From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Three Royal Navy ships have been named HMS Sheffield after the the city and county borough of Sheffield in the West Riding of southern Yorkshire.
The first HMS Sheffield was a Southampton Class light cruiser that entered service in 1937 and saw service in World War II from the Arctic Circle and the Atlantic to the Mediterranean,
The second HMS Sheffield (D-80) was a Type 42 destroyer laid down by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering at Barrow-in-Furness on 15 January 1970, launched on 10 June 1971 and commissioned on 16 February 1975. The ship was part of the Task Force sent to the Falkland Islands during the Falkland Islands War. She was struck by an Exocet cruise missile fired by an Argentine aircraft during on May 4, 1982 and abandoned. The burnt out hulk was taken in tow by the Rothesay Class Frigate HMS Yarmouth but sank on 10 May 1982, the first Royal Navy vessel sunk in action for almost forty years. Twenty one of her crew died during the attack and the wreck is a designated war grave.
The current HMS Sheffield is a Broadsword class frigate launched in 1986.
All three ships have carried many fixtures and fittings from Sheffield itself, including a great deal of stainless steel, leading to the nickname that has been applied to them all: the "Shiny Sheff".
