Hi all, some data about a destroyer the Royal Australian Navy was planning to build in the early 70s to replace the aging Daring class destroyers.
The intention was something light, based on the RANs institutional memory of the Indonesian Confrontation. They had the Perth class DDGs and River class Destroyer Escorts for working with the carrier Melbourne, so they wanted something smaller, simpler and cheaper.
The early design was really quite basic, but it didn't stay that way for long.
The design suffered from mission creep, everyone thought it would be good to add stuff. Hence it grew two helicopters, the Mk-13 GMLS, ASW torpedoes, SPS-49 radar, multiple small calibre cannon mounts, extensive comms and ECM / ESM capabilities. Long range for operations in the Pacific drove up fuel capacity and hence overall size.
The British design facility YARD was retained to bring everything together in a single design, which, due to YARDs involvement in the Type 42 design, ended up looking a lot like a Type 42 with US weaponry.
The image shows a Wessex but the hangars were sized for Lynx (and the YARD builders plans explicitly show a Lynx on the flight deck).
The final design looked like this (taken from the official builders plans).
Three ships were ordered, however a change of Government saw a new, left-wing government elected on a promise to introduce a raft of social programs when saw a cut in defence procurement. The DDL was cancelled before construction commenced and in time the RAN ordered FFGs straight off the US Navy's Perry class production line, plus building two more in Australia.
Here we have a drawing from the Shipbucket site showing how the DDL would have looked in service.
Unicorn
No wonder the project got killed.
