HMS Amazon ideas

[ysi_maniac]

With Bismarck turrets modified and reescaled to 1/2, so 7.5in guns. Well, let's say 6in. :wacko:



And updating the old concept of Flying Battleship.  :wacko: :wacko:

[GTX_Admin]

Errr…not seeing anything?

[ysi_maniac]

^^^^^
Can you see now?

[kengeorge]

OK I'll bite, that's a big flying boat.

Wing in ground effect flying frigate?

[GTX_Admin]

^^^^^
Can you see now?

Yes.

[Volkodav]

The Amazons are nice looking ships but as I understand it quite difficult to modernise, upgrade or adapt in any major way.  Apart from export ships built with different systems what else could be done?

I have an Airfix 1/600 Amazon, well two actually, one part wiffed and the other yet to be started.  A scaleorama to 1/700 comes to mind using Skywaves modern bits and bobs.

The other thought is an OTT Mega yacht.  The ships nice lines seem to cry out for that.

[Weaver]

I had the same thought about a 1/600th to 1/700th scaleorama, but in my case, I was looking to make an RN frigate that was more like the Brazilian Niterois.

The principle problem with the Type 21s was the low quarterdeck, which was the highest watertight deck. If you added any more weight to the hull, this deck got so low that it would have gone underwater. One obvious mod would therefore be to plate this deck in and put all the decoy gear on the back of the flight deck. This may seem to obstruct the helo, but it still wouldn't be anywhere near as cluttered as the back of an Exocet Leander.

One obvious thing you could do to get a more defendable GP frigate would be to replace the 4.5" gun with an Oto-Melara 76/62 Compact mount. This would get you about 15 tons to play with. You could then replace the heavy MM38 Exocet boxes with lighter, smaller MM40s or Harpoons mounted somewhere amidships. Now use this extra topweight to add the non-penetrating CIWS weapon of your choice in B-position, and something better in place of the Seacat. If doing the mod in recent years, a pair of RAM launchers would be ideal.

Anther, more radical thing you could do would be to lose the helicopter. Either keep the flight deck and fit VLS Seawolf in place of the hangar, or lose the flight deck too and fit anything you like in it's place.

[Volkodav]

Crunching a 1/600 to 1/700 scalorama I get L(oa)136.5m, B14.8m,D6.8m makes it larger than a Niteroi, could get a lot of usefull gear on a hull that size, even a Mk13  . 

For its original spec the Amazon wasn't too bad, basically a GP gun boat or patrol frigate.  Agree a 76mm Oto Melara would have been better than the MK8 and probably a light twin 35 or 40mm (if not a second 76mm over the hanger) and a Mk25 Sea Sparrow in B position with STIR instead of the Exocets.  Retrofit of Harpoon at a later date.  If the Dragon Amazon was actually 1/700 I would buy one and do just as I described.

Harping on like a broken record but these ships could have saved Australian shipbuilding had the design been adopted as a PF instead of(or as a supplement to) the cancelled DDL project.  Same concept as the later ANZAC class, build 8 helicopter equipped light frigates to supplement the RANs patrol boats in EEZ patrol as well as to be sufficiently armed to permit then to back up the higher end guider missile destroyers as required.  They would have been a good way to reach the stated requirement for 23 destroyers and frigates through providing a good, relatively flexible light frigate.

[GTX_Admin]

Harping on like a broken record but these ships could have saved Australian shipbuilding

I think it would take more than that.  The model of companies like Austal - i.e. build world class products and focus on exports - is a better strategy that is far more sustainable.

[Volkodav]

Harping on like a broken record but these ships could have saved Australian shipbuilding

I think it would take more than that.  The model of companies like Austal - i.e. build world class products and focus on exports - is a better strategy that is far more sustainable.

mmm... I think I will keep quiet about Austal, being successful and making sales doesn't mean the products are actually any good.  There are some very serious issues that are being glossed over and or miss reported for political reasons.  Prepared to discuss in private but not in public forums. 

