And so the RN made 16 of the ships less useful when more than 100nmi from English shores?
That reminded me that the Indian Navy operated Sea Kings from some of their their broad-beam Leanders by removing the Limbo & VDS and fitting a telescopic hangar & the Canadian Beartrap haul-down gear.
The Leanders had storage for 25 Sea Cats for two launchers, single-launcher ships only had 10 missiles.
Conway Martime Press - All The Worlds Fighting Ships 1947-1982 lists, for the Australian's Type 12 frigates, "approximately 24 of each missile" for Ikara and SeaCat.
navalinstitute.com.au
The Australian arrangement was designed to replace a Limbo mortar and its magazine. Bar for the apparently never used nuclear depth charge capability, the RN could have adopted the RAN configuration and fitted Ikara to all Leanders, while keeping the gun.The GWS.40 Ikara system carried 20 missiles (HMS Bristol).
UK Cold War monster destroyer retired | The Australian Naval Institute
The GWS.41 was fitted in the Leanders.
Would the hangar and flight deck be big enough for a Lynx? AFAIK the Exocet & Sea Wolf Leanders had the hangar extended aft over part of the fight deck and the flight deck extended aft over the where the Limbo had been to accommodate the Lynx.
Telescoping hangar like the US Frigates?
Here is the RAN installation - note that only the first two* RAN "River" class kept their stepped stern, the middle two* partly enclosed the stern until fitted with a helo deck in the early-mid 1980s identical to that of the first two. The magazine etc all fit under the aft superstructure and helo landing area. One Limbo launcher was retained after the Ikara was fitted, but was removed in another refit in the late 1970s-early 1980s.
Was I?
Probably not, good point. I think the Lynx required the Limbo bay to be plated over, so the flight deck could be extended.
That might work because AFIAK the first 4 Indian Leanders had a telescopic hangar (so they could operate a Chetak helicopter) whilst keeping the Limbo and (as I'm sure @Scott Kenny will be pleased to read) the VDS. Plus, I have remembered correctly that the last 2 Indian Leanders had a telescopic hangar too (so they could operate a Sea King) but lost the Limbo and VDS. The edition of Janes 1996-97 on Internet Archive has a photograph of Taragiri that shows the telescopic hangar retracted and there's a drawing of it on Navypedia showing it extended.
My vote would be Sea Sprites, but those are not all that much fancier than a QH-50 DASH. No processing power onboard, they carried the sensors and torpedoes out under the control of the ship.
Rebuilding the RAN Type 12s with helicopter facilities hasn't been discussed. There has been a discussion about whether a Leander could have its Limbo replaced by an Ikara launcher and still have space for a Lynx helicopter. @BlackBat242 provided examples of how the Ikara was fitted on RAN Type 12s which lead to me suggesting that an (RN) Leander could have an Ikara fitted in place of the VDS and the Limbo removed to allow a the extension of the hangar & flight deck for a Lynx helicopter.
If it's in the 1960s my guess is that it would probably be the Wasp to standardise with the RN & RNZN. My second choice would be the Italian AB 204AS or a Bell-built version of it to standardise with the UH-1s.
Or Lynx instead of AB 212AS/UH-1 in the 1970s.
I remember reading it in a 1970s edition of Jane's and that the reduction from 20 to 10 was one of the middle 1970s Post-Vietnam/Whitlam Government defence cuts. My guess is that it they were to replace more of the Wessexes that they bought in the 1970s.
Your guess, not mine. Lynx had nothing in common with the ADF's other helicopters, where as AB 212AS/UH-1 did. They'd be more likely to buy the Sea Sprite than Lynx because it's GE T58 engines would provide some standardisation with the RR Gnome engines on the Sea Kings.
To clarify they wanted to buy 20 Sea Kings in the 1970s. (See my reply to @Rule of cool for more details.) That's why I didn't mention the Sea Kings bought in the 1980s.
For what it's worth these are the exact quantities according to the ADF Serials website (http://adf-serials.com.au/3a16.htm) that I found when I was looking for something else.
According to the ADF Serials website (http://www.adf-serials.com.au/n16.htm) the RAN acquired a total of 16 Sea Kings. 10 delivered in 1975, 2 delivered in 1983, one ex-RN aircraft delivered in 1996 to replace N16-124 and another 3 ex-RN aircraft (no delivery date) for spares recovery which weren't given RAN serials.
Post 104 in full.
Post 105.
It looks like I was suffering from false memory syndrome because I've looked at the copies of Jane's 1972-73 to 1974-75 on Internet Archive and they don't mention plans to buy 20 Sea Kings.
But Jane's 1973-74 says on Page 30.
And Jane's 1974-75 says on Page 30.
Or was I? Because the following is on Page 31 of the copy of Jane's 1975-76 on Internet Archive.
Which suggests that 20 Sea Kings were originally wanted OR it could be a typo for "in lieu of 20 Wessex" like Jane's 1973-74 and Jane's 1974-75. The latter is the most likely.
Another part of Post 101.
Part of Post 102.
@Rule of cool, if the planned purchase of 6 Lynxes IOTL for the Light Destroyers is anything to go buy then we're both wrong and @BlackBat242 was right.
To muddy the waters even further this is Post 2 from the thread "Australian AOE Replenishment Ship HMAS Protector".
10 Sea Kings + 15 more Sea Kings = 25 Sea Kings.
Fair enough. Though having bought 27 Wessex helicopters in the 1960s it's plausible that the RAN would have wanted a similar number of aircraft to replace them.
