Type 43 Destoyer - double tiered Air Defence warship

[Thorvic]

Well finally managed to get some work done on this warship, so here are a few pics.

[Thorvic]

Plus one of the British Sea Dart destroyers and their replacement 

[Weaver]

Excellent work Geoff - looks really good.

There isn't much room to reload those aft Seawolf launchers, is there? 

[Thorvic]

Cheers Weaver, glad you like it.

Yeap they are a bit tight, partly due to the Pitroad items being overscale, but i suspect they were really hoping for light weight version of Seawolf

[Weaver]

Thing is, manually reloaded Seawolf launchers needed about the same amount of space whether the six round or four round versions. Yes the four-round launcher was lighter, but it used containerised rounds which were even more bulky and heavy than the naked rounds that needed ramps and pulleys to get them into the six-shooter.

The two-round launcher had a magazine below it with automatic reloading, so that would need a solid deckhouse rather than a platform.

One of the Type 43 drawings in Rebuilding the Royal Navy implies that the Mk.8 gun was optional: I wonder if they'd have built it with provision for VLS Seawolf there instead?

[NARSES2]

Looking good 

[Mossie]

Great work Geoff!  Would have been an imposing sight.

[Gondor]

I am not a ship fan so I am probably going to be wrong over this but, ..... surely it is difficult enough to land a helicopter on a ship anyway but to try and land it between the highest parts of the superstructure is surely dangerous. I would not think that the mid placed helicopter deck would work which is probably why you see helicopter decks at the rear of ships.

Gondor

[Thorvic]

I am not a ship fan so I am probably going to be wrong over this but, ..... surely it is difficult enough to land a helicopter on a ship anyway but to try and land it between the highest parts of the superstructure is surely dangerous. I would not think that the mid placed helicopter deck would work which is probably why you see helicopter decks at the rear of ships.

Gondor

Actually the rear of the ship is worse, although the deck is clear the stern like the bows have the greater degree of travel with the motion of the sea, where as the amidships location is more stable especially with the stabilisers used these days. Landing there is little different from landing on the Invincible class, you fly parallel to the ship and then shift sideways over the landing spot and then drop. It was a serious design and they did weigh up the pro's & cons before deciding on this format.

[Weaver]

Hmm, but on Invincible et al, there's no structure behind you, and helos have notoriously poor visibility to the rear. I know that on ships that do have a forward helo pad with structure behind it, the helo pilots are definately not keen: it means you have to be precise in three planes rather than two. I also know that D.K.Brown says of the Type 43 that "an acceptable solution was found", but then a) he designed it, and b) he was a ship designer, not a helicopter pilot!

My feeling is that the Type 43 would have been better off with Ikara amidships and a vertrep platform only, right on the stern.

[Thorvic]

In the background is another Destroyer to finish off the set, this is the Type 44 which was a poormans version of the Type 43 with Sea Dart II fwd and Seawolf aft, fwd of the bridge are the Exocets. Quite a bit of guess work on thai one as only a single basic side view showing the weapon locations is available. Note no hanger for a Helicopter.

[NARSES2]

Thorvic Shipyards Ltd have been busy 

[Martin H]

Some slipway! He lives on top of a damn great hill.