My comment ref saving the industry had to do with avoiding what was the second valley of death caused by ordering a passable design (the FFG) from overseas in place of the overly ambitious fully local option (the DDL) and instead of building something perfectly good enough (Amazon) locally.  A build of 8 to 12 Amazons would have given the RAN the numbers they needed to replace the Battles, Darings, Type 15s and early Rivers with the reduced costs from smaller crews and and a common platform while ramping up the industry to be able to deliver a more capable design or designs going forward.  With the Amazons in service the RAN could have then replaced the newer Rivers and then the DDGs with a fully developed DDG version of the DDL or a local version of the Kidd for example and maybe even have been in a position to affordably build a new carrier for the RAN, even if it was only a CVH version of Ocean for example.  It was a chance to start and then continue building a sustainable number of perfectly good enough ships for the RAN, not the only chance but a very real one that would have saved a lot of wasted time and effort down the track.

[GTX_Admin]

being successful and making sales doesn't mean the products are actually any good.

From a commercial pov it does…sorry, BDM hat on.

[Weaver]

Harping on like a broken record but these ships could have saved Australian shipbuilding had the design been adopted as a PF instead of(or as a supplement to) the cancelled DDL project.  Same concept as the later ANZAC class, build 8 helicopter equipped light frigates to supplement the RANs patrol boats in EEZ patrol as well as to be sufficiently armed to permit then to back up the higher end guider missile destroyers as required.  They would have been a good way to reach the stated requirement for 23 destroyers and frigates through providing a good, relatively flexible light frigate.

In all honesty, and speaking as someone who's country would have benefitted from such a deal, the RAN was WAY better off with the ANZACs than it would have been with direct Type 21 copies. There isn't a snowball's chance of refitting the Type 21 with a decent SAM system for the reasons discussed, and they also proved to have some serious damage control issues caused by the RCNC being shut out of the politically-inspired, cost-driven commercial design process.

Now if you were going for a bigger Vosper Frigate (i.e. Niteroi sized or larger) and you had some sensible project management and decision making (now there's something you could export!  ) you might be all right. The Niterois traded their Seacats, simple Bofors and Ikara for Aspide plus Bofors Trinity mountings at a mid-90s refit, which leaves them reasonably future-proof for a while yet.

[Volkodav]

In all honesty, and speaking as someone who's country would have benefitted from such a deal, the RAN was WAY better off with the ANZACs than it would have been with direct Type 21 copies. There isn't a snowball's chance of refitting the Type 21 with a decent SAM system for the reasons discussed, and they also proved to have some serious damage control issues caused by the RCNC being shut out of the politically-inspired, cost-driven commercial design process.

Now if you were going for a bigger Vosper Frigate (i.e. Niteroi sized or larger) and you had some sensible project management and decision making (now there's something you could export!  ) you might be all right. The Niterois traded their Seacats, simple Bofors and Ikara for Aspide plus Bofors Trinity mountings at a mid-90s refit, which leaves them reasonably future-proof for a while yet.

Talking about doing it (the ANZAC project) 20 years earlier, i.e. 70s / 80s instead of 90s / 2000s.  Australia had been looking to a class of 10 corvettes / light frigates in the 60s to increase hull numbers and supplement the destroyers and specialist ASW frigates (River Class DEs).  Through adding a helicopter, then Tartar / Standard, Exocet and a 5' gun the ship grew into a destroyer or DDL.  AGRA has researched all of this in depth and has a far better handle on it then me.  Basically scope creep killed the project and the RAN was not able to replace existing platforms into the 80s let alone supplement them with a low end GP platform with no corvettes, frigates or destroyers being built locally between the early 70s and the early 90s with only four OHP class FFGs being bought from the US during that time.

