A photograph from February 1974 shows HMS Tiger (C20) at Portsmouth Dockyard, with HMS Blake (C99) alongside. Both were Tiger-class cruisers, originally laid down during the Second World War but completed much later. By the early 1970s they had been converted into helicopter cruisers, their aft gun turrets replaced with a flight deck and hangar to operate Westland Wessex helicopters. It was an attempt to adapt ageing gun cruisers to a navy increasingly shaped by aviation and anti-submarine warfare. Tiger and Blake represented the last gun cruisers to serve with the Royal Navy. Their mix of automatic 6-inch guns forward and helicopter capability aft made them distinctive, though expensive to operate. By the late 1970s both would be decommissioned as defence cuts and changing priorities reshaped the fleet.