The County class destroyer was designed and built around the GWS Sea Slug, a beam riding anti-aircraft missile system. A variant of the land-based Blood Hound Missile. It was the Royal Navy’s first generation surface to air missile intended to hit high-flying nuclear-armed bombers. As such it had a range of some 27 km with a ceiling of around 65,000 feet travelling at a speed of over 1,000 km/h. Everything about the Sea Slug was on a grand scale, from the missile itself (six meters long and weighing two tons) to its handling arrangements and electronics systems; fitting a single system aboard a ship the size of the "Counties" was a challenge. The enormous missile was stowed horizontally in a large magazine that took up a great deal of internal space. On the last four ships, some missiles were stored partly disassembled in the forward end of the magazine to enable the complement of missiles to be increased. These missiles had their wings and fins reattached before being moved into the aft sections of the handling spaces and eventually loaded onto the large twin launcher for firing.

Post Script: Although Fife still had at least 10 more years of operational life, its weapons system was by 1974 obsolete. In the Falkland campaign of 1982, Sea Slug was reduced to punching holes in Port Stanley runway.

The contrast between my first ship and my last. You either loved it or hated it. Here it was the latter. I had lost complete confidence in the Royal Navy after this ship. I won't mention some of the officers by name.

Even now I could use a number of expletives on a certain officer who was both arrogant and incompetent and at the same time my boss in the Ops Room. Unlike the Captain, who could handle Fife like a racing car, and was respected by myself and the entire crew. Did I get anything out of those two years on Fife, I passed for Petty Officer, and helped with a plan to use helicopters to decoy sea-skimming missiles like the Exocet. Which was classified to quite a high level. Eight years later an officer by the name of Windsor would tell the world how it was done. In the end, I was glad to leave that awful ship and a few months later I left the Royal Navy, along with thousands more. Do I regret a career thrown away? Yes for the first few months, however with the hindsight of today no. It wasn't for me.