The ANZAC project was a much later effort to try and rebuild numbers by introducing a Tier 2 ( PF to support the high end or Tier 1 (3) DDGs and (6) FFGs and supplement the Tier 3 (15) patrol boats (that in turn were meant to be replaced with a dozen missile armed and helicopter equipped corvettes or combat capable OPVs).  A change of government and priorities saw the DDGs and two (soon to be three) of the FFGs retired without replacement, the corvettes / OPVs cancelled, leaving the ANZAC Class PF to be subjected to a series of studies and projects to convert them into GP frigates to plug the gap.

Basically my whiff is that Australia built 8 - 12 modified / improved Amazons during the mid 70s and late 80s instead of buying 4 FFGs and then built a class of proper GP DDGs during the 90s to replace the River class DEs and the DDGs.  The RAN Amazons could have been broad beam types but logically would have incorporated some improvements over the basic RN model, say a Mk29 NATO Sea Sparrow launcher instead of Sea Cat, either a Mk45 5" or an Oto-Melara 76mm, a pair of single or twin turreted light (30-40mm) automatic GP guns, Lynx and ASW torpedoes.  The ships would have served for 25 plus years and been replaced with a class of corvettes / frigates approximating the Turkish MILGEM, South Korean Incheon or even the USN LCS type.

[Weaver]

Sounds like, with the DDL, the RAN got itself into a situation described by D.K.Brown in Rebuilding the Royal Navy. He led the team that designed the Castle class OPVs, and as an experiment (and possible source of export orders) they set about investigating what happened when you expanded the design for more and more capability, up to the point where it was a "light, cheap frigate".

What they found was that, as you add capability in steps, there comes a point where the ship's cost crosses a line line where it's no longer militarily or politically possible to regard it as expendable any more, and then a whole bunch of factors kick in all at once. The ship now needs to be able to defend itself, which costs more money and adds more crew, which pushes the size up, which costs more money. It needs to be able to withstand and control damage (more crew and money), which means it needs to be built to naval standards (which make every single piece of kit more expensive) in a naval yard (with inherently higher building cost/ton). All this extra cost means that far fewer ships can be afforded, which means they need to be more multi-role to justify their existance, which leads to another round of crew and cost increase, etc, etc....

By the time this spiral tops out at a sensible, buildable design, the "cheap simple frigate" has morphed  into an "expensive complicated frigate" in one step, with the price (in early 1980s money) going from £35m to £100m. Their conclusion was that there are cost "zones" for each class of warship where it simply isn't possible to build a viable design: as soon as you get into the bottom of that zone, operational and political realities immediately push the design to the top of it. The same argument applied to the really small Harrier Carriers (less than six aircraft) that were being pushed by shipyards in the 1980s, which is why none of them ended up getting built.

Much the same has happened with your "cheap" Amazons: they've become " improved Amazons" with better SAM and light AAA systems than the originals and nothing taken out to compensate, so they're not going to be particularly cheap. They're effectively standard 1970s/1980s light frigates: with the exception of Tartar, they're almost identical to the "over-spec" DDLs.

In the late 1970s, VT were offereing an improved Amazon. It had 2ft wider beam and a modified superstructure, and this enabled it to carry Lightweight Seawolf in an interesting form. The ship had four twin-arm launchers located side-by-side in B pos and either side of the hangar. Each launcher sat on top of a container holding ten standard missiles, from which it reloaded completely automatically. The container could be topped up manually by replenishment at sea. The four MM-38 Exocets were moved to an amidships position, the AAA upgraded to 30mm and new search radars fitted. Looks like pretty much the sort of thing you'd want, and I bet it was offered to the RAN, but there were no takers. No idea what the cost was, but I wouldn't bet on it being cheap.

