HMS Queen Elizabeth has sprung a leak and everyone's all a-tizzy New British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth has sprung a leak. The warship takes on around 200 litres of water per hour thanks to a faulty propeller shaft gland packing, according to reports. The packing in question, according to The Sun, which broke the news and knocked up a graphic illustrating the problem, was rapidly …
Surely an artificial reef.Don't think sunken aircraft carrier reefs occur naturally.
Enough defects like leaking shaft seals and they just might occur as a natural result...
(You'd need significant seal failures, all pumps out, crew not able to make a bucket line (maybe no one thought to put buckets in, modern pumps being so good'n'all), watertight doors/hatches unable to be closed (or not sealing enough), and for some reason no ability to tow her back to port - at 200L/hr it'd take a very long time to even get a noticeable lowering in the waterline!)
Yes sea trials are to find problems.
But, y'know, with £3.5 Bn on this tub you'd think they'd managed to get the basics right.
Especially anything whose repair instructions start "First put ship in dry dock"
Because the ship is f**king huge.
It can still be used a helicopter carrier. UK still has some left of those.
It is one hell of an expensive helicopter carrier. The most expensive one in the world in fact.
This is especially when compared to what that other countries which used to operate Harriers and now are in line for the F32B have bought for a fraction of that money: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_ship_Juan_Carlos_I_(L61)
In fact, if you look at it, UK could have built ~ 8? ships of the same class for the same amount of money. ~1.5 more "power projection" bang for the same buck even before we take the landing craft launch capability into account. Unfortunately, someone in the Admiralty probably had an issue with the size of his anatomy and needed to order something BIG to prove himself. As a result the really simple idea that "If you build an aircraft carrier that big you might as well order proper planes, not VTOLs for it" did not compute.
meanwhile HMS Ocean which is a DEDICATED helicopter carrier and supports the marines and can actually come alongside in Devonport (home of the marines) returns home from her final deployment to be paid off. We'll soon have marines with NO marine capability!!!!!
http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/plymouth-news/hms-ocean-coming-home-christmas-942687
You really couldn't make this shit up!
Though defence commentators are, rather predictably, shouting about this being a non-story – and to a point it is an expected defect – it is very much a matter of public concern
Bollocks. It's a new ship, of new design, and there are some snags and the make will fix them. As the El Reg article says, isn't this the point of things like sea trials? TBH - I'd be very suspicious if there weren't any snags.
And why did El Reg spend most of the article being all calm, and then throw in that provocative statement. I expected better of El Reg.
It seems to be a thing with the Beeb recently. The News web site particularity. Lots of stories about nothing, or headlines focussed on a tiny, attention catching detail of a bigger story. Or massive exaggeration to the point if being fake news. One example of such. There was a headteachers' petition to the govt. recently. A genuine news story, a small deputation took it to no. 10. According to the Beeb headline at the time though headteachers were "marching on Downing St."
This story's a good example of the dumbing down on BBC News Online - not that they ran it, in this particular case, but because they picked up a non-starters because the tabloid sewer press both broke and framed the story the previous day. Ten years ago they would be reporting the fact that there was a screamsheet ruckus about it; now, the news agenda is set by the Mail.
There's been a stair-step down in quality in the last few months due to some management change or other - I forget the details - it was in Private Eye IIRC.
I think the BBC News has been dumbing down for quite a few years, especially on the Science and Technology front. My view is that the BBC source their newsreaders from classically educated graduates that generally have poor understanding of mathematics and science. Even in the business sections of the BBC some of the statistics and charts that they post would have failed O level maths/physics exams for being unclear and in many cases, incorrect. There are some exceptions but in general, the BBC is definitely heading down the sensationalist news road. If things don't improve, the BBC will be no better than the Sun and the Daily Mail. So sad.
I love the BBC, and those with strong ideological axes to grind (on various sides - more than two) who rave about bias annoy and bore me.
But I'm embarrassed when I see the 10 o'clock news once a week round my in-laws (long story. Also I have no telly or time.) Radio 4 is the last real, srs, news / current affairs channel left.
Radio 4 WAS the last real, srs, news / current affairs channel left, quite a time ago now..
FIFY.
