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[Colin Bishop]

Reports today that the PoW has broken down after leaving Portsmouth for a 4 month deployment.

More details here:

https://www.navylookout.com/hms-prince-of-wales-suffers-technical-issue-after-sailing-from-portsmouth/

Colin

[ScottW]

Artemis 1 moon rocket launch this morning is on hold for technical difficulties. Is there a trend of today not being the best day for big and expensive government hardware?

[Colin Bishop]

Rocket launch cancelled for today.

PoW now proceeding towards Portsmouth in company of five tugs. RN says she is beingt taken to a more suitable anchorage for inspection. Looks like the problem is something to do with the propshaft.

Maybe not surprising as people have been saying for years thet the Prince of Wales has a screw loose....

Colin

[Mike S]

Maybe a crew member may not have fancied 4 months away from home, personal problems, whatever . . . . .

[ScottW]

Yep, Artey missed her flight.

And that sounds almost karmic in a way ...

Maybe not surprising as people have been saying for years thet the Prince of Wales has a screw loose....

[Colin Bishop]

Apparently the intention is to re anchor in Stokes Bay.

Colin

[tonyH]

The bigger they are, the harder...........

[mrlownotes]

They can't afford the electricity to recharge the Lipo.

[kinmel]

Seeems to have been built to fail.


 First time out...   Propshaft seal failure

Next attempt...    Self flooding via fire pumps

This short trip...   Damage to propellor

Who knows what would happen if it faced a sea battle.

[ScottW]

Seeems to have been built to fail.
 First time out...   Propshaft seal failure
Next attempt...    Self flooding via fire pumps
This short trip...   Damage to propellor
Who knows what would happen if it faced a sea battle.

Oh, but see, this is all a big psy-op to lure potential adversaries in to having a false sense of superiority.

[derekwarner]

No, no, no......I blame the news-hungry mongrel Media/Press for reporting on such minor technical issues... any such issue that happens in War, or in this case, in a Warship should stay on the Warship

If there is any blame, let it be layed squarely at the feet of the Pin Stripped Politicians who reduced the design spend, which by necessity creates the need for greater reliance on artificial intelligence which has an unproved intrinsic life or reliability       

Derek

[Circlip]

It's a sad reflection that when ships are made for us by other nations there's a hue and cry as to why, in the event of a breakdown, it wasn't built here with all our historical shipbuilding history?


  Regards  Ian.

[Colin Bishop]

Just to put things into perspective, the US Navy's latest carrier USS Gerld Ford took 8 years to build due to construction problems and amother 4 years after commissioning before she was deemed fit for service. Russia's only carrier is a floating disaster area and may never recommission after a severe onboard fire and a dockyard crane falling onto her.

Colin

[kinmel]

Yes, but every new project, it's as if they have not done it before.
Class A submarines had foreseeable problems and the problems are still being dealt with.
Daring Class Destroyers are in an epic failure class of their own, even now they are coming into Cammell Lairds in turn for major engine modifications. How could they have foreseen that the ships just might deploy into the Tropics and so needed specialist engine cooling systems?     

How can a pair on £3billion ships not have an alarm to report that the fire pumps have come online and why did it takes 3 days to notice?   

Even we can fit effective seals on prop shafts.

[Colin Bishop]

A lot of this is politics and short term cost savings. The Daring power plants were deliberately cut back at the design stage on the basis that they would not need the originally intended capacity and when they did it wasn't there.

From what others have said, cost savings were also made on the carriers plus inadequately supervised work. The flight decks have had to be resurfaced to cope with the heat from the F35 downblasts. I think the seal on QE was OK but hadn't been fitted correctly.

Same old story really. The battleships Rodney & Nelson had such complex interlocks on their main armament that it took years before the guns were reliable, and even then all three guns in each turret had to be loaded at the same time even if only one or two were due to fire in the subsequent salvo, this reduced the overall rate of fire. The ships might well have been better off with the tried and tested 15 inch mounting which was proably a better gun overall and more accurate than the 16 inch. By the time the RN came to build the KGV class the building expertise for compex big gun mountings had been severely eroded whch caused all sorts of problems and reduced Prince of Wales to an unbattleworthy condition during the fight with the Bismarck.

In more recent times, the type 21 frigates, although pretty ships, were not really fit for purpose during the Falklands War. The original type 42 destroyer design was subjected to cost savings so the early ships were unable to be properly upgraded and later ones needed to be stretched by over 53 feet and displaced an extra 900 tuns to make them the ships they should have been in the first place.

Colin

[Colin Bishop]

There are now reports that the ship's propeller hit an obstruction and that it may be going to Amsterdam for dry docking instead of Rosyth. May be easier as I think Rosyth means that the ship's mast has to be taken down and access to the dry dock basin is tricky.

