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| Country:
UK |
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Type: Frigate |
| Service:
1963 - 1993 |
| Ships in class: 26 |
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The Leander class, also known as the Type 12I, consisted of twenty-six frigates built for the British Royal Navy between 1960 and 1968. The first batch of 8 frigates, built between 1963 and 1965, were general purpose alternatives to the far more expensive single-role classes of frigates. The second batch of 8 ships, built from 1966 to 1967, were designed as specialised anti-submarine warfare (ASW) frigates but they were only slightly revised from the Batch 1 frigates. The third batch, of 10 ships, built from 1968 to 1973, had an increased beam to give more internal space and improved stability; this also allowed the Batch 3 frigates to be more easily modernized. All Leander class frigates in Royal Navy service were decommissioned by 1993 due to age of the frigate design and large crew size.
Leander-class frigates were exported under licence to Australia as the River class, Chile as the Condell class, India as the Nilgiri class, the Netherlands as the Van Speijk class and New Zealand. Former Royal Navy ships were sold to the navies of Chile, Ecuador, New Zealand, India and Pakistan.
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