HMAS Torrens (DE 53) was a River class destroyer escort

River class destroyer escort

The River class was a class of six destroyer escorts operated by the Royal Australian Navy . Plans to acquire four vessels, based on the British Type 12M frigate, began in the 1950s. The first two vessels had some slight modifications to the design, while the next two underwent further changes...

 of the Royal Australian Navy

Royal Australian Navy

The Royal Australian Navy is the naval branch of the Australian Defence Force. Following the Federation of Australia in 1901, the ships and resources of the separate colonial navies were integrated into a national force: the Commonwealth Naval Forces...

 (RAN). Built as a replacement for , Torrens entered service in 1971, and was active until her decommissioning in 1998.

The ship was sunk as a target by in June 1999. Images and footage of the ship sinking have been used and adapted for various purposes, including in movies and as propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

.

Construction

Torrens and sister ship were ordered in 1964 as replacements for , a destroyer lost following a collision

Melbourne-Voyager collision

The Melbourne-Voyager collision, also referred to as the "Melbourne-Voyager incident" or simply the "Voyager incident", was a collision between two warships of the Royal Australian Navy ; the aircraft carrier and the destroyer...

 with the aircraft carrier in 1964. Although intended to be the same as the previous River class ships (themselves based on the British Type 12 frigate

Type 12 frigate

Type 12 frigate can refer to several ship classes. It most commonly describes the common design of three ship classes of the Royal Navy designed during the 1950s and constructed during the 1960s....

), the design was changed from 1965 to incoprorate many of the improvements of the British Leander class frigates

Leander class frigate

The Leander class, or Type 12I frigates, comprising twenty-six vessels, was among the most numerous and long-lived classes of frigate in the Royal Navy's modern history. The class was built in three batches between 1959 and 1973...

. Work on the two vessels started without specifications or a contract, and the evolving design meant changes were being made as the ships were being constructed, with resulting delays and cost increases attributed to a lack of planning.

Torrens was laid down by the Cockatoo Docks and Engineering Company Propriety Limited at Sydney, New South Wales on 18 August 1965. She was launched on 28 September 1968 by Dame Zara Holt

Zara Bate

Dame Zara Kate Bate DBE was an Australian fashion designer and wife of the Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt....

, and commissioned into the RAN on 19 January 1971. Torrens was the last major war vessel built in an Australian shipyard until work commenced on in 1985.

Operational history

Torrens and the destroyer tender participated in celebrations of Papua New Guinea's independence from Australia in September 1975, with Torrens arriving in Rabaul

Rabaul

Rabaul is a township in East New Britain province, Papua New Guinea. The town was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province until it was destroyed in 1994 by falling ash of a volcanic eruption. During the eruption, ash was sent thousands of metres into the air and the...

 on 14 September.

On 16 August 1976, Torrens and were performing work-up exercises following the latter's refit when they were called to assist MV Miss Chief off the coast of Bundaberg, Queensland

Bundaberg, Queensland

Bundaberg is a city in Queensland, Australia. It is part of the Local Government Area of the Bundaberg Region and is a major centre within Queensland's broader Wide Bay-Burnett geographical region...

.

During late February and early March 1972, Torrens escorted the troopship on her twenty-fourth and final troop transport voyage in support of the Vietnam War

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...

. The ships arrived in Vũng Tàu

Vung Tàu

Vũng Tàu is a city in southern Vietnam. Its population in 2005 was 240,000. The city area is including 13 urban wards and one village. It is the capital of Ba Ria-Vung Tau province, and is the crude oil extraction center of Vietnam. It is also known as one of the most beautiful cities of tourism...

 on 28 February, collected 457 Australian soldiers, then departed the next day for home.

Decommissioning and fate

HMAS Torrens paid off in 1998. On 14 June 1999, Torrens was sunk by a live Mark 48 Mod 4 torpedo

Mark 48 torpedo

The Mark 48 and its improved ADCAP variant are heavyweight submarine-launched torpedoes. They were designed to sink fast, deep-diving nuclear-powered submarines and high-performance surface ships.-History:...

 fired by the during the latter's combat system trials.

Digitally edited film of the torpedo hitting Torrens was used in the 2001 film Pearl Harbor as part of a black-and-white 'newsreel' montage. A photo of Torrens exploding was used on a Hezbollah-operated website to support a propaganda claim that an Israeli warship was sunk by a Hezbollah missile in July 2006.