The Influence of History

Two of the greatest navies in Europe have long been the British and the French. For most of their history, these two navies have been competitors, facing off in numerous wars from the Battle of Sluys in 1340 to the Attack on Mers-el-Kebir in 1940 (it is worth noting that, as was often the case in conflicts between these two great navies, the British triumphed in both the first and last of these actions). However, as Britain and France were eclipsed by rising powers outside of Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries, the Royal Navy and Marine Nationale slowly became partners rather than rivals. From the Anglo-French blockade of the Río de la Plata in 1845 and the Second Opium War in 1856 to the Suez Crisis of 1956, the British and French navies worked effectively together to project power abroad. Still, declining national strength during the Cold War saw both navies largely relegated to auxiliary forces under the umbrella of the United States Navy. While the Royal Navy saw a brief fli...

The County-class Unlike most navies, the Royal Navy's first guided missile ships were not conversions of existing ships. Instead, they were the eight purpose-built  County -class destroyers, which entered service beginning in 1962. Measuring 158 meters in length, these ships were much larger than the proceeding 120-meter Daring -class gun destroyers and were commonly referred to as "DLG" after the American hull code for large missile ships like the contemporary Farragut -class frigates . Further, rather than relying on American missiles as was done by most NATO navies, the British chose to build the County -class around the domestic Sea Slug surface-to-air missile - a weapon that unfortunately lived up to its underwhelming name. A beam riding missile with a range of 25 kilometers and a top speed of Mach 1.5 (many sources state Sea Slug was subsonic, this is incorrect and likely a misreading of the fact that it could only engage subsonic targets), Sea Slug was comparable...