Even the archers is a dumbed town bit of pc carp these days (compared to a few years ago).
Confession: I was working on my own and had radio 4 on. I was not near the set and left it on when TA came on. Father, I have sinned ....
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The Beeb are obviously having a slow news day too and have dragged the non-story out all day.
Including interviewing a retired submarine captain... And even having found a man who should have a mortal terror of a leaky boat, even he was pretty "meh".
Back of the envelope calculations tell me that at only 200 litres an hour, with no pumps running, and all water-tight doors (of which there are many) left wide open, she'd still be floating into the new year!
(Assuming she she didn't just fill up on one side and tip over of course).
Well, only The Sun it would appear, according to Reuters.
Having been a 'from new' Range Rover owner (and never again I might add) I know that the first thing you do is take the vehicle out for a road test and then promptly dropout it back to the showroom with a list of defects that need fixing.
"LoL National finances aren't like your house finances.
I would imagine there are similarities , like borrowing to avoid a small bit of pain eventually accumulates into a major headcache that would have been easier to deal with a bite at a time as it came up.
That wouldnt keep you elected though I guess.
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It's not so much the size of the leak; it's carrying the [teaspoon|bucket] up seven or eight decks from the bilge to dump overboard that takes the bulk of the time!
You then order some junior deckhand to take that bucket topside and dump its contents overboard, while leaving another, empty, bucket down in the bilge for the Master Leakscooper to fill. If one can't keep up that way you line up a bucket brigade.
> it's carrying the [teaspoon|bucket] up seven or eight decks from the bilge to dump overboard that takes the bulk of the time!
Just drill a hole in the hull nearby and use a hose to pump the water out? Shouldn't be that difficult.
Or use a commercial cargo ship.
Too soon?
Good point! Rather than messing round bailing, why not just cut out the middleman. Employ a cabin boy to stick his finger in the hole - and stop the water coming into the boat in the first place.
Problem solved! That still leaves his other hand free to do something useful, like putting oil on whatever bits of the engine he can reach - and he can still entertain the crew by singing for them, or something.
Basically, they are saying that there's a very minor problem with a newly built thing. So fucking what? I'm nowhere near 100% sold on the new ships, particularly the fact that they were designed to solely operate one particular type of unproven warplane. But this is the sort of story that's worthy of the shit-rag it comes from.
But it can be made a big story that all self respecting people from centre to right wing will point at laugh and say "That's why acceptance trials exist?!" while commenting on the stupidity of people who think that dillegently finding problems while the manufacturers pay to fix them is some kind of humiliation, rather than not spotting them until taxpayer plc is responsible for rectifying the fault. Which could be described as a humiliation.
The Sun might have this somewhere on their frontpage, but normally looking without actually using CTRL-F I can't find it within about a minute of looking. The BBC has ran it as the lead story in the UK, widely publicised it and then opened one of their increasinly rare "Have your Say!" forums on it.
Meanwhile, other news is buried under the noise that this generates. Nothing to see here, move along citizen.
So what's being buried today? I'm guessing it's that the Lib Debs are being fined by the electoral comission for just shy of the maximum penalties for breaches of the finances rules in the late referendum. That's something the BBC would prefer to not have to report because it reflects badly on people they support, and their editorial policy on this particular matter is embarassingly transparrent.
Your view may differ.
...it's a marvel the bloody thing even floats, let along floats long enough for water ingress to be considered an issue.
As for the Beeb lathering itself up with "highly embarrassing for the Royal Navy";
a) as if having an aircraft carrier without any aircraft wasn't embarrassing enough
and
b) someone hasn't paid much attention to the history of the floating department of our armed forces. I'd go out on a limb here and suggest that a leaky propshaft on a new boat is less embarrassing than, say, someone driving a nuclear sub into the Porridge Isles. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-nuclear-submarine/uk-nuclear-submarine-runs-aground-off-scotland-idUSTRE69L2FJ20101022
I don't know the specifics of this carrier but a spell in dry dock should not be required for a warship. The seal is meant to allow the prop shaft to rotate without excessive volumes of water coming in. They often leak a bit. You can squirt in extra grease to stop leaks. If that doesn't work you can seal the stationary shaft with an emergency inflatable collar then dismantle and repair the rotating water seal before deflating the emergency collar and resuming navigation.
