Yes, it’s amazing to reflect on the size of navies in the 50’s and 60’s, not just the RN but the Dutch had a fleet that would be considered very large in todays world, and a few other NATO fleets that are pretty small today were fairly substantial forces at that time. I guess a combination of a much more benign security environment in Europe, military equipment inflation, improvements in equipment effectiveness and a people who just don’t want to pay taxes for large military establishments is responsible, and in all honesty on the whole it’s hard to argue against most of those factors really. A point D.K. Brown makes that I agree with is that in a hi-lo force mix (which lets face it is just as much a part of the modern naval scene as when the T19 was under discussion if not more so) the designer should strive for a very high degree of capability in one field rather than trying to build a multi-purpose affordable design, as it’s better to have quality in limited scope than heavily compromised in every area. The example he gives is the T14, a very good ASW frigate of virtually no use for any other role.