RFA crew shortage as well as a Rear Admiral shortage....

[FD2]

These prangs usually take place out of sight in some God forsaken harbour but in this case... Watching it for the first time I felt like shouting "full ahead!", but crunch!

When I was forecastle officer of a frigate we were coming alongside a jetty at Rosyth and as we glided past where we should have berthed I looked back at the upper bridge and saw that the captain had frozen and it was only a word in his ear from the first lieutenant that woke him and then the only time that I had experienced "Full astern!" was used for real. The air stank as mud that had festered there for donkey's years was stirred up into dirty swirling mess. We stopped about 6 feet from the dry stuff. No damage - -no 'superior' witnesses - no recriminations. Someone I know particularly well hit a jetty at Portland, dented the bow, and was soon afterwards off to a shore job, as Flag Officer Sea Training staff were onboard at the time!

The 'word' seems to be being put about that in this latest embarrassment the engine was stuck at slow astern. If it only has one engine then that's plausible but if it has two then the other could have overcome that. Whatever the reason, stand by for a court martial or maybe two or more, flogging around the fleet followed by hanging from a yardarm. Oops - I forgot about the lack of a fleet for the flogging.

Embarrassing as this one is, it is knocked into a cocked hat by HMS Jupiter, which had refused the assistance of a tug, getting stuck after hitting London Bridge. They had just slipped from a weekend visit alongside HMS Belfast. A flooding tide took them further up river than intended! The captain then changed his mind about assistance from the tug.

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[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Engine stuck in reverse was my immediate guess earlier.
However, this kind of thing can happen*, so...
Why use a manoeuvre that uses the engine in reverse when you don't have to.
Why choose to reverse at a point where one's stern is pointed at another boat rather than the harbour wall
How long should it take to cut the engine(s) by other means? Whose job is that?
This all used to be part of a skipper's training, for Service yachts anyway.

Update: It appears HMS Chiddingfold has two engines and two shafts.

I had a racing skipper, Army, who was in the habit of steaming into the marina after a race at top whack, then slamming the yacht into reverse to stop neatly in the berth.
Needless to say, since we raced with minimum fuel on board, the inevitable happened one day, when the engine coughed and died when full reverse was demanded.

I agree that the Jupiter incident was really, really bad.

*Had an engine fail to respond to the throttle in my Tornado once. No warning captions appeared, as we had been promised they would. Ended up shutting it down via the fuel cocks.
FADEC - Full Authority Digital Engine Control, or as the Engines Lecturer called it "F#cking Artificial Didgery Ensures Chaos"


Full disclosure - The Engines Lecturer was me.

[FD2]

Maybe someone junior had been given the job to gain experience? We don't know how this event came about but I hope we'll know much more after the court martial. But at least the weather is warm and they have excellent ventilation below decks now. Unless there's a shipyard that specialises in fibre glass repairs it will be shipped home on a barge like HMS Nottingham.

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Nottingham Tasman grounding:

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[Boac]

Still, now we have 'grounded' 2 of our limited stock of naval assets, there will be a lot of spare crew to person the other ships. Anyone seen a NOTAM?

[FD2]

Are both of them out of action? I thought it was just Chiddingfold with the enhanced ventilation system. Correction - for Chiddingfold read Bangor!

[FD2]

Shapps visits the Red Sea so all's well. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/0 ... -missiles/

Has an announcement to make which will enhance the safety of the RN carrier strike group, if it ever gets to sea. I wonder when, actually, the enhancements will be made.

Royal Navy missiles that have been used to shoot down Houthi drones in the Red Sea will be upgraded, the Government has said.

The Sea Viper Air Defence system will get more effective missiles featuring a new warhead and a software update that will enable it to defeat ballistic missile threats.

It will help protect the Navy’s Carrier Strike group and allows tracking, targeting and destruction of a variety of air threats more than 70 miles away.

The £405 million upgrade, awarded to missile systems company MBDA UK, will help sustain 350 skilled jobs across the country and be complete by 2032.
‘Most capable naval air defence system ever’

The contracts will make Sea Viper “the most capable naval air defence system ever developed for the Royal Navy”, the Government said as Houthi attacks on ships passing through the Red Sea continue.

It is hoped the upgrade will help Navy ships to better deal with more complex threats in future.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said: “As the situation in the Middle East worsens, it is vital that we adapt to keep the UK, our allies and partners safe. Sea Viper has been at the forefront of this, being the Navy’s weapon of choice in the first shooting down of an aerial threat in more than 30 years.

[Boac]

I cannot imagine how Chiddingfold would be seaworthy! Apart from the need for Isopon to repair the stern I imagine the rubber bands took a bit of a pasting.

[1DC]

She was going that fast astern my first thought was that the engineer had given the wrong movements.i.e. astern instead of ahead or something had gone wrong down below and they couldn't change an original astern movement. If it was an error from the bridge I despair, I hope someone had thought of dropping the anchor to try and slow the astern movement..