Water ingress at the speed of a tap is less than negligible.
Pretty much. A while back, I was reading about the antics of the Royal Navy in the Med in WW2, and there was the tale of a cruiser that took some sort of rather meh battle damage, and was left with the pumps throwing 70 tons of water an hour overboard to keep up. That is, 70 thousand litres an hour, or more than 200 times the size of this leak, but on a rather smaller ship.
They continued operations and got it fixed afterwards.
In the Med in 1941 HMS Ark Royal remained afloat for 12 hours with a 130ft long hole in the hull.
HMS Uganda, a light cruiser, took on 1300 tons after being hit by German Fritz X guided bomb off Salerno in 1943. It survived and crossed the Atlantic on one propeller to reach a suitable dock for repairs. Thereafter transferred to Canadian navy it served until mid 50s.
It's very slight seepage. A bucket of water every 3 minutes. Absolutely nothing in the scheme of things.
The old HMS Ark Royal, (the one decommissioned in 1979) now that was a leaky ship. It leaked so badly due to rust, that from time to time they had to fill a hull section with concrete to keep the water out and hold the rust together.
It could well be possible to fix without dry docking. It may be a case of adjusting from the inboard end, depending on what kind of gland they're using either repacking it or something a bit more technical. Alternatively when one of the last Type 42s needed some work done below the waterline they made a compartment that sealed up against the section of hull and pumped the water out. Quicker than dry docking and means the rest of the ship's systems can work as normal.
But seriously, if the press are going to start reporting every incident this small they're going to be needing a lot more pages.
"But seriously, if the press are going to start reporting every incident this small they're going to be needing a lot more pages."
The last week before Christmas is notoriously a slow news week. This story probably narrowly beat out a kitten getting rescued from a chimney in Northwich as the main line items for the day.
'If there are problems with the new aircraft carriers, which are set to become Britain’s flagships for the next half-century or more, it is right and proper that the public knows about them'
The problem with that approach is that it makes any problem with them also known to any potential future adversary. OSINT works both ways.
"new aircraft carriers, which are set to become Britain’s flagships for the next half-century or more"
"flight trials with the new F-35B fighters that will fly from her during her British service life. "
Does anyone know of any first-class military aircraft which have remained operational and first-class for over half a century?
Boeing B-52. Tupolev Tu-95 Bear. Lockheed C-130 Hercules. Boeing CH-47 Chinook. Lockheed U-2.
F-15 eagles have been in service for 40 years and will be around into the 2030s. Panavia Tornados entered service in 1979 and are expected to be in use with the Luftwaffe into the 2030s as well. Same applies to the F-16 Falcon.
Um...
Well, the US has a couple:
B-52: in service since 1955
F-4 Phantom/Phantom II: In service from 1960, finally retired by US in 2016 (other nations are still flying them)
that's off the top of my head, with a little help from wikipedia. I'm sure the some of the propeller heads around here can rattle off a few more.
Longest British frontline service award probably goes to the Shackleton, which ultimately had it's roots in the Manchester, redesigned as the Lancaster, which became the Lincoln, which became the Shack. 1939 - 1991 for the full evolution of the design, last iteration going on for 40 years.
In boat terms, the QE class Battleships had probably the longest innings - Warspite was in service for 43 years. Similar service lengths from the Revenge class too.
>50 years is a pretty standard life span for both a boat and a jet fighter
But those need not dovetail perfectly
Launched in 77, the Nimitz would have barely missed getting the Navy F4, getting F14s instead. Then F18s. And who knows, later even F35s???
This whole fiasco with the lack of catapults seems rather similar to buying an all-in-one PC where the original parts can't be switched, are expensive and do not even provide very good performance to start with.
>remained
both in terms of operational and first class remained seems misplaced wrt F35s.
or maybe it can be fixed thus:
military aircraft industrial welfare project which have remained operational and first-class for over half a century
in which case one would hope, but that might yet be mistaken optimism, that the F35's capabilities budgetary vacuuming would lessen rather sooner than over 50 yrs.
