Brave class fast patrol boat

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Brave fast patrol boats were a class of patrol boats that were the last of their type for the Royal Navy (RN) Coastal Forces division.

They followed the Bold class boats which were a couple of experimental turbojet powered boats. Only two Braves would be built for the RN but the design was simplified and improved for export sales to West Germany, Denmark (5 of the Søløven class), Greece, Malaysia, Brunei and Libya, and was also the basis for the Scimitar class fast training boat.

Power came from three engines; maritime versions of the Bristol Proteus turboprop, delivering a total of 10,500 hp. These gave these 100 ft long, 100 ton boats a cruising speed of about 40 knots. Their maximum speed was 52 knots.

They were built to be able to be used as either Motor Torpedo Boats or Motor Gun Boats. For the former role they had a 40 mm Bofors gun, four torpedoes (21 inch diameter) and two depth charges, in the latter two 40 mm guns and two torpedoes.