[Volkodav]

What I was looking for was a 70s / 80s version of the ANZACs.  Basically the last of the 10 RAN/RNZN ANZACS, HMAS Perth was delivered for A$100M, both ahead of schedule and below budget, in 2006.  The ships achieved their brief in that they were affordable, versatile and more than capable of for filling their intended PF (or to be honest Sloop / Gun Boat) role, the 8 Tier 2 ANZACs were a more than adequate complement for the existing 9 DDG/FFG high end ships.  They were intended to be followed in the yards by a class of about a dozen Tier 3 Offshore Patrol Combatants (OPC) before the DDGs and FFGs would in turn be replaced by a class of 8 presumably higher end, high end Tier 1 Combatants.  Here's a link to some info on the OPC:

http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/topic/4941#.U1hD1u9ZqM8

Instead the OPCs were cancelled, the DDGs were retired, the FFGs planned to be upgraded and a project was launched to try and retrofit AEGIS to the ANZAC Class Patrol Frigates called the ANZAC Warfighting Improvement Program (WIP).  WIP failed (AEGIS just would not fit) and was replaced by the Anti Ship Missile Defence (ASMD)project that has become the centre point of the ANZAC mid life update, the systems are great, delivering world leading capability that has transformed the ANZACs, the trouble is the increase in weight (including ballast) has resulted in a significant reduction in speed and stability.

http://www.asiapacificdefencereporter.com/articles/290/Anti-Ship-Missile-Defence-impressive-progress

The FFG upgrade was botched resulting in schedule slip and cost increases which in turn led to the reduction of scope from six to four ships and the early retirement of the eldest two hulls.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/australias-hazardous-frigate-upgrade-04586/

Finally three new AEGIS equipped DDGs based on Spain's F-100 class frigate were ordered (although the RAN really wanted US Flight IIA Burke class DDGs) which it appears will now replace the remaining 4 FFGs. 

A long and convoluted story that can in a nut shell be explained as, perfectly good enough ships that were fit for their intended purpose are forced into roles for which they were never designed through the failure to order the ships that were meant to complement them.

The Amazons were cheaper and less capable than the OHP FFGs but could have been afforded in the required numbers and were perfectly satisfactory for their intended role(s).  They would have given the RAN experience in operating GTs and modern highly automated designs as well as complementing the over worked patrol boat fleet.  The build would have prepped the ship yards involved to build a following class of more expensive and complex destroyers, and possibly even a replacement carrier.

[Weaver]

Looking at the DDL some more, I can see why the mission creep started. The project began in 1966, based on experience of chasing Indonesian infiltrators around in coastal waters and shelling them ashore during Konfrontasi. The resultant DDL seems to have had 2 x Mk.45 5" guns, 4 x triple TTs (they're on the drawing...) and one Lynx helo. It has minimal air defence capability.

Two things strike me about this:

1. During Konfrontasi, both sides made strong efforts to prevent the situation escalating into a full-scale no-holds barred war, and this created a "permissive environment" in which to chase infiltrators with ships. No one tried to bomb the bases those infiltrators came from and no one launched mass air attacks against ships off the coast in retaliation. That's not unusual in limited war scenarios, but it can't be relied upon. The next major naval conflict was India/Pakistan in 1971 followed by the Falklands in 1982, and in both cases, ships were fair game for high-tech attack. The 1966 DDL would have looked pretty sick in either of those scenarios.

2. A year after Konfrontasi ended and the first DDL proposal was made, the Eilat gained the dubious distinction of becoming the world's first victim of sea-skimming missile attack, the missiles being launched from small craft that, to add insult to injury, didn't actually leave harbour. This caused near panic in naval circles as Styxs, Exocets and the FACs to carry them proliferated around the world, sold on the basis of their being "equalisers" for small navies facing larger ones. Had a 1966 DDL been attacked in similar circumstances it would have been utterly unable to defend itself and the Aus government and the RAN would have been roundly criticised for buying a "new-build Eilat".