B52s aside, the OP has a point - a warship like this might be expected to field several generations of aircraft , not be stuck with1
"It is vanishingly unlikely that a leaky gland seriously affected the carrier’s ability to operate (we encourage older readers not to draw comparisons with their personal situations)."
MOD Procurement specialist on phone: "Yes, I'd like to order several boxes of adult nappies, please. Size? Well, they're for 'Big Liz' so, I'd say extra extra EXTRA large..."
As there are no aircraft on board I expect the 679 crew will have plenty of spare time to sit around and drink tea and will likely produce nearly as much waste liquid as seeps in through the gland.
Good luck to HMS Penguin. I wonder if the Indian Navy Sea Harriers (retired last year) are still intact.? They might not be able to fly but we could park them on the flight deck to stop the empty expanse looking so bloody silly.
Indeed, so would I.
Reminds me somewhat of a passage from Spike Milligan's first volume of army memoirs. He was training in the artillery near Bexhill but they had no ammunition to let off. The solution was for the gun crew to shout "BANG!" instead.
I suppose our men in the navy could stand on the flight deck and shout "WHOOSH!".
Our foes must be quaking.
Be nice if folks were to get real with the "no aircraft" bull as well as the over-hyped leak.
The ship has only just joined the navy - they will need months to get the ship ready purely as a warship - damage control, weapons system testing, crew training etc.
Once they've done all that and the ship itself is judged operational, they can then start to work out aircraft handling procedures to certify the ship to handle the various types of helicopter and only then can they start to prepare for certification for F-35 - this is going to take until 2019 - by which time we will have the first operational aircraft - 12 is considered the minimum to defend the Carrier in normal operations.
"12 [aircraft] is considered the minimum to defend the Carrier in normal operations"
Cool, so we'll have an aircraft carrier that can sail to a trouble zone and sit there defending itself. Very useful. A bit like me going into a boxing ring and huddling behind my gloves whimpering "Please don't hit me again."
What an impressive spectacle this will be.
This is one of the most interesting stories on this site.
Interesting that it is a story, that it made it to the site, that people read it. Of the many items on the deficiency list that one of the least important, easiest and cheapest to address, becomes a "news" story is very interesting. If this item made the short list or summary of deficiencies the news story would have been the remarkable, unheard of success of the project so far. So much so that this would truly be a new age of British ship building. f this was was actually one of the most concerning deficiencies, which seems impossible to me i would have no doubt that Britannia is about to once again rules the waves..
But also interesting is that such a story generates comments, even comments about how interesting a story it is. Well done indeed.
"Looks like they're already adapting her to become a submarine. The MOD cuts are starting to bite."
It's all part of a cunning plan. Up until now HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark have been the two ships intended to sink themselves in action, now we have a third. With hard training and diligence we will have a fleet that can be sunk before the enemy even get a chance to fire a shot.
and to think they came up with such fancy development, lol:
"It is August 2025. The United States is mired in a growing short-of-war scenario that involves a series of dangerous crises in Asia-Pacific. Europe is vulnerable. Exhausted and worn down by the years of complex Brexit negotiations, sustained mass, irregular migration from its south, a seemingly endless flow of terrorist attacks, and years of relative economic decline caused by leaders unable or unwilling to take the necessary measures to resolve Europe’s myriad political, economic and social tensions.
Britain’s 70,000 ton heavy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is sailing off the North Cape of Norway. These are historic waters for the Royal Navy as ‘Big Lizzie’ is not far from where on the late afternoon of 26th December 1943, in the Arctic twilight, the British battleship HMS Duke of York sank the German battlecruiser KM Scharnhorst. The First Battle of North Cape was, in effect, the opening engagement of a new computer/missile age and the last battleship-to-battleship dual in history, in which no aircraft played any part.
(...)
Tensions with Russia have been building for months as an increasingly erratic President Putin, faced with economic and societal challenges that makes those of the rest of Europe seem trivial, has become steadily more aggressive. Central and Eastern Europe face regular cyber-attacks, with banking, transportation, and even health systems effectively shut down for days at a time. RT, Sputnik, and other Kremlin-controlled Russian media organs, pump out increasingly hysterical fake news stories about Western aggression. In recent weeks, Russia’s Western Military District (Oblast) has been reinforced with several new spearhead divisions, threatening much of NATO’s eastern border. Worse, Russia has markedly increased both the number and type of treaty-legal and illegal nuclear weapons deployed to its Kaliningrad enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
Above the Arctic Circle the Russian Northern Fleet has adopted aggressive patrolling with aircraft, ships and submarines regularly attempting to intimidate NATO naval forces far out into the North Atlantic. However, the most dangerous encounters take place in the so-called Greenland-Iceland-UK gap, and close to Norway’s North Cape.
