HMS Ark Royal goes under the hammer We at El Reg have always fancied our own navy, so we're seriously considering making a bid for the recently-decommissioned aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. The MoD is offloading the venerable vessel down at edisposals.com, along with Type-42 destroyers HMS Exeter, HMS Southampton and HMS Nottingham. Anyone interested in …
Actually, someone - or, rather, company - *did* put an aircraft carrier on eBay, quite a while back now. I do not recall the name of the vessel or any particulars, - - - scratch all that, here is link to a story on a quite-possibly-reputable site, which will inform you better than I can: http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/briefs/186472-1.html .
Dear sir / madam, I wish to purchase your vessel the HMS Ark Royal, to use for home defence and the projection of force abroad, for a small island off the coast of Europe which currently has no naval air presence.
I understand that you may also have some suitable VTOL / STOL aircraft going cheap?
It's likely the only intention that the MOD will accept is the intention to break the vessel for scrap.
The worst thing about this story hitting the news (and it's all over the place today) is that edisposals.com will collapse under the onslaught of all the people wanting to see the auction for themselves. As if seeing it somehow makes the story more real. It's a royal PITA for regular users of edisposals.
I intend to convert Ark Royal into a floating technology demonstrator extolling the virtues of green power. The large deck area means it may be suitable for rigging a very large area of sails and solar panels. Hanger and below deck areas can display the best of British energy saving and other green technology. It may not end up being very fast, or manouverable but given its large size and radar profile, shouldn't present too much of a hazard to navigation. I intend to fund purchase of said aircraft carrier via a loan from the newly established Green Bank.
Under no circumstances would I sail it to somewhere in international waters, scuttle it and use it as the centrepiece of any new offshore tax haven.. Unless the Admiralty can advise as to suitably shallow locations outside of existing Exclusive Economic Interest zones. If the Admiralty can, then there may be further opportunities to reduce bid costs of future PFI projects.
Yours faithfully,
E. Genius
Bearded billionaire funster, Richard Branson, should buy all four ships, paint them bright red and spend his days larking around the Indian Ocean blowing pirates out of the water, should such folly be his wont.
He could dress like Cap'n Bligh, sail under the Red Ensign with an all-woman crew dressed in red uniforms (apart from the Daily Mail embedded reporter) and shout "Ahoy there me scurvydogs" at the pirates from the deck before giving the order to fire and singing Rule Britannia at them.
It's just a shame he couldn't have bought Concorde that time. It would have gone perfectly with the Ark Royal.
Oh come on. Floating Cassino. Of course, in International Waters. With some clever adaptation, some smaller private planes could land on it, WW2 style, against the wind and all. Some down right kludgery could get you private jets landing on that ski-jump-edged runway. Of course, helicopters would still be there for the faint of heart.
I heard even a Hercules C-130 landed on one carrier, once. But it was a full-size one, USS Forrestal. "At 85,000 pounds, the KC-130F came to a complete stop within 267 feet" . Let's not forget 460 feet for landing roll, fully loaded. Credits to
http://www.theaviationzone.com/factsheets/c130_forrestal.asp
I don't know if they had the 40 knot head wind at all times... but it sure helps.
On the other hand, if Ark Royal had real steam catapults...
Just get rid of that "Joke Alert" icon and it would be a lovely floating casino. Why just park it off the coast of Washington D.C., register it in the Cayman Islands, offer to set up tax free bank accounts and have a helicopter service or three to ferry the folks to and fro right under the noses of the prudish pols. I'd say 12.1 miles should do it as you aren't exploring or using any marine resources so the 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone shouldn't apply.
Now then, shall we set up the poker tables or slot machines on the fantail?
"Just get rid of that "Joke Alert" icon and it would be a lovely floating casino. Why just park it off the coast of Washington D.C., register it in the Cayman Islands, offer to set up tax free bank accounts and have a helicopter service or three to ferry the folks to and fro right under the noses of the prudish pols".
I'd give it 12 hours before the first air strike.
of removing the Joke Icon.
But yes, the Cassino idea is still lovely isn't it? How about 50-50 partnership?
Oh yes, the poker tables are better in the fantail. The slot machines, either mechanical or electronic , don't agree with salt water.
Although tempting, what I would really do is to park it smack dab in the Med, write "Bubba Gas 'n 'Grub" (* tm) on the runway and just wait for the Tornado's landing, refueling and rearming, or whatever they must fly all the way from Italy and back.
( "Bubba Gas 'n 'Grub" is probably trademark of Blizzard Entertainment.)
Yes, I know this is el Reg and I am liable to go down in flames, but what the heck.
How about turning it in to floating data storage hub? Pleanty of below-deck area for racks and racks of disk. Its already hardened against attack, has satellite linkup capability. Then sell space for who ever decides that they don't like the FBI / CIA / NSA / MI5 / MIG/ MOSSAD / FSB (add your favorite list of initials / acronyms here). Keep it in international waters and no-one can touch you. Apply a suitable strong encryption algorithm and they won't be able to read what you are doing with said data.
Then when plod comes to call with a RIPA warrent for the encryption keys, hand over your pc and ask him to show you wnat part of the PC you want decrypted. Maybe have a small encrypted partition with a really nice random key, which when you give over to forensic investigator and he can find "All your bases are belong to us" in AES1024 !
Anonymous, because you never know who is reading this.
Mines the one with Cryptonomicon in the pocket
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