Here's a thought for a more defendable but still light DDL:

1. Go Italian : Swap the forward 5" gun for an OTO-Melara 5" compact mount. This has twice the ROF of the Mk.45 and higher elevation and angualr tracking rates, making it a serious anti-aircraft weapon. it also has a three-drum feed system, so it can swap from shore-bombardment to anti-aircraft rounds very quickly. Swap the aft 5" gun for a 76mm Compact or a Breda twin 40mm. Add two Selenia RTN-10X fire control systems which have TV trackers as well as radar so they can operate in clutter near to shore.

2. Go Swedish : Swap the forward 5" gun for a Bofors TAK-120 4.7" gun. This has four times the ROF of the Mk.45 (but only 52 ready rounds) and higher elevation and angular tracking rates, making it a serious anti-aircraft weapon. The downside is that it requires crewmen on the mount in order to fire. Swap the aft 5" gun for a Bofors 57mm which, even in it's Mk.1 form, is a very serious anti-aircraft/anti-missile weapon. Add two PEAB 9LV-200 fire control systems which have TV trackers as well as radar so they can operate in clutter near to shore.

3. I'm not sure why the ship has 4 x triple TTs (no reloads?) but whatever the reason, I'd seriously consider replacing the forward pair with an ASW mortar/RL in B-Pos. This is because inshore sonar conditions can drastically reduce detection ranges and homing torpedoes struggle in shallow water, needing revised search patterns and sonar processing which isn't easy to change with 1960s electronics. Pretty much the only economical, in-production option here would be the Bofors 375mm twin rocket launcher. I think the Norwegian Terne system was still available, but it needs a lot more deck space than the 375mm. Another option might be to recycle Limbo mortars from older RAN/RN ships that are being retired, and fit them in the quarterdeck, behind the turret.

With these systems, the ship can put up a credible air defence when close in to shore because its FCS has optical as well as radar fire channels which don't get cluttered by radar returns from the shore line. This is far better than the radar-only Signal WM-series shown in the drawing, probably better than radar-guided Sea Sparrow/Aspide, and far cheaper than fitting a SAM system.

Other options to make it cheaper would be to have one shaft rather than two (as in the Perrys) and/or make it slower, like an OPV : 22 knots on diesels rather than 32 knots on GTs.

[Volkodav]

As always lots of food for thought.  Your suggestions seem to parallel the earlier VT Corvette designs with the addition of a helicopter and as such are quite feasible.  This has got me thinking now of moving the OPC forward by 20 years as well as these ships you have outlined definitely better fit the original DDL or later OPC / Corvette concept than the evolved DDL.  So a dozen corvettes / light frigates (replacing patrol boats from the late 70s), 8-10 modified Amazons and 6 DDGs would make for a reasonable balanced RAN of the 1980s assuming the carrier was replaced.

There was the figure of 23 destroyers and frigates that was put forward in the late 60s as the minimum requirement for the RAN, I do not know for certain if this was including the original light DDL or the later full destroyer version although the figure was policy when Malcom Frazer was defence minister between 1969 and 71 which suggests it was the later more capable iteration.  My understanding (although I have no references for this just supposition on my part) of this was that the 23 was to have been made up of the 3 DDGs + 10 DDL + 10 FF.  Known facts the patrol boats were to have been replaced by 15 PBs and 5 missile armed FAC versions with only the PBs being built.  Assuming I was correct then the DDGs would be retained into the 90s, Amazons built as the FFs in the 70s and 80s and then followed by the DDLs in the 80s and 90s with the DDGs replaced with DDG51s in the late 90s prior to building a new class of frigates to replace the Amazons in the 2000s.

Now based on the original DDL proposal and your suggestions ( not to mention later Australian plans to replace patrol boats with corvette or OPV sized vessels) there is definitely a place for a dozen or more, corvette sized, light DDLs built as replacements for the Attack class PBs through the 80s.   

