943 |
Commissioned: | 18 September 1945 |
Decommissioned: | 31 March 1964 |
In service: | 1945-47, 1949-51, 1953-64 |
Out of service: | 1947-49, 1951-53 |
Reclassified: | 1951 |
Refit: | 1947-1949, 1951-1953 |
Struck: | 31 March 1964 |
Homeport: | Halifax |
Identification: | Pennants: R10, 214 |
Motto: |
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Fate: | Broken up 1965. |
Notes: | Colours: Gold and royal blue |
Badge: | Blazon Azure, a fern erect or |
General characteristics | |
Class and type: | Tribal-class destroyer |
Displacement: |
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Length: | |
Beam: | 37 ft 5 in (11.40 m) |
Draught: |
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Propulsion: |
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Speed: | 36.5 knots (67.6 km/h; 42.0 mph) |
Range: | 5,700 nmi (10,600 km; 6,600 mi) at 15 kn (28 km/h; 17 mph) |
Complement: | 190 - 240 |
Armament: |
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HMCS Micmac, was a Tribal-class destroyer which served the Royal Canadian Navy from 1945 to 1964. Micmac was the first modern, high-performance warship built in Canada. She was the first of four Tribal destroyers built at the Halifax Shipyard and one of eight Tribal-class destroyers to serve in the Royal Canadian Navy.
Micmac was one of 27 Tribal-class destroyers completed for the Royal Navy (RN), the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), and the Royal Canadian Navy. She was the lead ship of the Canadian wartime Tribal Destroyer program, followed by sister ships HMCS Nootka, HMCS Cayuga and HMCS Athabaskan.
Ordered in early 1941 she did not commission until late 1945, after the end of hostilities. Micmac's construction, taking 57 months from the date of order to the date of commission; about twice that of Tribals built elsewhere. For example Micmac's Australian-built sister, HMAS Warramunga—ordered by the RAN in September 1939, laid down on 10 February 1940, launched on 7 February 1942, and commissioned on 23 November 1942—took but 29 months while the twenty Tribals constructed for the RN (16) and RCN (4) in British yards averaged but 26 months from the date of order to the date of commission. Micmac's delay was due to economic and political issues that permeated the entire Canadian Destroyer Project.
Economically, Canada's overall limited industrial capacity was a major factor. Tribal class fleet destroyers hull construction required a high-tensile (HT) specialty steel that was neither made in Canada nor available for purchase from the United States. Steel which Great Britain, overtaxed by the growing demands of a general European war, could not provide and that Canadian mills proved slow to produce.
The hulls of low performance corvettes and frigates, designed to merchant ship standards and powered by triple expansion steam engines, could be built from the mild steel readily available from Canadian sources. However, high performance warships, like destroyers, require hulls built as light as practical to obtain the maximum speed possible from the available power plant whilst still carrying a useful armament. A strong yet lightweight hull requires high-strength steel and such speciality steel of the exact specification required for a Tribal hull simply was not to be had from North American sources when Micmac was ordered.