HMS Tiger (C20)
_in_1963.jpg)
HMS Tiger before her conversion
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| History | |
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 United Kingdom
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| Name: | HMS Tiger |
| Ordered: | 1942 Additional Naval Programme |
| Builder: | John Brown Shipyard |
| Cost: | £12,820,000 |
| Laid down: | 1 October 1941 |
| Launched: | 25 October 1945 |
| Commissioned: | 18 March 1959 |
| Decommissioned: | 20 April 1978 |
| Fate: | Scrapped, starting October 1986 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Tiger-class light cruiser |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: |
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| Beam: | 64 ft (20 m) |
| Draught: | 21 ft (6.4 m) |
| Propulsion: |
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| Speed: | 31.5 knots (58 km/h) |
| Range: |
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| Complement: | 698 (885 after conversion) |
| Sensors and processing systems: |
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| Armament: |
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| Aircraft carried: | After conversion: Four helicopters (originally Westland Wessex, then Sea King HAS 2 ) |
HMS Tiger was a conventional cruiser of the British Royal Navy, one of a three-ship class known as the Tiger class. Ordered during World War II, she was completed only after its end. The cruiser was later converted to a helicopter-carrying and guided missile cruiser in the early 1970s. She remained in service as such until placed in reserve in 1978 and was discarded in 1986.
Tiger started out as Bellerophon; she was laid down in 1941 at the John Brown Shipyard as part of the Minotaur class of light cruisers. These vessels had a low construction priority due to more pressing requirements for other ship types during World War II, particularly anti-submarine craft. Bellerophon was renamed Tiger in 1945, and was launched, partially constructed, on 25 October 1945. She was christened by Lady Stansgate, the wife of William Benn, the Secretary of State for Air, and mother of MP Anthony Wedgewood Benn. Work on Tiger was suspended in 1946, and she was laid up at Dalmuir.
Construction of Tiger resumed, but to a new design, with Tiger becoming the name ship of the class. The new design was approved in 1951, but construction did not resume until 1954. The ship had semi-automatic 6-inch (152 mm) guns in twin high-angle mounts with each gun capable of shooting 20 rounds per minute, and a secondary battery of fully automatic 3-inch (76 mm) weapons which delivered 90 rounds per minute per gun. Each 6 inch and 3 inch mounting had its own director, linked to a dedicated radar on the director. Her "automatically controlled" guns were "capable of firing at more than twice the speed of manned armament'...it was claimed by the Cruisers, few final defenders in the House of Lords at a time of rapid reduction of cruiser numbers in operation and reserve, by veteran Sea Lords, like Viscount Hall, from 1929-1931 that the improvement in guns was ten times better than if the ship had been with the original gun armament." However while true in 1948-9 when the Tigers revised weapon fit was designed,particularly against Kamikaze type targets, by the time Tigers legend was approved in 1954 let alone with its long delayed completion, the Tigers guns offered little advantage in surface action, and only two 6 inch turrets was insufficient to guarantee surface fire and less effectiveness in AA with improvements in missiles and aircraft and the fact the basic fit of three, twin 3 inch turrets no longer gave effective, reliable coverage of the fire arcs with the ultimate omission of the close in twin L60 or approved, twin L70, 40mm which were close to the twin 3 70 in performance and essential to effective close in defence. Excessive manning required and lack of space and weight available in an essentially pre-war design meant, HMS Tiger had no lighter anti-aircraft armament or torpedo tubes. Air conditioning was fitted throughout the ship, and a 200-line automatic telephone exchange was installed. Her first captain (Captain Washbourn) "said that H.M.S. Tiger had been designed to cope with nuclear attacks, in that she can steam for up to a fortnight through radio-active fall-out with remotely controlled boiler and engine and armament operating with re-circulating purified air below decks, and could operate as a fighting unit even if a nuclear bomb were dropped near by." It was said that their "fire power, endurance, and self-sufficiency will make them very effective ships for a long period to come, and especially is this true east of Suez, where distances are so gigantic."
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Wikipedia