HMS ''Whitby'' was a ''Whitby''-class or Type 12

anti-submarine An anti-submarine weapon (ASW) is any one of a number of devices that are intended to act against a submarine and its crew, to destroy (sink) the vessel or reduce its capability as a weapon of war. In its simplest sense, an anti-submarine weapo ...

frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...

of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom built by

Cammell Laird Cammell Laird is a British shipbuilding company. It was formed from the merger of Laird Brothers of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century. The company also built railway rolling stock until 1929, ...

and Co Ltd, Birkenhead. She was launched on 2 July 1954 and commissioned on 10 July 1956.

Design

The ''Whitby''-class was designed as a class of specialist anti-submarine warships, intended to counter fast modern diesel-electric submarines. As such, the design was required to reach a speed of at least , maintaining high speed in rough weather conditions and have a range of at . To meet these requirements, the Type 12s had a new hull form and, unlike the contemporary Type 41 anti-aircraft and Type 61 air direction frigates, were powered by

steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...

s. ''Whitby'' was

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...

and at the waterline, with a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of and a draught of forward and at the propellers. The ships were powered by the new Y-100 machinery in which the ship's boilers and steam turbines were designed as a closely integrated set of machinery to increase efficiency. Two Babcock & Wilcox water-tube boilers fed steam at and to two sets of geared

s which drove two propeller shafts, fitted with large ( diameter) slow-turning propellers. The machinery was rated at , giving a speed of . Crew was about 189 when operated as a leader and 152 as an ordinary ship. A twin 4.5-inch (113 mm) Mark 6 gun mount was fitted forward, with 350 rounds of ammunition carried, with close-in armament of a stabilised STAAG (Stabilised Tachymetric Anti-Aircraft Gun) twin Bofors 40 mm L/60 gun mount aft. The design anti-submarine armament consisted of twelve 21-inch torpedo-tubes (eight fixed and two twin rotating mounts) for Mark 20E Bidder homing anti-submarine torpedoes, backed up by two Limbo anti-submarine mortars fitted aft. The Bidder homing torpedoes proved unsuccessful however, being too slow to catch modern submarines, and the torpedo tubes were soon removed. The ship was fitted with a Type 293Q surface/air search radar on the foremast, with a Type 277 height-finding radar on a short mast forward of the foremast. A Mark 6M fire control system (including a Type 275 radar) for the 4.5 inch guns was mounted above the ship's bridge, while a Type 974 navigation radar was also fitted. The ship's sonar fit consisted of Type 164 search, Type 170 fire control sonar for Limbo and a Type 162 sonar for classifying targets on the sea floor.

Service

''Whitby'' was laid down at

's Birkenhead shipyard on 30 September 1952, was launched on 2 July 1954 and completed on 10 July 1956. On completion, she was assigned to the 3rd Training Squadron based at Londonderry Port. In 1960 Desmond Cassidi was appointed as her captain. During 1966 she saw service in the Mediterranean and Atlantic. In 1968 she undertook fishery protection duties off the coast of Greenland - the first ship to have visited those waters since 1966. In 1968 she took part in 'Navy Days' at Portsmouth Dockyard.Programme, ''Navy Days at Portsmouth August 31st-September 2nd 1968, p.17.''

References

Publications

* * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Whitby Whitby-class frigates Ships built on the River Mersey 1954 ships