AFV Club : US Navy Oliver Hazard Perry Class Frigate : 1/700 Scale

Description

The Oliver Hazard Perry class is a class of guided-missile frigates named after U.S. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the naval Battle of Lake Erie. Also known as the Perry or FFG-7 (commonly “fig seven”) class, the warships were designed in the United States in the mid-1970s as general-purpose escort vessels inexpensive enough to be bought in large numbers to replace World War II-era destroyers and complement 1960s-era Knox-class frigates.

In Admiral Elmo Zumwalt’s “high low fleet plan”, the FFG-7s were the low-capability ships, with the Spruance-class destroyers serving as the high-capability ships. Intended to protect amphibious landing forces, supply and replenishment groups, and merchant convoys from aircraft and submarines. They were also later part of battleship-centered surface action groups and aircraft carrier battle groups/strike groups. 55 ships were built in the United States: 51 for the United States Navy and four for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). Eight were built in Taiwan, six in Spain, and two in Australia for their navies. Former U.S. Navy warships of this class have been sold or donated to the navies of Bahrain, Egypt, Poland, Pakistan, Taiwan, and Turkey.

The first of the 51 U.S. Navy-built Oliver Hazard Perry frigates entered into service in 1977, and the last remaining in active service, USS Simpson, was decommissioned on 29 September 2015. The retired vessels were mostly mothballed with some transferred to other navies for continued service and some used as weapons targets and sunk. Some of the U.S. Navy’s frigates, such as USS Duncan (14.6 years in service), had fairly short careers, while a few lasted as long as 30+ years in active U.S. service, with some lasting even longer after being sold or donated to other navies. In 2020, the Navy announced the new Constellation class as their latest class of frigates.