The Type 16 frigates were a class of
British 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 ...
s of the
Royal Navy. They were based on the hulls of
World War II-era
destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
s that had been rendered obsolete by rapid advances in technology. They were similar in concept to the
Type 15 frigate, but were a far more limited design rendered necessary by budget constraints.
History
At the start of the
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
, the
Royal Navy was in urgent need of fast escort ships to counter the large number of s being built by the
Soviet Union, which were faster than the Royal Navy's existing
sloops and
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 ...
s. Britain had large numbers of
War Emergency Programme destroyers, which while relatively new, were poorly equipped for modern fleet purposes, with poor anti-aircraft armament and fire control. It was therefore decided to convert the Emergency Programme destroyers to interim escorts to meet the Royal Navy's requirements until new-build ships (which eventually became the
Type 12 and
Type 14 frigates) could be designed and built. The initial design was the
Type 15 frigate or ''Rapid'' class, which was a major rebuild of the ships, with an extended
forecastle and new superstructure giving improved accommodation and complete replacement of the ships' armament and sensors.
[Gardiner and Chumbley 1995, pp. 480, 512.] At one time, it was planned to convert 57 destroyers to the Type 15 standard,
[Friedman 2006, p. 219.] but the cost of such a large programme proved prohibitive, with only 23 ships becoming Type 15 frigates. Instead, a simpler and cheaper conversion, the Type 16 was ordered.
[Gardiner and Chumbley 1995, pp. 512–513.]
The Type 16 conversion removed the existing gun armament, substituting a twin
4 inch gun forward with a close-in anti-aircraft armament of seven
Bofors 40 mm guns, with simpler fire control than used in the Type 15. Anti-submarine armament consisted of two
Squid
True squid are molluscs with an elongated soft body, large eyes, eight arms, and two tentacles in the superorder Decapodiformes, though many other molluscs within the broader Neocoleoidea are also called squid despite not strictly fitting t ...
anti-submarine mortars, while a quadruple set of
21-inch (533 mm) torpedo tubes provided a limited anti-surface ship armament.
[Gardiner and Chumbley 1995, p. 513.]
Ships
Ex-O class destroyers of the
Pakistan Navy
ur, ہمارے لیے اللّٰہ کافی ہے اور وہ بہترین کارساز ہے۔ English language, English: Allah is Sufficient for us - and what an excellent (reliable) Trustee (of affairs) is He!(''Quran, Qur'an, Al Imran, 3:173' ...
''Onslow'' / ''Tippu Sultan'' and
''Onslaught'' / ''Tughril'' were returned to the UK between 1957 and 1959 to be converted along the lines of the Type 16 frigate.
See also
*
War Emergency Programme destroyers: The destroyer building programme that the Type 16 frigates were converted from
*
Type 15 frigate a more extensive conversion of destroyer hulls than the Type 16
References
Publications
*
* Friedman, Norman.
British Destroyers & Frigates: The Second World War and After'. London: Chatham Publishing, 2006. .
* Gardiner, Robert and Stephen Chumbley. ''Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1947–1995''. Annapolis, Maryland, USA: Naval Institute Press, 1995. .
* Marriott, Leo. ''Royal Navy Frigates 1945-1983'' Ian Allan, 1983,
{{Type 16 frigate
Frigate classes
Ship classes of the Royal Navy