Scale: 1:96. Waterline model of HMS 'Rocket' (1942) showing the proposed conversion to a Type 15 frigate in circa 1950. The model is decked, equipped and rigged. There are two plaques on the base inscribed ‘H.M.S. Rocket Type 15 frigate conversion scale 1/8"-1 foot made by M.C.D. Devonport’. ‘Rocket’ was built at Greenock by Scotts and measured 359 feet in length by 36 feet in the beam.

From 1943–45, she served in the 11th flotilla under Captain Lt. Cdr. H. B. Ackworth, taking part in an action in the Channel in October 1943. Between October 1944 and May 1945 ‘Rocket’ took part in Burma Operations. It was converted to frigate at Devonport Dockyard 1951–52 and broken up at Dalmuir in 1967.

The urgent need of fast frigates to counter the new generation of Soviet ‘Whisky’-class submarines could most readily be met by adapting the numerous ‘Emergency’ destroyer hulls. By the late 1940s these were totally unsuited to modern warfare, the majority having low-angle guns and primitive fire control. The conversions had a new forecastle deck extending almost to the stern, a superstructure of riveted aluminium and a new type of enclosed bridge at the forward end of the superstructure, directly ahead of the operations room.

Although regarded as expensive in their day, the Type 15 conversion proved weatherly and robust and made up numbers of escorts at a time when new construction was coming into service very slowly. ‘Rocket’ provided a prototype for these conversions together with ‘Relentless’.