Facts and Figures
Launched:	1974 by Lady Lewin
Displacement:	4,100 tons
Length:	125 metres (410ft)
Beam:	14.2 metres (46ft)
Draught:	5.8 metres (19ft)
Armament:	One twin Sea Dart medium range surface-to-air (surface-to-surface capability) GWS 30 system; one 4.5-inch automatic gun; two 20 mm Oerlikons; helicopter-launched Mk 44 anti-submarine torpedo tubes (triples) for Mk 46.
Propulsion:	COGOG arrangement of Rolls-Royce Olympus gas turbines for full power, 50,000 s.h.p.; two Rolls-Royce Tyne gas turbines for cruising, 8,000 s.h.p.; c.p. propellers; two shafts.
Speed:	30 knots
Range:	4,500 miles at 18 knots
Complement:	268 officers and men
Aircraft:	one Lynx Mk. 2 helicopter

Coventry Heads For The Rising Sun
Text from Ships Of The Royal Navy No. 288
Since she commissioned a year ago, HMS Coventry has been involved in a hectic whirl of trials, work-up and visits, mainly in home waters. But next year she will head for new horizons …

In the spring she will join a group deployment to Japan, via Gibraltar, the Mediterranean, Suez, the Arabian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.

The Coventry's part IV programme - the tuning and setting to work of sensors and weapons - was completed in mid-August, by which time she had undergone safety operational training at Portland and had been involved in 400 deck landing of a Lynx helicopter in the Lynx first of class trails.

In February she visited Birkenhead where she was built, and in April received the Freedom of the City of Coventry. She called on Brixham, Devon in July and made her first foreign visit in August - to La Pallise, France. She was in Norwegian waters for ordnance ranging in September followed by a brief visit to Scapa Flow for similar trials.

HMS Coventry, under the command of Captain Christopher Burne, was the fourth Type 42 to commission, followed by HM ships Glasgow and Cardiff.

Launched in 1974 by Lady Lewin - wife of the then Commander-in-Chief Fleet, Admiral Sir Terence Lewin - the Coventry was designed primarily to deploy the Sea Dart missile system for air defence.

Her cost has been kept to the minimum at which she can meet her main requirement, and secondary roles such as the hunting and destroying of submarines and surface ships, and undertaking shore bombardments.

The Type 42's sphere of operations is world-wide, with a minimum of dockyard support between four-yearly refits.