Talk:Type 21 frigate

Type 21 frigate

Re shortcomings- can anybody actually make a citation that the designer was a woman. This has been a popular rumour, and it would be good to have evidence or even a name(s) of the design(er)/team.Sidney Bung 15:59, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

According to D. K. Brown in Rebuilding the Royal Navy, (p. 103) they were designed in-house at Vosper Thornycroft with one Peter Usher in charge of the design, later to be MD at VT. Emoscopes ^Talk 17:20, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

SNIPPETS

May I suggest that the title for the Paragraph 'Shortcomings' is re-labled, as there are in fact no shortcomings. Perhaps this ought to be incorported in to the Design section. The only real shortcoming was that they had lack of air defence weapons, but this is to be taken in the context of the war environment they were designed for.Sidney Bung 19:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

On a personal note I believe that the 'cracks' mentioned in the Type 21 series was a bit over rated. These appeared at the begining of the types service life, and was ceratinlly a defect, but not enough to put the ship in danger. This was a most succcessful ship, afer all they have been in service for over 30 years.Sidney Bung 19:34, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Agreed, and done. Emoscopes ^Talk 20:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Niteroi class frigate

How do the Niteroi class frigates of the Brazilian navy differ from stock Type 21? Drutt (talk) 08:35, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

They were of completely different design, significantly larger and heavier.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:36, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Merging with Tariq Class

The proposal to merge the Tariq class Wiki pages is not supported.I say this as the Type 21 has a unique and special place in the history of the Royal Navy and the crews that served aboard them. Also t ships Ardent and Antelope where lost in war so should have their memory kept within a British Wiki record.

Chopsm (talk) 15:11, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

It would nonetheless be interesting to know what other nations operated the type, and how their ships differed from the British vessels. Drutt (talk) 15:12, 24 November 2008 (UTC)

I am with ChopsM on this one, as an ex member of the 21 Club I would prefer to see these as seperate entities. Mainly because the PNS ships have had extensive work done to make them only a Type 21 hull. There is a link on the web page to the PNS ship site so this I believe satisfies Drutt's wishes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 57.250.242.249 (talk) 15:39, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Severe problems with this article

Apart from being virtually unreferenced, this article appears riddled with unsubstantiated opinions and WP:OR, particularly the Analysis section, with the statement that the Royal Navy should have purchased large conventional carriers, which is completely out of scope for an encyclopedia article.Nigel Ish (talk) 14:58, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I will agree with the high lack of references. I feel the prior user calling it unsubstantiated opinions perhaps severe. I find it a captivating article - would have a better feel if not referenced have a batch of British Mid-grade Naval officers and Brass (Admirals) state agreement with this. Obtaining references for Development and Design sections would greatly help. Wfoj3 (talk) 14:05, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

Template content is causing PDF printing issues

PDF output using Google Chrome's built-in distiller produces poor results with this page. (Use the Ctrl P command in Chrome to preview). Issue may be with the template used or (more likely) the the way content was entered into the template and saved by the contributor. For example, when printing this article with Google's PDF printer, the font size is scaled down too much. Note that the font size should not dynamically scale up or down to fit a page; font size of the main-body text content should be about 12 points on outputted PDF page(s); it is the images and table cells that should dynamically scale up or down to fit the info box and template in order to maintain the two-column Wikipedia layout. The offending element appears to be the table. Printchecker (talk) 03:40, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

What happens if you use the Print/export under tools on the left sidebar? Does the Wikipedia "distiller" generate same problem? GraemeLeggett (talk) 05:16, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Problem passage with citations that do not support content

I have removed the following problem passage from the analysis section:

In many ways the Iranian classification of their derivatives as small 'destroyers' is a more accurate classification than frigate. The Falklands revealed them useless for anti aircraft convoy defence with the Mk 8 4.5 gun having a large blind fire arc and the GWS24 Seacat over engineered for a simple missile. As anti submarine ships they were easily heard and classified by the ARA San Luis. Their speed and glamour amplified the "boy racer" tendencies of the RN officer class which acted against quiet, anti submarine operation.

References

Let us look at these statements:

1. In many ways the Iranian classification of their derivatives as small 'destroyers' is a more accurate classification than frigate.
   No citation.
   By the late 1970s and the 1980s in Western European navies, the term "destroyer" was usually used for air defence specialist ships: clearly not a Type 21 in RN service.
2. The Falklands revealed them useless for anti aircraft convoy defence with the Mk 8 4.5 gun having a large blind fire arc and the GWS24 Seacat over engineered for a simple missile.
   Uncited. You might have thought that the citation for the third sentence also applied to this one. I checked and it does not.
   Almost all RN destroyers and frigates of the time had large blind arcs of fire for their 4.5" guns, and still do now. On Type 21, the 4.5" gun and the Seacat depended for their effectiveness on radar. According to Michael Clapp's book Amphibious Assault Falklands, San Carlos was chosen for the landing site by Clap in part because it would be difficult to launch air attacks on ship in San Carlos Water (Clapp used to be a Buccaneer navigator, so he knew about these things). However the same terrain that meant that low-flying fast jets had very little time to pick a target, also stopped non-doppler radar from picking out targets. The 4.5" and the version of Seacat on Type 21 depended on radar. Of course they could be used without radar, but most of the crew training would have been in their main (radar assisted) mode, rather than the manual reversionary mode.
3. As anti submarine ships they were easily heard and classified by the ARA San Luis.
   This has a citation. You can check it online[1] The pages does say that the Arrow and Alacrity were heard and classified as frigates by the ARA San Luis. According to page 131 the frigates were doing 30 knots. The ship's log for HMS Arrow says 20.16 knots.
   Please note that both ships appear to have been towing acoustic decoys (probably their unifoxers, but possibly their Sonar 182 decoys). That they were tracked at high speed whilst towing acoustic decoys does not invalidate them as antisubmarine ships.
4. Their speed and glamour amplified the "boy racer" tendencies of the RN officer class which acted against quiet, anti submarine operation.
   There is a citation, which says talks about the 4th Frigate Squadron: "Collectively the captains of the ships in his squadron were known as the “Boy Racers” and when White arrived on May 25, shortly after two Types 21s, Ardent and Antelope, had been sunk, he was greeted with a signal: “Blimey, that was Formula One.”" I do not see how this supports the claim that the RN officer class had "boy racer" tendencies.

