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HMS Scylla, the last to decommission of 27 Leander-class frigates completed for the British Navy between 1963 and 1973, 1
is seen here flying her paying-off pennant as she enters Portsmouth harbor on 3 December 1993. Others of the class were built in British yards for New Zealand (two) and Chile (two), while the Netherlands built six slightly modified examples as the Van Speyk class (transferred to Indonesia during 1986-90), and India built six more, the later of which were greatly changed from the original Leander configuration. While the Leanders are gone from the Royal Navy, examples will continue to serve in foreign fleets well past the turn of the century.
In 1993, the Royal Navy also retired an even longer-serving class, when the last of the 118 “Ton”-class wooden-hulled mine countermeasures ships completed during 1952-1958, the Nurton (pictured), paid off on 4 December. The Nurton w as one of a number of “Tons” equipped between 1964 and 1969 with a Type 193 variable-depth sonar to enable them to serve as mine- hunters. France built the very similar Sirius class (the last of which was stricken in 1992), and sisters continue to serve in the Argentine and South African navies. One British half-sister, the “Tupperware” Wilton, completed in 1973 as Britain’s first glass-reinforced, plastic-hulled warship, was assigned to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, in 1991 as a training ship and will be retired this year.
Decommissioned from the U.S. Navy and stricken on 29 April 1992, the former USS Goldsborough (DDG-20) was the last active unit of the 23-ship Charles F. Adams (DDG-2)-class and one of three that had been modernized with the Mk 86 fire control system and other improvements. Bought for the Royal Australian Navy for $2.4 million in 1993, the ship is seen here arriving on 2 February 1994 at Sydney, where she is being stripped of useful equipment in support of the RAN’s three Charles F. Adams-class guided missile destroyers, Perth, Hobart, and Brisbane, completed by Defoe Shipbuilding at Bay City, Michigan, during 1965-67 and not scheduled to be decommissioned until the turn of the century. Most of the remaining electronic and weapons equipment is to be removed to shore locations for use in training.
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