The 'Retired' British Destroyer That Cheated The Exocet That Killed HMS Sheffield

She was the Royal Navy destroyer the fleet had written off as obsolete, and on 12 June 1982 HMS Glamorgan did what no other warship in history has ever done: she survived a direct hit from an Exocet missile, the same weapon that sank HMS Sheffield five weeks earlier. Body: By 1982 the County-class destroyers were considered relics. Their Seaslug missile was a museum piece, their design dated to the 1950s, and the Nott Defence Review had already marked the class for disposal. Yet when an improvised Argentine shore-launched Exocet streaked toward Glamorgan off Port Stanley at dawn, her crew did in under a minute what the far more modern Sheffield could not: they detected the launch, threw the ship into a hard emergency turn, and cheated a weapon that had already proven it could kill a British destroyer. This is the full story of HMS Glamorgan's war in the Falklands, the naval gunfire support off the gun line, the Pebble Island raid, the assault on Two Sisters, and the 06:37 strike that killed fourteen of her crew but failed to sink her. It is a story of an "obsolete" ship, an alert ship's company, and the only vessel ever to take an Exocet hit and steam home under her own power. Fourteen men of HMS Glamorgan died on 12 June 1982. This video is dedicated to their memory. 🔔 If you enjoy deep-dive Royal Navy history, subscribing takes a second and supports the channel. Dramatised thumbnail and reconstruction imagery are artist's renders, not historical photographs.