HMS Corunna (D97)
HMS Corunna (D97) was a later or 1943 fleet destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was named in honour of the Battle of Corunna, which took place during the Peninsular War in 1809 between British and French forces. Corunna was built by Swan Hunter & Wigham Richardson Limited on the Tyne. She was launched on 29 May 1945 and commissioned on 6 June 1947. Design and construction The Battle-class was developed as a result of operational experience in the early years of the Second World War, which had shown that the Royal Navy's existing destroyers had inadequate anti-aircraft protection, and in particular, lacked a modern dual-purpose main gun armament, capable of dealing with both surface targets and air attack, with guns lacking the high elevation mountings necessary to deal with dive bombers. The resulting design was armed with two twin 4.5 inch high-angle gun-turrets of a new design mounted forward and a heavy close-in anti-aircraft armament, with 16 Battle-class destroyers ordered under the 1942 construction programme. For the 1943 construction programme, 24 Battle-class destroyers of a revised design (known as "1943 Battles") were ordered, with three destroyers (Corunna, Oudenarde and River Plate) to be built by Swan Hunter. Corunna was