HMS Norfolk (D21): The Royal Navy's First Exocet Warship, Later Chile's Flagship

The Last of the County Class

HMS Norfolk was laid down by Swan Hunter on 15 March 1966, launched by Lavinia, Duchess of Norfolk, on 16 November 1967 and commissioned on 7 March 1970, a Group 2 County-class destroyer and, notably, the very last of the entire County-class ever built, displacing 6,200 tons standard and originally armed with twin 4.5-inch guns and the Sea Slug surface-to-air missile system.

The First Royal Navy Ship With Exocet

HMS Norfolk underwent a significant modernisation between 1972 and 1974, emerging from the refit as the first Royal Navy warship ever armed with the Exocet anti-ship missile system, a genuinely significant technological milestone for the fleet, and one that would prove enormously consequential just a few years later when Exocet missiles, fired by an entirely different navy, would go on to sink HMS Sheffield and MV Atlantic Conveyor during the Falklands War.

A Court Martial in Fremantle

HMS Norfolk deployed widely across the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the South Pacific during her Royal Navy career, flying the Queen's Colour during a visit to Sweden in September 1976, and hosting a rather more unusual occasion during a 1979 visit to Fremantle, Australia: the first court martial held aboard a Royal Navy warship in over a decade, a genuinely rare event that placed HMS Norfolk briefly, and somewhat awkwardly, in the naval history books for reasons entirely unrelated to combat or diplomacy.

From Dartmouth Training Ship to Chilean Flagship

HMS Norfolk decommissioned from front-line Royal Navy service in 1981 to serve as the Dartmouth Training Ship, before being sold to Chile on 6 April 1982, in the immediate run-up to the Falklands War, and renamed Capitán Prat. She went on to serve the Chilean Navy for a further quarter of a century, receiving Barak surface-to-air missile upgrades in 1996 and new helicopter facilities in 2001, a striking testament to just how much useful service remained in a well-built County-class hull long after her original owners had moved on.

Scrapped in Mexico

HMS Norfolk, as Capitán Prat, was finally decommissioned from Chilean service on 11 August 2006 and sailed to Mexico for scrapping in September 2008, closing out a career spanning nearly four decades across two navies, from a pioneering British missile trial ship to a long-serving South American flagship.