As part of the preparations for her maiden operational deployment in May, HMS Queen Elizabeth has made her first visit to the Clyde to embark munitions.
The ship sailed from Portsmouth on 1st March for about a month away from home, initially conducting training and preparations for the carrier Strike Group deployment in May (CSG21). She has been operating in the Channel and the Irish Sea, working up the ship’s company which includes a significant number of new members since she returned from successful exercises at the end of October. She has also conducted helicopter training, including with Army Air Corps Apaches and RAF Chinooks to maintain aircrew currency for carrier flying.
At the weekend the carrier arrived in the Firth of Clyde. This is the first time the ship has sailed these waters, although the most complex sections of the ship, including the engine rooms, were constructed at the Govan shipyard on the upper Clyde, before being taken by barge to Rosyth for assembly.
The ship held a memorial service over the Second World War wreck of HMS Dasher off Ardrossan. The Dasher was a US-built merchant ship, hastily converted to an escort carrier. Tragically, she blew up and sank with the loss of 379 men on 27th March 1943. The explosion was probably caused by faulty petrol handling arrangements – typical of the kind of accident caused by the pressures of war.
On 15th March the carrier sailed up the spectacular Clyde estuary on her way to the newly refurbished Northern Ammunition Jetty (NAJ) at Glen Mallan on Loch Long. In 2019, work began on a £64 Million project to modernise the NAJ to meet the requirements of the QEC aircraft carriers. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO) announced earlier this month at the project had been delayed by 5 months due to COVID but evidently, the work was sufficiently advanced for the carrier to be able to berth.
HMS Queen Elizabeth is expected to be alongside at Glen Mallan for a week or so in order to load the largest outfit of munitions she has yet embarked. The Jetty is served from nearby DM Glen Douglas, the largest ammunition depot in Western Europe which provides secure storage in a series of hillside bunkers for bombs and complex weapons.
Munitions are brought by lorry from Glen Douglas onto the jetty and the two pedestal cranes raise the loads onto the lowered aircraft lifts. The munitions are then struck down to the magazines below via dedicated lifts in the hangar.
Northen-Ammunition-Jetty-Glen-MallenPlan
Strangely, kept seeing Daring on the AIS, following QNLZ. I thought she was tied up alongside in Portsmouth as a “harbour training ship”. Anyone else see that or was it a mirage?
I saw that too
QLNZ is spoofing as Daring for some reason, Montrose in the gulf spoofs as other ships too.
Thanks
Daring should still be in dry dock undergoing a refit. Then On to Camell Laird for a engine upgrade this spring, with new diesel gens, like Dauntless.
Thanks
There is something about pictures of big ships next to big hills…….
Looks awesome with the snowy tops in the background.
Quite a few police carriers in one of the pictures, Were they expecting trouble/protests or is this standard procedure?
Possibly crowd control? Rather unique opportunity to see QE from the adjacent road. She looks a bit like a patchwork quilt with a two tone paint job in places and hasn’t had her 30mm fitted?
Ministry of Defence Police. Arent they the local security for the whole berthing area and ammunition storage .
http://www.mod.police.uk/
Standard procedure
Loading up munitions??
Her rear Diesel Generators seem to be smoking a bit.
Are they Bergens or Wartsila?
Wartsila.
Wartsila.
It’s normal for large DGs to smoke quite a bit when under-loaded, the white smoke is unburned fuel. The front GT appears to be running too, judging by the heat haze.
My guess would be that for safety reasons a fully redundant generation configuration is being used. Any sudden trip or single genset failure won’t then cause loss of propulsion when manoeuvering in a tight space such as Loch Long.
Sensible approach, but it does leave the engines very under-loaded and hence a bit smokey.
Isnt it electric propulsion and being gas turbine based generators the response is fairly instant with modern electronic controls to match the fuel supplied and load
Yes it’s electric. The turbine isn’t smoking – the diesels are.
I’m not an ME but it’s something I have seen before when large diesel gensets are run under-loaded. DGs need at least 50-60% load to be happy!
I’m guessing that the fueling control range on the diesels is set to stay above a certain base level, because otherwise the engine might stall (due to compression) if there is a sudden increase in electrical load (e.g. if another generator tripped). This results in over-fueling at idle load hence the white smoke.
The turbine doesn’t have the compression issue so as you say the fueling can be matched to the actual load and spooled up quickly if required.
Could also be cold and the catalytic convertors not fully warmed up? Diesels don’t work well cold.
The big issue with diesels (including trucks and cars) is that the combustion chemistry is totally different until the engine and ancillaries reach temperature. Which is why from Euro3 onwards they generally (not always) had Fuel Burning Heaters to speed up reaching temperature.