[PHXPhlyer]

Even the person videoing the "accident" knew that something was not right and said "Full ahead".



PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I hope someone had thought of dropping the anchor to try and slow the astern movement.

Quite.
This was drummed into us at Gosport.
I never moved anywhere in confined waters without the ability to drop the anchor immediately.
I never sat at anchor without the ability to drop a second anchor, already laid out for the correct depth, ready immediately. And that did save me once when the main anchor rode parted. Of course, I drifted downcurrent a bit whilst it paid out, but I had re anchored the day before when some inconsiderate soul decided to anchor directly down current of me, to ensure I had that room, so I didn't hit anyone.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Looking at that video, one can see the cavitation still happening after the collision, so it looks like the engines were still running in astern. Plus there is no 'bounce' from Chiddingfold.

[1DC]

When Zanzibar got its independence and had a mutiny shortly afterwards I happened to be in Mombassa with probably more RN warships than the grand fleet consists of now. My tanker was on the buoys and an aircraft carrier was on the buoys ahead of us and kept us awake all night playing with aeroplane engines noisy propellor jobs, when I had a memory I would have named them all gnats I think.
One afternoon when all was quiet the Captain (I assume) of a frigate or destroyer woke everyone up by speaking on his loudspeakers to a tug. I remember the name of the tug ,Kongoni..THe frigate was about to let go from the buoys astern of us and the harbour tug had come across to give him a hand. Harbour Regulation said that the harbour tug always got in everyones way, sometimes in a helpful way, and got paid.THe frigate loudspeaker boomed out "Kongoni,Just hang orf my starboard, I won't need you." Naturally the quiet afternoon had now been disturbed and everyone was now waiting to see the nice frigate slip her mooring in a true navy like fashion and proceed to sea. What actually happened was that the frigate slipped her mooring, quickly, spun herself around and rearranged her bow on the main deck of the tug. Watching with a professional eye from my position on watch on my tanker I actually thought it took a bit of skill for the frigate to manage to hit the tug and not miss it.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

So, the props didn't engage, she drifted back and swung on the current/wind, and of course didn't have steerage in the current, or sufficient steerage in the wind.
The tug was holding position exactly downcurrent/downwind, as ordered, and didn't do anything except get in the way, as you said they would?

[FD2]

I actually thought it took a bit of skill for the frigate to manage to hit the tug and not miss it.

If you're going to make a fool of yourself, do it big time!

[1DC]

I think the carrier may have been Hermes and the aeroplanes were Gannets. When we finally went alongside in Mombassa to discharge the Glorious Gloucesters were guarding the oil jetty,I think it was a time when a coup may have been in the wind and our boys didn't want it to spread from Zanzibar. Being your average hospitable Brits we gave our soldiers a couple of cold beers as the sun was over the yard arm. Apparently their Officer found out about it and came aboard to issue the necessary borrickings,our Captain decided to sort it out, he was good at this sort of thing, and a few hours later said officer was assisted ashore as he was quite incapable of getting off himself. Said Officer was very unpopular with the men, and apparently with his fellow Officers, and we found out the next day we had done them all a favour but we never found out what happened next!

[1DC]

Looking at the video of that minesweeper their seems to be a lot of chaos on the forecastle head but, from the sound, they may have got the anchor down but forgot to stop it and use it as a brake.
You would have thought that considering the job it was supposed to do manoeuvring with the engines would have been pretty high up on the deck officers familiarity list? If she was twin screw I assume only one engine ran away.

[FD2]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ay-sources

It's happened on aircraft but as we used to say 'never assume, check!' If true, can this be classified as a 'Murphy' - it just shouldn't be possible.

[PHXPhlyer]

When car mechanics work on things like engines, transmissions, brakes, etc. they usually take the vehicle out for a test drive.
Maybe the RN should try that.

PP

[Boac]

What can you say? Farcical if correct.

[FD2]

It shouldn't even be possible to connect them wrongly in the first place let alone put to sea without testing them! I've heard of some pretty stupid aircraft problems over the years though, like rotor blades back to front and hydraulics connected wrongly but we'll see when the Board's conclusions are published. HMS PoW's shaft wasn't exactly inspiring either and provided plenty of schadenfreude for some.

If Chiddingfold slipped and went astern then maybe it was just the port engine that was used and it worked correctly. If they then ordered slow ahead on the starboard and it went astern instead then maybe 'stop engines' might have been a sensible order. Was at least one of the anchors ready to drop ('acockbill')? If so it should have been dropped as it's probably not very deep there, but maybe it was too late for that and a vision of retirement to run a chicken farm had sprung to the captain's mind.

It's easy to slip into the 'what if' without the correct evidence though, which I have just done!