[Weaver]

Well my thinking was for DDLs instead of Amazons in the original early 1970s timeframe, which is why I picked the weapons I did: all carefully checked for availability! BTW, just realised my comments on ASW mortars/RLs are bunk: Limbo was clearly still available new into the 1970s because new UK export frigates/corvettes were being built with it!  (all carefully checked for availability..... )

I doubt whether ten evolved DDLs with Tartar could have been afforded at any point.

Just going off-topic for a moment, if I wanted the capability to go and control a complicated coastal zone, what I might be inclinded to do is build a couple of multi-role LPD/mother ships similar to the French Ouragans or Foudres. These could function as conventional amphibious units for landing troops with landing craft and transport helos but could also re-role as coastal command ships, deploying four Lynx helos and four 100-150 ton FPBs with folding masts*, both helos and boats being armed with Sea Skua and Seaspray (the FPBs would have light guns too, of course). Basically, the FPBs give you endurance and silence (i.e. they can sit and wait for hours with their engines off), while the Lynxes give you speed and firepower. Add a DDL or two to escort the mothership and provide occasional NGS and off you go.

Sea Skua/Seaspray has been developed and deployed in real life: Kuwait has eight small FACs with it. An alternative (with some merit in this situation, since it's command-guided rather than SARH) would be AS-15TT, although as far as I'm aware, a ship-based version hasn't been fielded.

* The Foudres & Ouragans accomodate 400 ton P-400 patrol boats (with their tall masts) in their docking wells by having a two-section helo deck, the aft section of which slides forward under the forward one to leave the docking well open to the sky. They don't do this in order to deploy them straight into combat, rather it's a strategic transport mission to exchange refurbished P-400s for tired ones in France's far flung colonies/protectorates. I was going to suggest something similar, but since I want more, smaller FPBs with more limited electronics, it struck me that it should be possible to give them folding masts and have an efficient sinlge flight deck over a slightly deeper docking well instead.

[Volkodav]

I like the LPD / Mother ship idea.  It fits quite well with USN brown water activities in Vietnam as well as with some more recent sea basing concepts.

Many are unaware that the RAN of the 50s, 60s and 70s was both larger and more capable than generally realised and significantly smaller and less capable than intended or actually planned.  There were Tribal and Q class destroyers converted into ASW frigates that served for many years alongside the modern Type 12 based River class DEs, Battle and Daring class destroyers.  The total number of ships was about half what was planned at any given point however many older ships had been retained in reserve or were used as training ships.  They were available and on occasion actually did return to active service.

Back onto the Amazons, my thinking was a build of 8, preferably 10 modified / improved / batch II / broad beamed or what ever we call them from the late 70s until the mid to late 80s.  They would still be a sloop or gun boat, rather than frigate, in everything but name but would include an improved air defence missile system (Sea Wolf or NATO Sea Sparrow) and directed light automatic guns (replaced with Phalanx).  They would be cheaper than the OPH FFGs, easier to build and have smaller crews.

Above all building an average of one Amazon a year through the 80s would have geared Australian shipbuilding for the more complex project of a new FFG or DDG to replace the River class DEs into the 90s.  Such a ship would have been designed with input from the RN on the Falklands and could have resembled the DDL but incorporated VLS, Phalanx or Goalkeeper.

[Weaver]

Well the RAN could certainly get a fleet of useful frigates from the Type 21 build you suggest, my suspicion though is that they wouldn't be as cheap as you imagine, particularly if they have Seawolf or Sea Sparrow.

Whether they'd have the same problems as the RN Amazons or not would depend on how the RAN managed the program. In the UK there was a politically motivated drive to keep the RCNC (Royal Corps  of Naval Constructors) out of the Type 21 design process completely to "save money", but that also made it hard to impose tough standards and practices on the builders because those standard came as much from the "culture" of the RCNC as they did from anything formal that could be written into a contract.

