HMCS Saskatchewan (DDE 262)

HMCS ''Saskatchewan'' was a that served in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and later the Canadian Forces. She was the second Canadian naval unit to bear the name . The ship was named for the Saskatchewan River which runs from Saskatchewan to Manitoba in Canada.

Entering service in 1963, she was mainly used as a training ship on the west coast. She was decommissioned in 1994 and sold for use as an artificial reef. She was sunk as such in June 1997 off British Columbia.

Design

The ''Mackenzie'' class was an offshoot of the design. Initially planned to be an improved version of the design, budget difficulties led to the Canadian government ordering a repeat of the previous ,Milner, pp. 223–224 with improved habitability and better pre-wetting, bridge and weatherdeck fittings to better deal with extreme cold.Gardiner & Chumbley, p. 45 The original intention was to give the ''Mackenzie'' class variable depth sonar during construction, but would have led to delays of up to a year in construction time, which the navy could not accept.

General characteristics

The ''Mackenzie''-class vessels measured in length, with a beam of and a draught of .Gardiner & Chumbley, pp. 44–45Macpherson and Barrie (2002), p. 256 The ''Mackenzie''s displaced fully loaded and had a complement of 290.Macpherson and Barrie state the complement as 245 (12 officers and 233 enlisted)

The class was powered by two Babcock & Wilcox boilers connected to the two-shaft English-Electric geared steam turbines providing . This gave the ships a maximum speed of .

Armament

The most noticeable change for the ''Mackenzie''s was the replacement of the forward /50 calibre Mk 22 guns of the ''St. Laurent'' designCaliber denotes the length of the barrel. In this case, 50 caliber means that the gun barrel is 50 times as long as it is in diameter with a dual Vickers 3-inch/70 calibre Mk 6 gun mount and the presence of a fire-control director atop the bridge superstructure. The bridge was raised one full deck higher than on previous classes in order to see over the new gun mount. The class did retain the rear dual 3-inch/50 calibre gun mount and for anti-submarine warfare, the class was provided with two Mk 10 Limbo mortars. The ships were initially fitted with Mark 43 torpedoes to supplement their anti-submarine capability, but were quickly upgraded to the Mark 44 launched from a modified depth charge thrower. This was to give the destroyers the ability to combat submarines from a distance.

Sensors

The ''Mackenzie'' class were equipped with one SPS-12 air search radar, one SPS-10B surface search radar and one Sperry Mk.2 navigation radar. For detection below the surface, the ships had one SQS-501 high frequency bottom profiler sonar, one SQS-503 hull mounted active search sonar, one SQS-502 high frequency mortar control sonar and one SQS-11 hull mounted active search sonar.

DELEX refit

The DEstroyer Life EXtension (DELEX) refit was born out of the need to extend the life of the steam-powered destroyer escorts of the Canadian Navy in the 1980s until the next generation of surface ship was built. Encompassing all the classes based on the initial ''St. Laurent'' (the remaining ''St. Laurent'', ''Restigouche'', ''Mackenzie'', and vessels), the DELEX upgrades were meant to improve their ability to combat modern Soviet submarines, and to allow them to continue to operate as part of NATO task forces.

The DELEX refit for the ''Mackenzie'' class was the same for the Improved ''Restigouche''-class vessels. This meant that the ships would receive the new tactical data system ADLIPS, new radars, new fire control and satellite navigation.Milner, p. 278 They exchanged the SQS-503 sonar for the newer SQS-505 model.

They also received a triple mount for torpedo tubes that would use the new Mk 46 homing torpedo. The Mark 46 torpedo had a range of at over with a high-explosive warhead weighing .

Construction and career

''Saskatchewan'' was ordered in 1957 and was laid down on 29 October 1959 at Victoria Machinery Depot Ltd., Victoria. The ship was launched on 1 February 1961.Macpherson and Barrie (2002), p. 258 The ship was supposed to be launched on 31 January, but poor weather forced the delay. In September 1961 she was moved to Yarrows Shipyard at Esquimalt, British Columbia for completion. She was commissioned into the RCN on 16 February 1963 with the classification number DDE 262.

''Saskatchewan'' originally deployed to the east coast, operating out of Halifax. In April 1963, while transiting to the Pacific, ''Saskatchewan'' was deployed off Haiti as part of an international force monitoring an insurrection against the sitting president, François Duvalier. In October 1963, she transferred to the Pacific. On 8 September 1968, the ship ran aground in the Gulf of Georgia. The captain was later found guilty of negligence by a court-martial on the matter. The destroyer returned to the east coast in February 1970, when she relieved as flagship of STANAVFORLANT, the standing fleet of NATO.

In 1973, ''Saskatchewan'' returned to the west coast and remained there for the rest of her career, with both the RCN and later the Canadian Forces's Maritime Forces Pacific, largely as a training ship. In July 1982, the destroyer was sent to track the Soviet spy ship ''Aavril Sarychev'' which had been monitoring the North American west coast. She underwent the DELEX refit at the Burrard Yarrow Shipyard in Esquimalt from 27 May 1985 to 17 June 1986. In Fall 1986, she was among the Canadian warships sent to Australia to participate in the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Royal Australian Navy. The ship remained a training ship as part of Training Group Pacific until she was paid off by on 1 April 1994.Barrie and Macpherson (1996), p. 55

''Saskatchewan''s hulk was purchased by the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia in 1997 and she was scuttled off Nanaimo on 14 June 1997 as an artificial reef.

References

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External links

HMCS ''Saskatchewan'' (DDH 262) – readyayeready.com

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saskatchewan, HMCS
Mackenzie-class destroyers
Cold War destroyers of Canada
Shipwrecks of the British Columbia coast
1961 ships
Ships built in Victoria, British Columbia