-- Toddy1 (talk) 13:41, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

An IP editor has added a new version of the above passage on 20 April 2018

"In many ways the Iranian classification of their derivatives as small 'destroyers' is a more accurate classification than frigate. The Falklands revealed them useless, for anti aircraft convoy defence with the Mk 8 4.5 gun, the gun being unreliable, unsuitable for as a modern AA gun with only 25rpm and a large blind fire arc, increased by only 55 degree elevation and the GWS24 Seacat over engineered and useless as even a point defence missile . As anti submarine ships gas turbine powered, T21/22 they were easily heard and classified by the ARA San Luis. The towed decoy behind HMS arrow was smashed apart by a German torpedo fired from ARA San Luis at a range of 5 km ,firing on purely sonar data ,, the San Luis snorkelling with antenna raise only at night when J. Coward, Cpt of HMS Brilliant and the Sea Kings from HMS Invincible could not fly or operate effectively due to lack of MAD ( magnesium alloy detectors) on the Sea kings and inability to refuel from the frigate decks or pipes. The 21's speed and glamour amplified the "boy racer" tendencies of the RN officer class, who always took the 21s out of harbour at full throttle at 30 knots which acted against quiet, anti submarine operation. They proved completely unsuitable for the Royal Navy's 1980s role as a second line nuclear deterrent, anti submarine force in the North Atlantic and Arctic and"

Sources:

• Citation [1] is M. Hastings & S.Jenkin. The Battle for the Falklands (1994) p 11, 116 and 127.
  • I checked pages 11, 116 and 127 and they do not mention Type 21 frigates.
• Citation [2] refers to "Vice Admiral Parry. Reflections on the Falklands. Annapolis and Washington. USA (2017)".
  • I have been unable to identify this book or magazine article.
• Citation [2] refers to Down South: A Falklands War Diary by Chris Parry, pub Viking, 16 Feb 2012.
  • Chris Parry served on a County-class destroyer. I checked the references to Sea Cat in this book and they did not support the statement.
• Citations [3] and [5] refer to Lt Cdr S R Harper. Submarine Operations of the Falklands. USN War College Paper 1994, p21-2
  • Pages 21-22 do not support the claim.
• Citation [3] refers to S R Harper and N.Friedman. Falklands war in Retrospect. Defense 2013]
  • This says "The sole effective Argentinian submarine had no difficulty finding the ships." It also talks about an attack by the San Luis on HMS Hermes, the details of the attack correspond to the attack on 1 May 1982 on HMS Brilliant.
• Citation [4] probably refers to Safeguarding the Nation: The Story of the Modern Royal Navy,by John Roberts, 16 April 2009, pub Seaforth Publishing.
  • Though this does mention the the torpedo attack on the decoy, it is not really relevant to the IP editor's attack on the Type 21 frigate.
• Citation [5] refers John Coward's obituary in the Daily Mail.
  • I cannot find this online. But in any case WP:DAILYMAIL would seem to apply.
• Citation [6]
  • Already dealt with when an earlier version of the same post was made.

-- Toddy1 (talk) 06:06, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

It is worth adding that the supposed deficiencies of the Invincible's Sea Kings as submarine hunters do not tell us anything about the subject of this article, which is the Type 21 frigate. The claim that MAD stands for "magnesium alloy detectors" is about as accurate as the IP editor's citations. See magnetic anomaly detector.-- Toddy1 (talk) 09:50, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

The latest edit from the IP editor is this one.[2] This inserts two passages:

• the fitting of the Type 2016 bow sonar, <ref> A. Preston. Type 21 Anti Submarine Frigates in the Worlds Worst Warships. Conway Maritime Press (2002) London,p 172 </ref> to increase passive sonar detection ranges from 20 km with the exiting 184 sonar to 200km. The type 21 could be fitted with either the 2016 sonar or Seawolf not both ,<ref> Preston (2002) p 172 </ref>
• as the Rothesay and older Ikara and Exocet group 2 Leanders were more suitable for towing the 2031 towed array, the towed version of 2016

The source cited does support the statement that the type 21 could be fitted with either the 2016 sonar or Seawolf but not both. It does not support the other statements.-- Toddy1 (talk) 19:14, 25 April 2018 (UTC)