Royal Navy Type 22 Frigates: A Comprehensive Guide

The Type 22 frigates were designed during the Cold War to provide advanced anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability for the Royal Navy. Built in three distinct batches, these large and heavily armed frigates went on to serve in a wide range of roles, including air defence, surface strike and humanitarian operations.

A total of 14 ships were built between the late 1970s and late 1980s, with several going on to serve with other navies after their Royal Navy careers ended.

Origins and Design Development

The Type 22 was conceived in the late 1960s and early 1970s as a replacement for the ageing Leander class frigates. At the time, the primary threat to NATO shipping was the Soviet submarine fleet, particularly its fast nuclear-powered attack submarines.

The new class was designed with sophisticated sonar, quiet propulsion and the ability to deploy helicopters, providing the Royal Navy with a powerful ASW escort.

The first batch, known as Batch 1, entered service in the late 1970s. These ships were followed by progressively larger and more capable Batch 2 and Batch 3 variants, which added enhanced missile systems, improved sensors and expanded surface warfare capabilities.

At full load, later ships displaced more than 5,300 tonnes and were nearly 150 metres long, making them among the largest frigates the Royal Navy had ever operated.

The Frigate With No Gun

One decision defines the first ten of these ships and it is almost always skated over. Batch 1 and Batch 2 had no main gun at all. The largest weapon aboard a Broadsword was a twin 40mm Bofors. There was no 4.5-inch mounting, no gun capable of doing anything useful against a target ashore, and nothing bigger than a light anti-aircraft weapon anywhere on the ship.

It was not an oversight. The Type 22 was designed for one job, hunting Soviet nuclear submarines in the North Atlantic, and for that job a gun is dead weight. What she needed was sonar, quiet machinery, two helicopters and Sea Wolf to keep aircraft and missiles off her while she worked. Everything else was thrown out to pay for it. The Type 22 was the first Royal Navy frigate class since the age of sail designed without a proper gun.

The Falklands took about a fortnight to expose that. A frigate with no gun cannot bombard a position, cannot support troops ashore and cannot warn off a small vessel without firing a missile at it, and all three of those turned out to be daily work in the South Atlantic. That is why Batch 3 has a 4.5-inch Mark 8 in the bow, and why the last four ships of the class ended up the most heavily armed frigates the Royal Navy has ever operated.

Ships of the Class

A total of 14 Type 22 frigates were built, divided into three batches:

Batch 1: HMS Broadsword, HMS Battleaxe, HMS Brilliant, HMS Brazen.

Batch 2: HMS Boxer, HMS Beaver, HMS Brave, HMS London, HMS Sheffield, HMS Coventry.

Batch 3: HMS Cornwall, HMS Cumberland, HMS Campbeltown, HMS Chatham.

Falklands War Service

The Type 22 frigates saw their first combat during the Falklands War of 1982. HMS Broadsword and HMS Brilliant deployed to the South Atlantic as part of the task force. Their advanced Seawolf missile systems proved invaluable, successfully intercepting incoming Argentine aircraft and protecting the fleet from attack.

What Sea Wolf Could Do, and What It Could Not

It is worth being precise about this, because the class is usually praised or blamed for the wrong reasons. Sea Wolf was built to destroy a single sea-skimming missile flying a straight line at the ship, and it did that better than anything else afloat. On 12 May 1982 HMS Brilliant (F90) proved it: four A-4 Skyhawks came in low, HMS Glasgow's Sea Dart failed to engage, and Brilliant's missiles destroyed two of them outright while a third flew into the sea trying to escape.

The other half of that afternoon is told a good deal less often. A second wave came in behind the first, weaving hard at low level, and Sea Wolf let them through. The trackers lost the picture, the launchers swung back to the fore and aft position, and nothing was fired. One bomb went through HMS Glasgow three feet above the waterline and out the other side without exploding. Inside about ten minutes Brilliant had demonstrated exactly what Sea Wolf could do and exactly where it stopped working.

Broadsword was present at the loss of HMS Coventry, narrowly avoiding disaster herself, while Brilliant’s missiles accounted for several enemy aircraft. These actions demonstrated the value of the Seawolf system and confirmed the importance of the class in modern naval warfare.

25 May 1982

Present at is not the phrase. First, the reason the two ships were together at all was not defensive: it was bait. HMS Broadsword (F88) and the destroyer HMS Coventry were stationed north of Pebble Island deliberately in the open, to pull Argentine aircraft away from the ships unloading at San Carlos, with Coventry's long-range Sea Dart to engage them coming in and Broadsword's short-range Sea Wolf to catch anything that got through. It had worked twice already. On 25 May neither half of it worked.

Coventry could not get a lock on the first pair. Broadsword's Sea Wolf, faced with exactly the situation it could not handle, shut down. A bomb went through Broadsword's after section, sheared the nose clean off a Lynx she had borrowed from Brilliant, cut a torpedo slung beneath it in two, bounced up through her flight deck and out of the ship, and exploded clear of the hull.

