In its place a smaller design carrying Sea Dart for air defence entered service as the Type 42 destroyer.

The CVA-01 aircraft carrier project was cancelled in the 1966 Defence White Paper, eliminating the requirement for the Type 82 class.

It was not a direct replacement for the Type 82 per se, but filled the area air defence role in a Cold War, North Atlantic navy.

It also featured a flight deck and hangar for its own air component providing improved anti-submarine, surface-strike and general utility to the design.

The serious naval confrontation between Malaya and Indonesia from 1963-6, showed Asian powers now had jet bombers armed with cruise missiles, and RN carriers with subsonic second generation de Havilland Sea Vixen and Supermarine Scimitar fighters were insufficient.

Although capable of landing a Westland Wasp helicopter on the quarterdeck the ship lacked a hangar and aviation facilities and thus had to rely on external air support.

The original design called for a long-range 3-D air search radar to be fitted; the joint Anglo-Dutch Type 988 "Broomstick", and early drawings and artist's impression show a large dome on the bridge to carry this set.

However, the RN dropped out of the program due to high cost, and instead she was fitted with the ageing Type 965 air search radar, with a "twin bedstead" AKE-2 antennae, on a stump foremast.

Radar Type 992Q low-angle search was carried on the tall, slender mainmast and as such the electronics fit had not advanced significantly from the County class.

Type 909 sets were shipped fore and aft for Sea Dart fire control, allowing two targets to be engaged at any one time.

The steam plant was repaired in 1976 and it was not until 1979 that she was fitted out for frontline service with ECM, Corvus countermeasures launchers and a pair of World War II-era Oerlikon 20 mm cannons.

After a short refit, during which the mortar well was plated over to allow the landing of large helicopters on the quarterdeck, she joined the Royal Navy task force in the South Atlantic in the 1982 Falklands War as a component of the carrier battle-group.

With the Royal Navy short on hulls after damages and losses incurred in the Falklands, Bristol remained in commission and made several overseas deployments until paid off for refit in 1984.

In addition, the Ikara system was removed and it was intended that it be replaced with two triple STWS-1 launchers for 324 mm anti-submarine torpedoes, although these were never fitted.

In 1987 she became part of Dartmouth training squadron, for which duties she had extra accommodation and classrooms added in the former Ikara and Limbo spaces.