In early July, Russia moved a large formation of Naval Infantry (marines) to Pechenga, close to Russia’s short border with Norway. An alarmed Oslo called for Alliance support. On August 10th, as tensions ratchet up, and by way of response to Russia, the North Atlantic Council ordered SACEUR to take all necessary steps to demonstrate to Moscow the Alliance’s determination to defend its borders, and the vital sea and air lines of communication around them. However, few US ships are available to the Alliance given the mounting tensions in Asia-Pacific, the size and capability of the Chinese People’s Liberation Navy (PLN), and a series of humanitarian disasters in the Mediterranean and beyond, engineered by Russia and Iran, and partly linked to the ongoing migration crisis.
A hastily-organised NATO Task Group is formed and organised around HMS Queen Elizabeth. The Task Group includes ships, aircraft and submarines from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and of course, Norway.
August 15th 0430 hours: 150 nautical miles WNW of North Cape. Suddenly weapons and defence systems on board HMS Queen Elizabeth crash, as the Task Group flagship suffers a sustained cyber-attack, along with much of the rest of the twenty-ship flotilla. Almost simultaneously the huge ship is attacked by an intelligent swarm of autonomous, flying armed ‘attack-bots’. The Second Battle of North Cape has begun.
0431 hours: Situational awareness is effectively reduced to nil. The decision-action cycle of the ship’s captain is reduced to less than a second, whilst the commodore loses all communications and command and control links to the Task Group. Parts of the robotic drone swarm split up and attack specific systems on HMS Queen Elizabeth.
0432 hours: Internal communications are disabled and the damage control centre fails; the ship stalls to a sudden halt as the engines go into reverse. Two Russian Yasen-class nuclear attack submarines, successfully avoiding the 3G and 4G detection systems of the Task Group by exploiting the different temperature and density layers of frigid North Atlantic waters, each launch an Iskandr PL anti-ship missile and cripple ‘Big Lizzie’. The damage to HMS Queen Elizabeth is devastating.
0434 hours: The ship takes on water rapidly and begins to list heavily to starboard. After an enormous internal explosion, a shocked captain gives an order he never thought possible. He orders the surviving crew to start shouting “abandon ship - every man and woman for themselves”. Those ‘lucky’ enough to make it into the water die within minutes from hypothermia.
0453 hours: Twenty-three minutes after the attack begins, a burning HMS Queen Elizabeth, the largest ship ever to serve in the Royal Navy, capsizes and sinks by the bow, propellers spinning in the cold, dark, light of an Arctic dawn, with the loss of almost all hands. Much like HMS Hood, which blew up in the Denmark Strait in May 1941 not so far from the scene of the Royal Navy’s latest battle, there are only three survivors from a crew of 1500. ‘Big Lizzie’s’ complement of F-35 Lightning II/5 (Enhanced Range) fast jets, and Merlin 7 ASW helicopters, never got off her decks.
0454 hours: The Russian submarine Novosibirsk flashes a success signal to Moscow. It contains just one word; ‘Kursk’.
0603 HMS Asute sends the one word message "Archangel" to Northwood indicating 6 cruise missiles armed with tactical nuclear weapons have just hit the russian north fleet bases near Murmansk
0623 US sensors show multiple rocket launches across northern Russia
0632 US land based ICBMs take off from their bases
0633 everyone on the planet floods facebook with goodbye messages along with plenty of curse words.....
0645 see icon
Splendid tale M. Coward, very sub-Tom Clancey. Sadly such an act would almost certainly be the point where the big pointy atom bang sticks would start to fly, and it would something of a hollow victory for Ivan, no matter how krokodil-crazed they'd gotten by 2025. Yes, yes, lots of chatter right now about how Russia thinks they're able to push their luck because nobody in the West has any balls any more and have traded in all their military at cash Convertors, but I'm not sure they're quite that stupid or confident.
