HMCS Yukon was a that served in the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and later the Canadian Forces. She was the first Canadian naval unit to carry the name. She was named for the Yukon River that runs from British Columbia through Yukon and into Alaska in the United States. Entering service in 1963, she was primarily used as a training ship on the west coast. She was decommissioned in 1993 and sold for use as an artificial reef and sunk as such at Sunken Harbor off San Diego, California in 2000. Design The Mackenzie class was an offshoot of the design. Initially planned to be an improved version of the design, budget difficulties led to the Canadian government ordering a repeat of the previous , with improved habitability and better pre-wetting, bridge and weatherdeck fittings to better deal with extreme cold. The original intention was to give the Mackenzie class variable depth sonar during construction, but would have led to delays of up to a year in construction time, which the navy could not accept. General characteristics The Mackenzie-class vessels measured in length, with a beam of and a draught of . The Mackenzies displaced fully loaded and had a complement of 290. The class was powered by two Babcock & Wilcox boilers connected to the two-shaft English-Electric geared steam turbines creating . This gave the ships a maximum speed of . Armament The most noticeable change for the Mackenzies was the replacement of the forward /50 calibre Mk 22 guns of the St. Laurent design with a dual Vickers 3-inch/70 calibre Mk 6 gun mount and the presence of a fire-control director atop the bridge superstructure. The bridge was raised one full deck higher than on previous classes in order to see over the new gun mount. The class did retain the rear dual 3-inch/50 calibre gun mount and for anti-submarine warfare, the class was provided with two Mk 10 Limbo mortars. The ships were initially fitted with Mark 43 torpedoes to supplement their anti-submarine capability, but were quickly upgraded to the Mark 44 launched from a modified depth charge thrower. This was to give the destroyers the ability to combat submarines from a distance. Sensors The Mackenzie class were equipped with one SPS-12 air search radar, one SPS-10B surface search radar and one Sperry Mk.2 navigation radar. For detection below the surface, the ships had one SQS-501 high