Attack class patrol boat
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The Attack class patrol boats were small coastal defence vessels built for the Royal Australian Navy and operated between 1967 and 1985. Many were eventually donated to the defence forces of Pacific nations.
Twenty boats were ordered by the Department of Defence in 1965 at a cost of around $AUD 800,000 each from two Queensland shipyards, Evans Deakin in Brisbane and Walkers in Maryborough.
The Attack class was replaced in RAN service by the larger and more capable Fremantle class patrol boats.
Two Attack class boats represented the fictional HMAS Defiance in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation TV series Patrol Boat.
The boats of this class were (in order of commissioning):
- HMAS Aitape (P 84)
- HMAS Attack (P 90)
- HMAS Acute (P 81)
- HMAS Adroit (P 82)
- HMAS Advance (P 83)
- HMAS Archer (P 86)
- HMAS Ardent (P 84)
- HMAS Arrow (P 88)
- HMAS Assail (P 89)
- HMAS Aware (P 91)
- HMAS Bandolier (P 95)
- HMAS Barbette (P 97)
- HMAS Barricade (P 98)
- HMAS Bombard (P 99)
- HMAS Buccaneer (P 100)
- HMAS Ladava (P 92)
- HMAS Lae (P 93)
- HMAS Madang (P 94)
- HMAS Samarai (P 85)
- HMAS Bayonet (P 101)
Advance is a (fully operational) museum ship at the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney. Aitape was sunk as a dive wreck off Port Moresby in 1995. Ardent is preserved as a memorial in Darwin. Arrow was destroyed by Cyclone Tracy in Darwin in 1974. Bayonet was scuttled in Bass Strait in 1999 and has been successfully dived.
Specifications
- Displacement: 146 tonnes full load
- Dimensions: 32.6m x 6.1m x ?m
- Armament: 1-40mm gun, 1-81mm mortar, 2-.50 MGs. Mines and depth charges could also be carried
- powerplant: 2x 16 cylinder turbo-charged diesel engines developing 3,460hp and driving twin propellers = 24kts
- Complement: 19