HMS Queen Elizabeth

[98elise]

Cold said:

BrettMRC said:

820 NAS are Merlins

(At least I knew they weren't Chinooks. )


FYI, departure has been pushed back until tomorrow (Tuesday 8th). Slipping at 16:00 - takes about 15-20 mins to manoeuvre and reach the harbour mouth.

Glad I didn't go then! I was planning to go down if the weather was nice.

[normalbloke]

Cold said:

BrettMRC said:

820 NAS are Merlins

(At least I knew they weren't Chinooks. )


FYI, departure has been pushed back until tomorrow (Tuesday 8th). Slipping at 16:00 - takes about 15-20 mins to manoeuvre and reach the harbour mouth.

Why?

[Cold]

normalbloke said:

Why?

Reports are that a couple of the crew tested positive for Covid 19.

[Wildcat45]

acd80 said:

Wildcat45 said:

I knew Captain Mike, John Clink and Jerry. I'm guessing you knew my great friend Steve P who was XO before Rob B. Rocky and Sarah in FLYCO too.

I spent many a happy trip in ARKR as a civvy and I was honoured and touched to be asked aboard for Glenmallan to the Tyne. I'd known her from childhood and first went aboard when she was a just launched empty hulk.

She was loved.

I missed this so apologies for the late response. We probably passed each other on 5 deck at some point then on that trip! She was an awesome vessel and I enjoyed my time onboard immensely.

She was indeed a wonderful ship. I spent much of the trip in 2 Sierra STBD heads. The Pentland Firth always does that to me!

[Wildcat45]

98elise said:

What makes you say that? The crew (minus flight) is about 700 and the Navy has nearly 40,000 personnel.

Why would you refit a new ship? Refits are where you replace and refurbish old/redundant kit, or do major upgrades. Refits happen probably once or twice in the life of a ship.

It depends on how you define a refit.

I may be slightly out of date with the RN terminology here but there are lots of different forms of refit and maintenance.

Self Maintenance Period alongside. Sailors do the work.
Assisted Maintenance Period. The dockyard or contactors help.
Docking and Essential Defects - when important stuff gets fixed .
LIFEX - Big long refits designed to add new gear, extend the useful life of the ship.

If you look at the operational life of a carrier as an example, you'll see they actually do lots of things without actually being in service, and deployed. Training being an example where the ship is at sea, being used, getting rusty, dirty and wearing things out. She will get regular "refits" to keep her in condition during this time.

Every few years she will need a bigger refit, but the time in the hands of the ship repair teams is only part of this. Preparing a ship for refit is time consuming. Everything from surveys to de-storing/ammunition ship, to removing kit that might be needed on another operational carrier has to happen.

Then you have the physical refit.

Then post refit fettling, re-storing, crewing, training, integrating new systems, re-acquainting the air group, and somewhere down the line declaring the ship operational.

You're talking years from going into refit to being fighting fit.

In a couple of years, QE will be due a decent refit. She will have had 5-6 years of active life. PoW is needed to take the strain for 3 years or so. And so the cycle continues.

There will be periods when both are at sea at once, but it is likely one will be about to go into or just out of refit. Naturally it's times like that when if there's going to be any st hitting fans you want to be in a position to field two carriers where one can be brought up to readiness quickly. Sod's Law dictates one will be in bits and the other at the wrong side of the planet if/when it does.

I really hope we don't end up with just one. As suggested above, it would be a very expensive mistake.

[98elise]

Wildcat45 said:

98elise said:

What makes you say that? The crew (minus flight) is about 700 and the Navy has nearly 40,000 personnel.

Why would you refit a new ship? Refits are where you replace and refurbish old/redundant kit, or do major upgrades. Refits happen probably once or twice in the life of a ship.

It depends on how you define a refit.

I may be slightly out of date with the RN terminology here but there are lots of different forms of refit and maintenance.

Self Maintenance Period alongside. Sailors do the work.
Assisted Maintenance Period. The dockyard or contactors help.
Docking and Essential Defects - when important stuff gets fixed .
LIFEX - Big long refits designed to add new gear, extend the useful life of the ship.

If you look at the operational life of a carrier as an example, you'll see they actually do lots of things without actually being in service, and deployed. Training being an example where the ship is at sea, being used, getting rusty, dirty and wearing things out. She will get regular "refits" to keep her in condition during this time.

Every few years she will need a bigger refit, but the time in the hands of the ship repair teams is only part of this. Preparing a ship for refit is time consuming. Everything from surveys to de-storing/ammunition ship, to removing kit that might be needed on another operational carrier has to happen.

Then you have the physical refit.

Then post refit fettling, re-storing, crewing, training, integrating new systems, re-acquainting the air group, and somewhere down the line declaring the ship operational.

You're talking years from going into refit to being fighting fit.

In a couple of years, QE will be due a decent refit. She will have had 5-6 years of active life. PoW is needed to take the strain for 3 years or so. And so the cycle continues.

There will be periods when both are at sea at once, but it is likely one will be about to go into or just out of refit. Naturally it's times like that when if there's going to be any st hitting fans you want to be in a position to field two carriers where one can be brought up to readiness quickly. Sod's Law dictates one will be in bits and the other at the wrong side of the planet if/when it does.

I really hope we don't end up with just one. As suggested above, it would be a very expensive mistake.

I've never heard the others called refits.

There is all sorts of maintenance going on all the time. A significant proportion of the crew are in the engineering branches. It's normal for ships to spend time along side without them actually being mothballed or out of service.