Russia is the Begbie of geopolitics, frightening but ultimately a wee man with an attitude problem.
About the Authors
General John Allen USMC (Retd.) is Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, the former Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL, and former Commander of the NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.
General Philip M. Breedlove (Retd.) is the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and Distinguished Professor at the Sam Nunn School at Georgia Tech.
Professor Dr Julian Lindley-French is Senior Fellow of the Institute for Statecraft in London, Director of Europa Analytica in the Netherlands, Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow at the National Defense University, Washington DC, and a Fellow of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.
Admiral (Ret.d) Sir George Zambellas is the former First Sea Lord, Head of the Royal Navy.
p.s. I would recommend other parts of the document (GNAI-Future-War-NATO), as it does contain a word or two about Russian perceptions of the West, and Western perceptions of Russia, including certain...human characteristics. Nothing new, but neatly rounded up (although the whole document is, conveniently, one-sided).
Russia is the Begbie of geopolitics, frightening but ultimately a wee man with an attitude problem.
Kinda scary how we have that with Russia, more so with the Norks, and maybe even more so with the Yanks!
"Man-made global warming" could happen a LOT faster than even the freakiest of the IPCC bods could imagine (see icon)
As a boat but admittedly, not ship owner myself, this sounds like the fake news story of the week. The thing is...................drum roll..................... stern glands always leak. Not only that, they're supposed to as the water leaking in both cools and lubricates the stern gland. If they leak too much, it's usually just a case of tightening the gland cover. When there is no more adjustment left, the gland has to be added to or repacked. It's routine maintenance and certainly not worthy of the panic stricken news stories in the media today.
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Seriously the older ( pun ) Royal Navy ships used to use Lignum Vitae ( oily wood ) which used to swell when placed in the glands ( snigger ) making the shaft ( oh jeeez ) watertight and allowing it ( the shaft ) to spin . Now they use artificial packing and the experience is not so good hence the leaky shaft ( I am done stop laughing and great Christmas to you all and remember only use the real deal when handling your shaft or glands )
"a matter of public concern" to the public who in general haven't a clue how big engineering projects work. Especially if they are Scum readers. There isn't a single large ship in the water that didn't have defects that needed ironing out.
Expecting to stick a 70,000 tonne ship in the water without a single issue is like expecting the the Sun to publish a single newspaper without a spelling mistake or lie in it. Will never happen.
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I had to adjust the shaft packing gland in my boat several times this summer. I take two large (2 ft long) adjustable wrenches to do it - release the lock nut, tighten the packing gland, tighten the lock nut. Of course, the QE has a much more sophisticated packing gland otherwise they would need insanely long wrenches. :)
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The article that the story thoughtfully links to includes the sentence
"Consequently, we have reached a state of affairs where the public think that the QUEEN ELIZABETH is a late, leaking and broken white elephant without any planes."
Does The Register have any idea how the public got that idea?
Propellers? How 19th century.
I would have thought this thing was jet propelled and rode the seas on massive hydrofoil wings, putting the fear of Britannia into all who sailed around her, and able to respond to a crisis half a world away in a couple of hours or so.
Hellfire, we were supposed to have airborn aircraft carriers by now.
Century 21 productions my arse!
They tried flying aircraft carriers in the 1930s-1950s.
E.g.,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airborne_aircraft_carrier
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_XF-85_Goblin#Further_developments
The general conclusion seemed to be that you're better off with in-flight re-fuelling than a flying aircraft carrier.
NonononoNO!
Extinct balloons don't count, firstly because they are balloons with three, count 'em, three biplanes inside and secondly because we don't have them any more!
If it doesn't have a runway and a load-out of Angel Interceptors it NEED NOT APPLY!
Yes, the public who pay for these things with tax have a right to be told about them. I just wish the filtering mechanism that boils down the daily firehose of press releases and general newsflow was a bit better at putting them into context, as El Reg has so done so nicely in TFA. Like many Reg readers with only hazy grasp of naval architecture, a couple of seconds mental arithmetic and knowing that "bilge" and "leaks" are things in perfectly seaworthy vessels and I was thinking "oh, come ON" at the radio yesterday.
