Warships and Submarines

A destroyer is a class of surface warship specially designed to fight submarines, torpedo boats, and aircraft, to conduct reconnaissance, to escort aircraft carriers, battleships and cruisers, and to carry out torpedo attacks on large ships. The development of the destroyer was the direct consequence of the invention of the self-propelled torpedo in the second half of the 19th century. The first destroyer, 'el destructor', was invented by Spanish naval officer Fernando Villaamil Fernández-Cueto in 1885 to cope with a new threat in the sea waters against large war vessels: the torpedo boat that launched the new self-propelled Whitehead torpedoes.

The first destroyers had displacements of 1,000 and 1,500 tons and maximum speeds of 35–36 knots (64–66 km/hr). They were armed with 8–12 torpedo launchers and three or four artillery guns with calibers ranging from 100 mm to 120 mm. During the war, the role of this warship was expanded, and they were fitted with additional artillery guns and with mechanisms for releasing antisubmarine depth charges. The destroyer was first used in combat during the Russo-Japanese War on February 8, 1904, during the naval battle of Port Arthur.

In World War II, destroyers were used to protect transport convoys and tactical units of large naval vessels from attack by German or Japanese submarines and light surface ships. Although they were armed with depth charges and torpedoes, the most important part of a destroyer's anti-submarine warfare was the sonar, which is a position-finding device to detect the presence of an enemy submarine by transmitting acoustic waves and picking up the reflected sounds from enemy submarine hull. At the beginning, destroyers were light warships with little endurance for unattended ocean operations. This is the reason they had to operate together in packs, supplied by the tender, or depot ship.

Today, they are used to search and destroy submarines and to lay minefields. After the war, with the development of missiles and atomic weapons, the destroyer class of vessels evolved into separate classes of medium-tonnage, narrow-purpose warships with anti-aircraft and antisubmarine capabilities. Vessels of the US Navy’s Arleigh-Burke class are representative of the modern destroyer. Such vessels have a displacement of 5,800 tons and travel at speeds of up to 35 knots. They are equipped with one 127-mm gun, two triple torpedo launchers, and one 8-tube rocket launcher.

Above, the first modern US Navy destroyer; the USS Wickes DD-75, which was commissioned in 1918.

Above, four US Navy Allen M. Sumner destroyers moored alongside their tender. Commissioned in 1943, they were the first American destroyers fitted with a modern effective sonar.

HMS Sheffield D80 was a British destroyer, which was scuttled on May 10, 1982, after being seriously damaged by an Argentine Navy's aircraft during the Falklands War. She was the lead ship of her class of 10 vessels, which were all Type-42 destroyers equipped with surface-to-air and anti-ship missiles. Although she was a state of the art warship at the time, the four high-tech radars she was fitted with could not detect the French-made Exocet missiles on time to allow her skipper maneuver the vessel around and avoid being hit.

Designed in 1968, HMS Sheffield D80 was laid down in 1970 and built by Vickers Armstrong Shipbuilders at the shipyards on the River Tyne. She would be launched on June 10, 1971, and commissioned on February 16, 1975, after four years of sea trials. Before the Falklands War broke out, she had been assigned to carry out patrol duties in the Indian Ocean and later in the Persian Gulf, taking part in Exercise Roebuck in 1981. On April 2, 1982, the day Argentina invaded the Falklands Islands, she was assigned to the British Task Force, which was composed of 43 war vessels and 22 auxiliary ships.

On May 4, 1982, when she was cruising along on the rough waters of the South Atlantic, 70 miles off the coast of East Falkland, she was hit by one Exocet missile launched from a French-made Argentinean Super Etendard combat aircraft, which had actually fired two missiles upon the British vessel. Realizing the damage was overwhelming, beyond repairs, and that the fire might reach the ammunition room, the skipper, James Salt, ordered the crew to abandon the ship, which was scuttled on May 10.

Technical Description

HMS Sheffield was a Type-42 destroyer, which had a 141-m (410-ft) long hull, which was made entirely of steel (not aluminum as wrongly written elsewhere). Thus, compared to the Type-82, she was smaller, but compact, with enough room to provide area defense for the Sea Dart surface-to-air missile, twin-arm launcher set up on the fore deck. Power was provided by four Rolls Royce gas turbines, from which two were Olympus TM3B (50,000 SHP), and two Tyne RM1A gas turbines (8,000 SHP).

Specifications

Type: guided-missile destroyer

Displacement: 4,350 tons (full load)

Length: 125 m (410 feet)

Beam: 14 m (46 feet)

Draft: 5.8 m (19 feet)

Propulsion: Two Rolls Royce Olympus TM3MB gas-turbines, with two shafts, and two Rolls Royce Tyne RM1A gas-turbines, the four of them generating 58,000 SHP.

Maximum Speed: 30 knots (35 mph/ 56 km/h)

Range: 4,750 nautical miles (7,600 miles)

Armament: one twin-arm launcher for Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles; one 120-mm naval gun; and two 20-mm AA.

Compliment: 300 sailors and officers

Below, HMS Sheffield D80 sailing in the South Atlantic in late April, 1982.