Type 82 destroyer

The Type 82 or Bristol class destroyer was intended, in the 1950s & 1960s as a class of air defence destroyers designed as escorts to the CVA-01 type of aircraft carrier proposed for the Royal Navy.

However, the cancellation of the carrier programme in the 1966 Strategic Defence Review also led to the Type 82 orders being cancelled, with only HMS Bristol being completed. Bristol, laid down in 1967, launched in 1969 and commissioned in 1973, was used as a testbed for a series of new systems, including the Sea Dart missile, which would later be fitted in the Type 42 destroyers, the Ikara anti-submarine weapon and the advanced ADAWS-2 (Action Data Automation Weapons System Mk.2), a system designed to coordinate the ship's weapons and sensors. She was decommissioned from active service in the early 1990s but still serves as an accommodation ship for sea cadets at Portsmouth Naval Base.