When a ship goes in for a proper refit the crew is reduced and the ship is not operational. When it comes back into service it will need to go though a period of testing, training and operational acceptance. You can't just drop a crew on it and hope everyone knows what to do. That's why have various shakedowns, work-ups, and operational sea training.

In almost every other maintenance period ship remains operational and the crew remain attached to the ship and there is no need to retrain the crew. That really only works if you go on regular exercises, even if it's just the Thursday war.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thursday_War

[RizzoTheRat]

Presumably the point is that one will always be high readiness, and the other probably at 3 or 6 months most of the time?

[Cold]

Another 24 hour postponement for departure. I guess it's a big old tub to disinfect properly. Must be getting through a lot of wet wipes.


Sailing set for tomorrow (Weds 9th) at 16:35. Third time's a charm.

[Cold]

Finally! She's off.

[98elise]

RizzoTheRat said:

Presumably the point is that one will always be high readiness, and the other probably at 3 or 6 months most of the time?

Why not just run them both as normal ships rather than one sitting along side festering? You have the ship, and a crew so what's the point in leaving it tied up along side doing nothing?

You also have to hope that you're not needed while your crew are on leave, or you're in dock for an unplanned repair (happens about once a year in my experience)

[BrettMRC]

98elise said:

RizzoTheRat said:

Presumably the point is that one will always be high readiness, and the other probably at 3 or 6 months most of the time?

Why not just run them both as normal ships rather than one sitting along side festering? You have the ship, and a crew so what's the point in leaving it tied up along side doing nothing?

You also have to hope that you're not needed while your crew are on leave, or you're in dock for an unplanned repair (happens about once a year in my experience)

Because while it's at sea, being used, it wears and degrades and needs more upkeep/refit time... this increases the probability of not having a serviceable CV available.

[Cold]

Shakedown successful, she's due back in tomorrow (Sunday 13th) at 14:00.

She'll spend the week loading kit and personnel from 617 Squadron and the US 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing which will mean around 1700 people on board. The US F35s landed at Marham just over a week ago ready for her next trip.

Soon it's back out of the harbour and head north for GroupEx/JW202 while picking up a load of F35s on the way. Looking forward to the ship's photos of that.

[Cold]

[HarryW]

Cold said:

That’s some zoom shot from the north of the harbour, Porchester castle?

[Cold]

HarryW said:

That’s some zoom shot from the north of the harbour, Porchester castle?

In the field, r/h corner of Skew Road/Portsdown Hill Road. Complete with "something" insecty that's taken three bites of my arm.

[normalbloke]

Cold said:

HarryW said:

That’s some zoom shot from the north of the harbour, Porchester castle?

In the field, r/h corner of Skew Road/Portsdown Hill Road. Complete with "something" insecty that's taken three bites of my arm.

3.7 miles away. Not bad!

[Boom78]

Cold said:

Shakedown successful, she's due back in tomorrow (Sunday 13th) at 14:00.

She'll spend the week loading kit and personnel from 617 Squadron and the US 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing which will mean around 1700 people on board. The US F35s landed at Marham just over a week ago ready for her next trip.

Soon it's back out of the harbour and head north for GroupEx/JW202 while picking up a load of F35s on the way. Looking forward to the ship's photos of that.

Is the RAF/RN/USMC going to be an ongoing thing? I remember quite some time back we wanted to Reshape our armed forces into something resembling the marine corps, basically an ‘all in one’ force.

How many F35s do you think will be onboard?

[98elise]

Boom78 said:

Cold said:

Shakedown successful, she's due back in tomorrow (Sunday 13th) at 14:00.

She'll spend the week loading kit and personnel from 617 Squadron and the US 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing which will mean around 1700 people on board. The US F35s landed at Marham just over a week ago ready for her next trip.

Soon it's back out of the harbour and head north for GroupEx/JW202 while picking up a load of F35s on the way. Looking forward to the ship's photos of that.

Is the RAF/RN/USMC going to be an ongoing thing? I remember quite some time back we wanted to Reshape our armed forces into something resembling the marine corps, basically an ‘all in one’ force.

How many F35s do you think will be onboard?

The Navy already covers that role as it comprises of:

Fleet Air Arm
Surface Fleet
Submarine Service
Marines

So land sea and air all covered (+ sub surface)

These days the RAF and the Fleet Air Arm roles are more blurred, but the Fleet Air Arm previously operated independent of the RAF with both fix and rotary wing aircraft.

It's fairly common for other countries forces to operate from our ships (and vice versa) in combined exercises.

[acd80]

Boom78 said:

Is the RAF/RN/USMC going to be an ongoing thing? I remember quite some time back we wanted to Reshape our armed forces into something resembling the marine corps, basically an ‘all in one’ force.

How many F35s do you think will be onboard?

We had a squadron of USMC AV8-Bs onboard HMS Ark Royal in 2010 during a large exercise and we also embarked AH-64D for marinisation training later the same year.

Then we got scrapped as part of the Strategic Defence & Security Review - we all found out via the BBC News....

[Cold]

The Strike Group details for the upcoming shenanigans have been released.

It will comprise of:
HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Kent, HMS Defender, HMS Diamond, HMS Northumberland, RFA Tideforce, RFA Fort Victoria, HNLMS Evertsen, USS The Sullivans and possibly/maybe/perhaps something painted a darker colour that moves around undetected by most.