I wanted to add a couple of retrospectives in honour of other founders of the Old Grey Funnel Line Faction that are no longer active here.
I'm not sure if this design ever made it to the first AU RN, but this sleek design by Bombhead always appealed to me. Bombhead's Flower Class was a modern update of the classic Flower Class corvettes.
I take no credit for the design of this vessel, all I did was to add a new underwater hull and bring it up to the latest drawing standards. I did remove the bow sonar and A/S torpedo tubes Bombhead had originally planned for this class, because I felt that they would have bumped up the cost of the these vessels. I did retain the towed sonar for use as a Towed Array Ship however.
As I said in the intro, this AU is not necessarily a complete AU. The ships in it can be swapped around and plugged in and out. In this case the Flowers would probably take the place of the Type 24 frigates I posted earlier, or they could replace the real-world Castle Class OPVs. In this AU I see the Flowers more as a back up to the OPV fleet as well as ASW screening operations in wartime.
Flower Class Offshore Patrol Vessel
HMS Bluebell, Flower Class, 1985
HMS Bluebell P89 June 1983
HMS Camellia F90 September 1984
HMS Dianthus F91 March 1985
HMS Orchis F92 August 1985
Dimensions
Length: 319ft (oa), 293ft (wl)
Beam: 38ft 6in
Draught: 12ft 6in
Displacement
2,000 tons (full load)
Powerplant
Two 3,500hp Paxman Ventura diesels
25kts on both
Endurance 9,000nm at 10kts
Armament
1x 76mm OTO Super Rapid
1x 30mm LS-30
1x Corvus flare-chaff launcher
Landing pad for 1x Westland Westland Lynx or Westland WG.34 helicopter
Radars & Sonars
One Type 992Q air/surface TIR, one Type 1006 navigation, one Type 2031Z towed array sonar.