HMS Chichester was a or Type 61 aircraft direction frigate of the British Royal Navy.
Construction and design
The Salisbury-class, or Type 61, frigates were designed for a main role of providing long-range radar cover for convoys and to direct aircraft protecting the convoys. While they would be fitted with powerful radars and communications equipment and the crew to operate it, high speed would not be required. They shared a common hull and machinery with the (or Type 41) anti-aircraft frigates.
Chichester was long overall, at the waterline and length between perpendiculars, with a Beam of and a draught of . Displacement was standard and deep load. Exhausts for the diesels were routed through the ship's lattice foremast and mainmast. The ship's lattice foremast carried direction finding and VHF/UHF communications aerials, together with a Type 268 navigation radar, with a Type 277 air/surface warning and height finding radar mounted on a short lattice mast immediately forward of the foremast. The ship's mainmast carried a Type 960 long-range air warning radar and a Type 293Q target designation radar, while a Type 982 aircraft direction radar was fitted on a deckhouse aft. The ship's sonar fit consisted of Type 174 search, Type 170 fire control sonar for Squid and a Type 162 sonar for classifying targets on the sea floor.
Chichester was laid down at Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company's Govan shipyard on 26 June 1953, as Yard number 771. She was launched on 21 April 1955 by Elizabeth Douglas-Home, wife of Alec Douglas-Home, and was completed on 16 May 1958. On 10 September 1958, Chichester rescued the crew of the coaster Concha, which had caught fire off Milford Haven after an explosion in her engine room. The frigate put a firefighting party aboard the blazing coaster, but despite these efforts the fire could not be contained and Concha sank while under tow by the tug Sheila. On 2 November 1958, Chichester, together with the cruiser and the frigate embarked British troops from Aqaba, Jordan. The troops had been deployed to Jordan earlier in the year following a request by King Hussain of Jordan due to instability in the Middle East following the establishment of the United Arab Republic and the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy. The commission took her through the Mediterranean to the Far East returning via South Africa and South America.
In 1963–4 she was refitted in Chatham with macks (masts and stacks) along with type 965 & 993 radar.
In 1968 she deployed for Fishery Protection duties and was accused by the Soviet Union of spying on Soviet naval exercises. During December 1969, Chichester was deployed on the Beira Patrol, attempting to stop the supply of oil to Rhodesia via the Mozambique port of Beira.
Towards the end of her career, in 1971, the Type 61 frigate was refitted as a Hong Kong guard ship, to replace an ageing Type 12 frigate believed to be HMS Whitby, due in part to her good range conferred by her diesel machinery. Her radar fit was reduced to radar 978, 993M and the 275, Mk 6 director for the twin 4.5 and a more suitable light arms for patrol off Hong Kong of two single 20mm guns and a single 40mm Bofors.
The election of the Labour Government in 1974 saw a further reduction of naval forces, east of Suez with the frigate being supplemented by five Ton Class minesweepers converted for Patrol duties, as the largest vessels maintaining a presence for protection of British interests. Chichester left Hong Kong in the spring of 1976 to return to the UK, via Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands in response to RRS Shackleton being fired on by the Argentine destroyer ARA Almirante Storni.
Following decommissioning Chichester arrived for scrapping at Queenborough on 17 March 1981.