Of course the whole shock horror scandal story comes from the tabloid sewer, and the BBC and presumably other MSM outlets felt compelled to pick it up.
Barnum's Law is a bastard.
“An issue with a shaft seal has been identified during HMS Queen Elizabeth’s sea trials."
Use a shaft walrus next time: it might work harder.
Meanwhile the rest of us zoologists find ourselves wondering, what seal? Fur seal? Crab-eating seal? Harp seal? Inquiring minds wants to know!!!
There's a hole in our warship
Dear Lizzie, dear Lizzie.
There's a hole in our warship
Dear Lizzie, a hole.
How much did it cost you?
Dear Tresa, dear Tresa.
How much did cost you
Dear Tresa, how much?
Three billion dear Lizzie
Dear Lizzie, dear Lizzie.
They say it's quite normal
Dear Tresa, dear Tresa.
They say it's quite normal
To have holes in your plans.
As one who was in the business, there is a well- trodden path to go down. FATS for factory acceptance tests, i.e. is it painted the right colour, is the red light on the left, etc. Then we move onto HATS, harbour acceptance trials i.e. does it float the right way up, does the radar work, DOES IT LEAK, are there sufficient sockets for kettles. Finally, SATS ( as above but at sea). Does it roll over, can it go back and forward, does it make a good "thrum" at full speed ahead. Who signed off Harbour Acceptance?
SHIPS LEAK, wodden ones were worse, but thats why the bilge pump has been around since ancient times (conventional wisdom says this is what the archemedies screw was invented for)
The bilge and sullage collection system on HMS QE has the capacity to hold up to 83 m3 or 83000 litres or 17 days 7hrs of leakage, this is processed and safely expelled within the average 8 hrs shift.
The issue isnt that big Liz isnt on schedule, its tat they got rid of the harriers and Invincible class before they had a replacement.
The other nations intending on operating the F35-B are actually copying the Invincible class idea, wheras the RN have learnt from this, the old ASW Carriers were highly limited by their single runway and limited deck area, and could not operate more than two flights simultaneously (after a midlife upgrade) wheras the QE class can land and recover symaltaneously and have rotary wing co-operation, they also have the capacity to land STOL aircraft like the C-130 that wouldnt have the space on the invicible class.
I am firmly of the opinion that the F35 will be a white elephant, and a version of the AV-8B would have better solved the Fleet Air Arm requirement, or even a Blank sheet design from BAe/RR.
its been a long time since I looked but isn't there ALWAYS a slight bit of shaft leakage that the system(s) are designed to compensate for?
while this may be more than normal this is (if I am right) what sea trials are specifically designed to draw out.
or am I way off base?
please correct me if I am wrong.
I listened to the BBC interview some guy about this leak on Radio 4 and I'll tell you I was right pissed off at the stupid BBC journalist who was so trying to make it a huge disaster for the MOD/Goverment/Britain/Engineers who ever. Stupid ***** woman. It so gets on my tits when stupid people think that things always work first time with no teething troubles. Dumb ******* BBC journalists. They are never happier than when they can blame somebody for something, anything.
I sometimes think it's the British disease, if it doesn't work first time it's a failure, give up and go home at least that's what you would think if you listened to the mainstream media. In reality in order to achieve anything you have to fail, but you learn from it and do it better next time! You certainly never give up!
Seals leak. Fact of life. Usually tightening (compressing the packing further) helps. Otherwise replace the packing. Big deal. The really bad case would be a roughness in the shaft - it would need re-machining. *That* would justify the fuss being made. I've had expert craftsmen have problems in getting packing exactly right and this was on shafts maybe 3" dia max.
Packing starts to leak *after* some use. That's probably one of the reasons the navy do sea trials. :-)
I can't call this a storm in a teacup because the ship is too big to fit in a teacup.
"Able Seaman Johnson! Come on, I'll collect the water in these buckets, whilst you take the full ones up top and dump the water over the side, hurry up now, there's a good lad!"
"Why's it gotta be me climbs all them stairs? You're rotten, Chiefy, you're a rotten rotten rotten, and I don't like it, and you're rotten!"
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