HMS Leander (F109): The Ship That Gave Her Name to a Whole Class

From Rothesay Class to a New Design

HMS Leander was originally intended to be a Rothesay-class frigate under the name HMS Weymouth, but during her construction at Harland and Wolff's shipyard in Belfast, she was redesignated as the lead ship of an entirely new class, one that would go on to bear her own name for the rest of naval history.

Launched on 28 June 1961 and commissioned on 27 March 1963, HMS Leander displaced 2,450 tons standard, armed with twin 4.5-inch guns, Seacat anti-air missiles, a Limbo anti-submarine mortar and facilities for a Westland Wasp helicopter, and became the founding member of what would ultimately become one of the largest and most successful frigate classes in modern Royal Navy history, with 26 ships built for Britain alone and dozens more constructed for allied navies overseas.

Global Deployments and an Ikara Upgrade

HMS Leander deployed widely through the 1960s and 1970s, visiting the West Indies, the Pacific and the Persian Gulf, and in 1970 joined NATO's multinational Standing Naval Force Atlantic squadron.

Between 1970 and 1972 she underwent a significant modernisation that saw her forward gun mount replaced by an Ikara anti-submarine missile launcher, a substantial upgrade to her underwater warfare capability that reflected just how central anti-submarine work had become to Cold War frigate design.

Ramming Icelandic Gunboats

HMS Leander found herself in the thick of the Third Cod War between 1975 and 1976, conducting fishery protection patrols off Iceland during Britain's most intense and confrontational fishing dispute with the Icelandic government.

In the course of that campaign she rammed not one but two Icelandic gunboats, ICGV Thor and ICGV Ver, sustaining hull damage on both occasions, a notably aggressive record even by the standards of a conflict that regularly saw British and Icelandic vessels manoeuvring at dangerously close quarters.

A Final Act as a Missile Target

HMS Leander went on to further Mediterranean deployments in 1983 and 1985, before being placed in reserve on 31 July 1986 and formally decommissioned in April 1987.

Her final contribution to the Royal Navy came in 1989, when she was deliberately sunk during a live-fire naval exercise, targeted with Sea Dart missiles, Exocet anti-ship missiles and further ordnance, providing invaluable data on weapons effectiveness against a real steel hull.

It was a fittingly instructive end for the ship whose name and design had shaped an entire generation of Royal Navy frigates, going out not in battle but in the service of the weapons testing that would help protect the ships that followed her.