Then a second pair came in. Coventry turned to present a smaller profile and in doing so moved directly into Broadsword's line of fire, so Broadsword could not shoot at all. Coventry was hit, listed and capsized in under an hour. Nineteen of her ship's company were killed.

Broadsword, herself holed twenty minutes earlier with a wrecked helicopter on her deck, put her boat and her Gemini in the water and began towing life rafts clear of a capsizing destroyer with a magazine in her that could have gone up at any moment. They took off 170 people. It is one thing to read that a ship rescued survivors and another to picture a frigate that had just been bombed sending her boats alongside a rolling hull to do it.

Post-Falklands Service

After the Falklands, the Type 22 frigates became workhorses of the Royal Navy, taking part in global operations throughout the Cold War and beyond. They were deployed to the Persian Gulf during the Iran–Iraq War and again during the Gulf War of 1991, where they escorted shipping and enforced embargoes.

During the 1990s and 2000s, the class was involved in operations in the Balkans, Sierra Leone, counter-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa, and disaster relief efforts. Their size and adaptability allowed them to serve as command platforms as well as escorts, giving them a central role in many multinational task groups.

Technical Features

Across the three batches, the Type 22 frigates were progressively improved, but all shared core features:

Displacement: Batch 1 around 4,400 tonnes, Batch 3 over 5,300 tonnes.

Length: Up to 148 metres.

Propulsion: Combined gas turbine (COGOG) system, with top speeds over 30 knots.

Missile Systems: Sea Wolf surface-to-air missiles on all three batches, the weapon the whole class was designed around. Exocet anti-ship missiles on Batches 1 and 2, Harpoon on Batch 3.

Guns: none worth the name on Batches 1 and 2, whose heaviest weapon was a twin 40mm Bofors. A 4.5-inch Mark 8 was fitted in Batch 3 after the Falklands showed what a frigate without a gun cannot do.

Other Weapons: Anti-submarine torpedoes, depth charges, close-range defence systems such as Goalkeeper or Phalanx.

Aviation Facilities: Large flight deck and hangar capable of operating two Lynx helicopters, later Merlin.

Crew: Typically around 250 officers and ratings.

Batch 3 ships were the most heavily armed frigates the Royal Navy ever operated, effectively serving as multi-role warships rather than purely ASW specialists.

Legacy and Replacement

The Type 22 frigates served for more than 30 years, gradually being decommissioned between the 1990s and 2011. Several ships were transferred to the Brazilian, Romanian and Chilean navies, where they continued to serve for many years after leaving British service.

Half the Class Went Abroad

Several is seven out of fourteen, which is worth saying plainly. All four Batch 1 ships went to Brazil in the mid-1990s: HMS Broadsword (F88) became Greenhalgh, HMS Brilliant (F90) became Dodsworth, HMS Brazen (F91) became Bosisio and HMS Battleaxe (F89) became Rademaker.

Two Batch 2 ships went to Romania, HMS Coventry (F98) as Regele Ferdinand and HMS London (F95) as Regina Maria, and one to Chile, HMS Sheffield (F96) becoming Almirante Williams. The remaining Batch 2 ships, HMS Boxer (F92), HMS Beaver (F93) and HMS Brave (F94), were scrapped.

The four Batch 3 ships, HMS Cornwall (F99), HMS Cumberland (F85), HMS Campbeltown (F86) and HMS Chatham (F87), all went in 2011 under the Strategic Defence and Security Review of the previous year. They were the most capable frigates in the fleet, all four were paid off inside a single year, and nothing replaced them.

They were replaced in Royal Navy service by the versatile Type 23 Duke class frigates, which combined ASW capability with general-purpose flexibility. The Type 22s remain remembered for their contribution to the Falklands War, their global deployments, and their reputation as some of the most powerful frigates of their era.

The Fourteen Ships

Batch 1, no main gun, all four sold to Brazil. HMS Broadsword (F88), HMS Battleaxe (F89), HMS Brilliant (F90) and HMS Brazen (F91).

Batch 2, no main gun. HMS Boxer (F92), HMS Beaver (F93) and HMS Brave (F94) were scrapped. HMS London (F95) and HMS Coventry (F98) went to Romania and HMS Sheffield (F96) to Chile.

Batch 3, with a 4.5-inch gun, all four paid off in 2011. HMS Cornwall (F99), HMS Cumberland (F85), HMS Campbeltown (F86) and HMS Chatham (F87).

The Best Frigates the Navy Had, and the First Without a Gun

The Type 22 frigates were some of the most capable and versatile warships the Royal Navy ever operated. From their debut in the Falklands War to their service in the Gulf, the Balkans and beyond, they proved adaptable and reliable.

Heavily armed and technologically advanced for their time, they provided Britain with formidable ASW and surface warfare capability for over three decades.

Although they have now left Royal Navy service, many continued to serve with allied navies, reflecting the strength of their design. Their legacy lives on in the modern Royal Navy through the lessons learned and the ships that succeeded them.