Problems with the Type 21s:

1. Hull cracking.

The combination of an aluminium superstructure and a steel hull made it tricky to analyse hull fatigue, but it was believed that the hull was safe even if the superstructure cracked right through, which was good because it started cracking really early and had to have fibreglass patches applied. Then just before the Falklands, new analysis showed up a previously unrecognised failure mode that could snap the hull itself, and all the ships were warned to "avoid excessive sea motions" just before setting off the fight a war in the South Atlantic.....

The Amazons did more than their fair share of the NGS work in the Falklands because they had the Mk.8 gun and the latest Seacat system but were more "expendable" than the Type 42s that were needed to defend the fleet with Sea Dart. Arrow ended up with a damaged hull due to both the heat she endured when she came alongside Sheffield after the Exocet attack and to the sheer amount of gun firing she did and the stress that put on her hull. She ended up having to be sent back to the UK before the fighting was over, and all the surviving ships had to have large steel patches applied to the sides of the hull in the centre section after the conflict.


2. Damage control/resilience.

Experience in the Falklands showed that the RN's institutional memory about damage control had slipped a bit generally, but the Amazons had some particularly bad features and unfortunately, the fatal attacks on Ardent and Antelope gave plenty of opportunity to explore them. Some of these problems stemmed directly from the commercial contruction techniques that had made then so attractively cheap in the first place. Cables wern't glanded where they passed through bulkheads but were instead fed through a wide, common slot, which allowed smoke to spread. The ship's ventillation system was very simple and couldn't isolate one area of the ship from another, so smoke in one area rapidly spread throughout the vessel. The ships only had one major databus with no backup: in the first attack on Ardent, a bomb went right through this databus and severed it, leaving the ship to face the second attack with only her two 20mm Oerlikons.


3. Inability to upgrade.

Adding new weapons and sensors to the ships proved impossible because anything that was added would make the ship sink lower in the water, and freeboard to the quarterdeck was marginal. Put a bit more weight on them, and it would have gone underwater in a hard turn.


Most of these problems got through because of the political interference in the normal design process which made the ships "cheap". To avoid them, the RAN would have to ride the builders' backs far more closely and impose higher standards on the design process, but that would doubtless result in large slices of the cheapness going away.

If you must have a Vosper Frigate, then I'd definately make it a larger one, similar to the Mk.10 Niterois bought by Brazil. After all, if Brazil could afford to buy/build seven hulls in the 1970s (4 x ASW, 2 x GP, 1 x training) then presumably Australia could have afforded a decent number of them. I'd go for the CODOG powerplant too: the extra weight low down helps with stability and the Mk.10s had much better range than the Amazons.

By the way, an Amazon wouldn't have a smaller crew than a Perry:

Type 21 : 177
Mk.10 : 217
FFG-7 : 176

[Volkodav]

I actually work in naval shipbuilding and sustainment and I can assure you there is nothing you have mentioned ref the Amazons that hasn't come up in discussing other classes during design reviews etc.  The FFGs for instance would not still be at sea but for the composite patches developed by ADI (now Thales) and many of the damage control features that exist in the FFGs are not found in the newer ANZAC class which were designed as patrol frigates.  The new destroyers are much better but still hold nothing to the Burke class DDGs that many of my US colleagues had extensive experience on.  I wont get started on commercially classed patrol boats, except to say just imagine an aluminium hull with two big diesels in a single large engine room situated just aft of a forecastle break in sea state 7  (no I wasn't on the design review for these but had I been I would have asked "WTF are you thinking!")

With the Amazons we are talking 20-30 years before the ships I am used to dealing with but similar issues to those their contemporaries had, just worsened by operational need, i.e. if they spent their careers stooging around the Caribbean and Persian Gulf in a PF or Sloop role they would have been rated a success.   A war in the South Atlantic that were found wanting.

On the crewing RAN FFGs sail with 170 crew in local waters but never deploy with less than 200, 220 is the highest figure I have been made aware of.  It comes down to tasking, what the crew needs to do what specialities they need to cover off over core functions.

