A sad day as a poor old lady leaves Portsmouth for the last time
A long way from that first day in Swan Hunter's yard more than 60 years ago when those on board didn't even know the ship was fitted with digital computers. Through the 70s we programmed those computers to provide the best automated weapon systems in the world. It is indeed a sad day as the old lady, lacking the punch that took her into the Falklands, left Portsmouth for the last time.
HMS Bristol was designed as part of the fleet to protect a carrier that was never built, but was developed as part of the weapons development program at what was then ASWE. It was fitted with a 4.5" gun for navel warfare and shore bombardment, that could even hit an aircraft. Its main anti air armament was a newly developed missile system which used a target seeking radar system, and it carried a missile delivered homing torpedo. All very new weapons back in the 1970s.
For you programmers out there, the programs were developed by a team of 170 operating out of ASWE, some of whom still live in Portsmouth. The twin computers had a massive store of just 126K, loaded from paper tape, to run the Real Time programs for all the weapons systems as well as surveillance and digital communications, some of which was programmed in machine code (24 bit words) and the rest in a low level assembler code.