Background
The principal role of these ships is to provide the fleet with mid-range anti-air warfare capability with secondary roles of anti-surface and anti-submarine. A total of sixteen Type 42s were built between 1972 and 1985, in three batches, with Coventry the last of the first batch to be commissioned. To cut costs, the first two batches had 47 feet removed from the bow and the beam-to-length ratio reduced. These early Type 42s performed poorly during trials and are notoriously poor sea-keepers.
Type 42 Destroyers were fitted with the Sea Dart surface-to-air missiles designed in the 1960s to counter threats from manned aircraft. Sea Dart is constrained by limitations on its firing capacity and reaction time, but did prove itself during the Falklands War with seven kills, three of these attributed to Coventry.
Read more about this topic: HMS Coventry (D118)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)