HMS London (D16): The Last Ship to Fire the Sea Slug Missile

Laid Down at Wallsend

HMS London was laid down on 26 February 1960 by Swan Hunter at Wallsend, launched by Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester, on 7 December 1961 and commissioned on 14 November 1963 under Captain J. C.

Bartosik, a County-class guided missile destroyer displacing 6,200 tons standard and armed with the Sea Slug twin-arm surface-to-air missile system, two Sea Cat launchers and four 4.5-inch guns, one of the small group of ships that gave the Royal Navy its first modern guided missile capability.

Confrontation and the Beira Patrol

HMS London took part in operations during Indonesia's Confrontation with Malaysia through the 1960s, and carried out Beira Patrol duties, monitoring compliance with international sanctions against the breakaway white-minority regime in Rhodesia by patrolling the approaches to the Mozambican port of Beira, an unusual and politically sensitive assignment that saw a Royal Navy guided missile destroyer effectively acting as a maritime customs enforcer rather than fighting a conventional naval war.

Bicentennial and Jubilee Duty

HMS London represented Britain at the American Bicentennial celebrations in New York in 1976, a suitably prestigious assignment for one of the Royal Navy's more capable destroyers, and attended the Silver Jubilee Fleet Review at Spithead in 1977, marking twenty-five years of the Queen's reign in the company of the rest of the fleet.

The Last Sea Slug Firing

HMS London earned a particularly notable place in Royal Navy history as the last ship capable of firing the Mark 1 Sea Slug missile, conducting the system's final firings on 9 and 10 December 1981, bringing the operational life of Britain's first shipborne guided missile system to a formal close.

She served as Belize Guardship and supported Antigua's independence celebrations before being decommissioned that same month, closing out a Royal Navy career defined as much by this small but historically significant technological milestone as by any single combat action.

A Second Career as PNS Babur

HMS London was sold to Pakistan on 23 March 1982 and recommissioned as PNS Babur, going on to serve for a further decade under her new flag before being decommissioned in 1993 and scrapped in 1995, closing out the career of a destroyer whose final Royal Navy act, firing the last Sea Slug missiles the service would ever launch, gave her a small but permanent footnote in the story of British naval missile technology.