Colin

[kinmel]

How can a modern warship not navigate safely out of it's own naval base?
The first A Class sub crashed into a Scottish island a few years ago and in 2002 HMS Nottingham met some rocks near Wolfe Island, Australia.
Perhaps we should issue charts and fit sonar.

[derekwarner]

Without going too far off track, its the same here in Australia


Back in the early 80's, a joint Parliamentary Committee decided that the Kockhams submarine [from Malmo] would be the best choice to replace our aging Fleet of Oberon Class submarines, then some Dingbat Minister of Defence said yea that's a good choice, and our Australian Submarine Corporation was born, together with the directives that a minimium Australian content % must be achieves  ...... which technically, was  unachievable

Well....we still needed to have US and UK manufactured weapons & counter measure electronics systems, so that left very little for local content apart fro the high tensile/strength steel produced in my Port Kembla ........however the diesel/electronic propolsion systems were manufactured here but under Licence from the original European designers

40 years later, our dedicated Naval engineering Ratings are still placing Band-Aids on defects to keep 3 of 5 of our Collins Class Submarines operational.......

So what happens .... another joint Parliamentary Committee decides we need a replacement for our Collins Class fleet, and awards the Contract to the French to modify an existing French nuclear Class submarine design, but to conventional diesel propulsion......so after some 6 years no evidence of building, just more & more plans revised and more Committees continually reviewing progress........there is no evidence of progress, so our Government rips up the  Contract........naturally the Frogies are more than a little upset.............[I think $50 million was the cancellation cost with nothing to show for it..and no disclosure of all previous costs]

You guessed it,.........just after ripping up the French Contract, another joint Parliamentary Committee announces we are to get a new Fleet of nuclear propelled submarines, however without any nuclear weapons......

But where is this design to be sourced?...obviously one of our ORCUS partners [US or UK] and when?.....

When questioned of the build time frame, one of our Politicians suggested possibly within a 45 year window?....one of bright spark Opposition from across the floor reminded the Minister, that submarines don't have windows

If all this weren't so serious  ...it would be funny 


Derek

[Baldrick]

There are now reports that the ship's propeller hit an obstruction and that it may be going to Amsterdam for dry docking instead of Rosyth. May be easier as I think Rosyth means that the ship's mast has to be taken down and access to the dry dock basin is tricky.

Colin

   Message doing the rounds now is that they neglected to grease the prop shaft bearing      now if you had done that on your model you would have called yourself a TOTAL ****.

[Circlip]

It might have been down to some poor little mate alot but believe me, how many sub (bad pun) committees and paper pushers have been in line to determine the necessity to do it let alone the equivalent chain to choose which grease to use and the safety committee for risk assesment and then - - - -


  Regards  Ian.

[derekwarner]

Ian....could I suggest that Dockyard Pub talk, is either 100% correct, to 0% factual

The days of a Junior Stoker Rating wandering around with a grease gun are well gone
All lubrication systems are computer functioned & controlled......
A Senior Chief PO would be on shift 24/7 in each engine room of the Elizabeth Class vessels & his job during each shift is to read all operational systems reports via computers

If a lubrication component failed, it would have flagged an alarm of sorts within the intelligent electronic systems
So if lubrication ...or the lack is not down a human error, clearly investigating the cause further would be warranted

I previously used the words..... artificial intelligence, and intrinsic reliability        without the latter, we are stumped

Derek

[Liverbudgie2]

I found it somewhat amusing that the news reader on the 10pm ITV news bulletin kept calling her “HMS Prince Charles”, when the guy on the rubber duck doing the news report while bobbing around in the Solent had the correct name.
The type 3 42’s were indeed a big improvement on the type I & 2, but it was interesting to see that although they had the same power output as the earlier versions, were just as fast if not slightly faster, through the water.

LB

[Baldrick]

Ian....could I suggest that Dockyard Pub talk, is either 100% correct, to 0% factual

The days of a Junior Stoker Rating wandering around with a grease gun are well gone
All lubrication systems are computer functioned & controlled......
A Senior Chief PO would be on shift 24/7 in each engine room of the Elizabeth Class vessels & his job during each shift is to read all operational systems reports via computers

If a lubrication component failed, it would have flagged an alarm of sorts within the intelligent electronic systems
So if lubrication ...or the lack is not down a human error, clearly investigating the cause further would be warrantedI

Derek

  It may be that the lubrication system was AOK, but the problem was with the intelligent electronic system . I Don't trust electronicals they are bad enough in cars

[Circlip]

Derek, AB Popeye may be an exaggeration, But If you think everything behind is not reality, it's a long time since your active service.


  Regards  Ian.

[Rob47]

It's a sad reflection that when ships are made for us by other nations there's a hue and cry as to why, in the event of a breakdown, it wasn't built here with all our historical shipbuilding history?


  Regards  Ian.

Ian dont quite follow your point, they were built here if its the QE class you are on about.


Bob