The X Files of the HMCS Mackenzie
HMCS Mackenzie (DDE 261), was a destroyer of the Canadian Navy from 1958-1995. Commissioned in 1962, she was the head of a four-ship class of blue water ASW patrol craft. Classified as a ‘destroyer,’ her 366-foot hull and 2880-ton displacement even in the 1960s was really more of a Coast Guard cutter/OPV/light frigate. Armed with a single 1 x 3″/70 Mk.6 Vickers twin mount forward, another 3″/50 Mk.33 FMC twin mount aft, 2 x Mk NC 10 Limbo ASW mortars, and 2 x single Mk.2 “K-gun” launchers with homing torpedoes, she was good for coastal patrol and sub-busting. She spent her career after commissioning at Canadian Vickers Ltd., Montreal on Canada’s Pacific Coast where she frequently worked with USN and USCG vessels along the sea frontier. Upgraded in 1985, by the end of the Cold War she was thoroughly obsolete. After her decommissioning in 1993 she was kept in mothballs for a couple years awaiting to be sunk as an artificial reef off Sidney, BC.
HMCS Mackenzie in San Diego 1992. She filled in as the destroyer USS Ardent in the X-Files
To make some money for the cash-strapped Canadian Forces, Mackenzie was filmed often after her decommissioning, including no less than two episodes of the X-files (“End Game”, and “Død Kalm”), where the Canadian Navy rented the mothballed ship for $10,000 both times. It should be noted that most of Dod Kalm was filmed inside the Mackenzie and the film-crew suffered from kerosene fumes for the entire two days of filming. In fact, according to some fan sites on the X-files, the whole episode was written because they had access to the Mackenzie on the cheap.
The truth is out there.