The RN’s sole remaining Sandown-class minehunter HMS Bangor is being repaired after she was struck by HMS Chiddingfold while alongside in January.
While manoeuvring in the harbour at Bahrain on 19th January, HMS Chiddingfold went stern-first into the side of HMS Bangor. The causes of the accident have not been made public but a failure with HMS Chiddingfold’s machinery controls seems to be most likely. (Technically this was not a ‘collision’ but an ‘allision’ which involves an accident where only one of the vessels is moving.) Bangor suffered significant damage to her port side with a large breach in the fibreglass hull. Images posted by sailors on board show the junior rates’ mess and bunk spaces distorted by the impact, suggesting there could also be internal structural damage. Fortunately, no one was injured and neither ship was holed below the waterline.
2024 has been especially unlucky for HMS Bangor as she was also subsequently struck in the stern by USS Gladiator while the American minehunter was making a cold move. This accident ripped off guard rails, and the cleats and bollards needed to attach tugs. This repair had to be completed before she could be moved to dry dock.
In August HMS Bangor was moved from the UK Naval Support Facility to the Bahrain Ship Repairing and Engineering Company (BASREC) to enter their small floating dock. This was to undertake repairs to the hole in the port side of the ship and all the associated internal damage together with repairs to the starboard side where it was compressed against fenders on the jetty.
HMS Bangor is the last of the single-role minehunters (SRMH) left in RN service from a class that once numbered 15-vessels. The RN has accelerated the withdrawal of the SRMH from service to create ‘budget headroom’ to invest in autonomous minehunting capabilities. Bangor was provisionally due to decommission in 2025 and that may still be the plan. The repairs will allow her to return to the UK under her own power and make her a viable proposition for sale to a foreign navy.
However, the withdrawal of RFA Cardigan Bay from Bahrain complicates the plan to deploy autonomous MCM platforms to the Gulf region as replacements for MCMVs. (As well as denuding the conventional RN and USN MCMVs of their main support vessel). Bangor could therefore be extended in service slightly longer. Following her return to Portland in September, a crew was eventually found and RFA Cardigan Bay made it to Falmouth on 10th October, where she awaits refit. Whether the RFA will be able to find the crew to return her the the Gulf is currently highly doubtful.
I know its beneficial to allies but I hope we get good value out of a sale after all this hassle.
Hmmm.
Thats steel cup and hook staging around the hull and is being used for the gangway. It shouldn’t be any closer than 3 ft from the hull. A mag survey should be done before , during and after a docking to ensure you don’t get any induced magnetism from steel items into the ships systems low mag items.
Ideally you use ally staging to remove that issue.
That hull repair is going to take a few months more to complete and the rainy season is approaching now in Bahrain. GRP repairs are a complex and specialist task. It’s a massive step repair with stiffeners to replace on the hole side. No doubt there are fractures, delamination, and root whitening damage on both sides of the hull.
When repairs are done you need to allow the new GRP to gas off the styrene from the resin before you can paint. Thats normally a few weeks. Painting should take a week as they run with silicone anti foul but that has a very specific and unforgiving timeline for application. Get the time between coats wrong or it rains, and you have to re-blast the hull and start again. And on re-blasting that again is a specialist task. Usually requiring a specialist abrasive such as crushed Walnut shell or a slurry garnet mix at low pressure. Apply the blast media incorrectly and you damage the resin rich layer in the GRP which needs to be repaired.
That sounds like it brings back some painful memories
Fixing GRP properly is actually quite hard.
All the these hulls were very, very well built.
So sad to see this amazing capability destroyed before it successor is introduced or mother ships can be properly crewed…
The whole Mothership thing is a bit of a farce in itself truth be known. Stirling Castle and the other experiment, Proteus have had so many issues.
I oversaw 2 SRMH refits as my final military job. I was acting as part of a small team of independent arbiters between a contractor and the UK Govt and a Foreign Govt. Great job to do by the way.
I went outside shortly thereafter and then was a Sub Con PM working on the final SRMH to get refitted.
I have also overseen repairs to SRMH and Hunts here in Bahrain. Bangor was actually done by me some 5 years ago. Did a hull clean, repaint, sea water system cleans…Some GRP repairs. I think we also did a Voith change.
Gunbuster
]As usual, you are spot on with your entire technical assessment.
One very minor point: that scaffolds made of GRP are usually even better than aluminium for this type of repair work.
Furthermore, the fact that your comment starts off with a “hummmm” should mean that the RN officer who allowed this to happen should be keel-hauled
(The charge sheet: “For not understanding magnetic waves and currents”)
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
(Note: those two puns were definitely both intended in the main sentence)
“Keel Hauling” will soon be replaced by some sort of new punishment due to all new ships being built without the traditional laying of Keels…. Goodness only knows what the Woke brigade will call it. ….
It rather begs the question of why she is being repaired.
At an inspired guess I would say she has a quite unique capability.
Or….
Although to counter that I’d say that the lack of care with the magnetic scaffold suggests that she is being repaired for a pre-agreed sale to others for whom residual magnetic signatures to RN levels are unimportant?
All very strange!
GRP scaf isn’t as resilient to the abuse it gets from stagers. And my stagers would batter it.
On a previous job a boffin turned up with a bit of kit that cost 15k to measure the nano tesla’s. He went around measuring the area around the staging and mapping the field in 3 dimensions.
I downloaded a 79pence app and got the same readings on my phone.
The boffin was not happy….
What app was that Gunbuster? i am entering into 3D printing and might be useful.
Physics toolbox magnetometer is what I currently use. However I am talking 10 -12 years ago here so it would have been some other app…I had a Nokia Windows Phone ( which was brilliant by the way!) which tells you how long ago it was…
I still use a Windows tiles GUI front end on my Android z Fold. Far easier to see and read than poxy little circles on android and iphone GUIs and works the same as a tablet
Gunbuster
Some of the very modern (and quite specialist) GRP scaffolding systems – as used in the civilian high-voltage electrical generation and even railway industries – are very robust: far more so than back in the days when Nokia mobile phones were the height of fashion (note 1)
Alternatively, you could always train up your anoerxic orangatan – the one you say (here on NL) you always used to maintain the inaccessible engines on CB90’s – to be more careful…….
Peter (Irate Taxpayer)
PS I must admit I kept my Noika for many years: until it died of very old age…
Orangs come from Borneo.
Most of my stagers are from Nepal. Small, wiry and strong as F*** for little guys.8-12 hour shifts handballing steel scaf poles will do that to you. Never arm-wrestle with em!
Try the phyphox toolkit, it’s excellent and free