Anyway, really enjoying these discussions as your knowledge of UK platforms and earlier eras far exceeds mine, I have learnt so much and look forward to learning more.

[Weaver]

Well first off, respect to you for being a professional and tolerating my amateur and second-hand opinions!

All of my knowledge of this stuff comes from a few good books (wish I could afford/find more...) You're doubtless familiar with Norman Friedman's stuff so I won't go over it again.

D.K.Brown and G.Moore's  Rebuilding the Royal Navy is an excellent insider's view of Royal Navy ship design in the post-war period. They're frank about mistakes made (Brown was an RN naval architect) and that's both sobering and informative. I want more of Brown's books (alas, he died in 2008).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rebuilding-Royal-Navy-Warship-Design/dp/1848321503

Also good, but hard to find, is the Ian Allan Type-21 volume in their Modern Combat Ships series. This was published in 1990 so it's only available second-hand now, but it's written by Capt. John Lippiett who was CO of Ambuscade in the Falklands and went on to command Amazon, so it's an excellent insider's view of the class, although not entirely objective in places.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Combat-Ships-Type-21/dp/0711019037

Not entirely relevent to this particular discussion, but I'm sure you'd find it fascinating, is naval historian Eric Grove's Battle for the Fiords, which starts with an excellent history of NATO naval strategy, before going on to a lively account of exercise Teamwork '88, for which the author was ferried around the NATO ships involved to get a first-hand view of the action (I know: some people have such terrible jobs....). Again, this was a 1991 publication so only available second hand (I spend a lot of time in second-hand books stores and charity shops!).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Battle-Fiords-Forward-Maritime-Strategy/dp/1557500525

I wont get started on commercially classed patrol boats, except to say just imagine an aluminium hull with two big diesels in a single large engine room situated just aft of a forecastle break in sea state 7  (no I wasn't on the design review for these but had I been I would have asked "WTF are you thinking!")

Some things never change... Regard this little known horror, the Type 14 Blackwood class 2nd rate ASW frigate:


(Original image from www.theblueprints.com)

The red triangle was a post-construction fix: originally the hull stepped down two decks with a 90 deg corner: how's that for a stress-raiser? Yes, they cracked.....

On the crewing RAN FFGs sail with 170 crew in local waters but never deploy with less than 200, 220 is the highest figure I have been made aware of.  It comes down to tasking, what the crew needs to do what specialities they need to cover off over core functions.

Same thing happened with the Amazons. According to Capt Lippiett (see above) they were officially rated at 177, but it crept up to over 200 for long deployments after a few years' experience. The Pakistani Navy currently runs them at 213 (Tariq class).

[Weaver]

Just found this discussion on Secret Projects:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,7772.15.html

It's about the Type 24 and 25 projects from the mid '80s which were never built. However the big Type 24 scan shows the 4 x twin Seawolf arrangement that was also proposed for an upgraded Type 21. The export Type 24 looks pretty good to me.

[Volkodav]

I used to have a very old (mid to late 70s) Airfix magazine that had a photo of a model of a "broad beam Amazon".  It was I believe a builders conceptional model and was accompanied by a brief story stating how this export version of the Amazon was on offer to Australia and other nations and included a new version of Seawolf that used four twin launchers in place of the two sextuple units on the Broadswords.  I wish I could find it but fear it may be long gone after so many moves. 

The twin launcher as I understand it was sort of like a mini Mk26 and I vaguely remember reading somewhere had been designed to fire Seaskua as well as Seawolf.

[Weaver]

Another Secret Projects thread with good info on Seawolf launcher options:

http://www.secretprojects.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,6921.0.html

This pretty much covers all the ground my various books and magazines do.

No mention of Sea Skua though. All it's dimensions are different and unlike Sea Wolf, it's tail fins are indexed at 45 deg to it's wings, so designing a common launcher would be very complicated. There is a surface-launched version of Sea Skua (the Kuwaiti navy has some) but it's a fixed container like most other AShMs.