If they are not under a big load then they take ages to warm up.
I did wonder if temperature was a factor, the water in Loch Long must be pretty cold!. Standby sets for hospitals etc. often have electric jacket heaters and are kept permanently warm. Not sure how that could work with sea water cooling.
Key issue with diesel gensets is that they are governed to a fixed speed, to sync with the other sets. So unlike a vehicle you can’t just rev them hard to warm up. Hence they need a decent electrical load to come up to temperature.
It’s always been an issue with non steam ships. They have to have 2 DGs running so they may be light loaded. On a Leander 1 500kVa DG took the bottom board while the 2 TAs shared the Main board.
That’s the crux of the issue – when you run more electrical output than strictly needed (for redundancy purposes) you can’t then match output to load.
IEP is intended to help with load matching, by having a larger common generator pool for both propulsion & hotel load. But it works best with large hotel load such as on a cruise ship, so growth margin on QE for EMALS, DEW etc. is likely a factor here too.
But at least they can keep the engines in good shape by giving it a good blast now and then on the open sea, as Tomuk mentioned. Don’t have that option on a non IEP ship!
Sounds like they need an italian tune up. Quick thash out into the atlantic.
Yes, that will help blow the cobwebs out!
Think perhaps RN learned some hard lessons from Type 45? Would explain the abundance of caution in operating procedure!
So what do we reckon she will be taking onboard? Besides pallets of small caliber stuff i’m assuming it’ll be ASRAAM’s and Paveway lV’s. Proabaly some Martlet for Wildcat and Stringray for Merlin too.
If the leak this evening is true then we’re losing 2x T23’s and all 13x mine-hunters.
This may not represent a terrible outcome for the RN if (and it’s a lot of very big ifs) these are phased withdrawals only slightly earlier than planned and the lack of other mentions means the rest of the fleet (including stuff like the previously vulnerable looking Albion’s) is secure.
I really hope too that 48 F35’s is the minimum amount guaranteed rather than the final cap and the decision on a follow-up order will be deferred – essentially admitting we won’t be purchasing 138 in a hurry but not completely closing the door on aiming for a fleet of around 70 which is what most seem to agree is the base-line requirement to sustain more than purely token carrier operations.
Devils in the detail – but unsurprisingly it looks very much like The Army will be gutted and somewhat more surprisingly the RAF will be fairly hard hit too.
T23 is a given.
Minehunters are a must have.
48 F35bs isn’t enough and makes the whole carrier venture suspect.
The Army is already gutted. It is close to the point where it is questionable beyond SF.
What a mess.
Don’t worry the new cyber force can throw their keyboards at the incoming hoards of T90s!
Joking aside the IR states 48 F35b as minimum commitment by 2025, no mention of any cap or reduction.
It’s clear the intention is to increase escort numbers with T31/32 and mine-hunting transferred to embarked autonomous systems. Given cost & crewing constraints, it’s not an entirely stupid plan.
It is a small reduction in hull numbers but it’s effectively replacing small specialist vessels with full size GP frigates, while maintaining & modernising mine-hunting capability which IMO will be a more flexible and useful overall fleet. And the retired RN mine-hunters will likely end up going to Baltic & Black Sea allies where they will still be useful to NATO.
But agree the future of the Army increasingly looks a bit of a joke, small wonder they are struggling with recruitment.
HMAF have been too small and under funded for decades.
We shall re F35b. The maintenance hour vs flying hour ratio is still way off.
As for hulls. All escorts (T45 to one side) have been GP since Leander. The reason why the RN has specialist hulls is to do specialist tasks. Too many on this site conflate and confuse that. If we are operating SSBN’s we need a MCM vessels. And we need vessels to operate them. Estonia playing with Sandown a few days per month doesn’t make us any safer.
HMG chooses not to fund the Army. And it is a disgrace.
I don’t necessarily disagree with any of that. Just trying to emphasize that it could be worse, and RN at least are trying to make the best of what resources they have available.
Besides chronic underfunding, I don’t think two decades of playing world policeman in the sandbox have helped much either, it’s a big part of why Army equipment is now in such a mess.
There’s not much more to cut. Tomorrow’s jam never arrives.
I’ve read that the Army are to be formed in Brigades with individual intigrated combat teams.
The Army needs kit. We need too double the Boxer buy. Buy two new artillery systems straightaway. And scrap CR2 and buy Leopard. Men on their feet with a rifle has no place now……..
It’s the job of the Germans and French and Poles to stop the T90s, alwayscassuming they drive through Georgia and Ukraine. No doubt with a lot of the rest of the EU Army.
People really need to get real.
That’s assuming the T90s are coming, and don’t all break down on the way!
Seriously, I very much doubt we will ever get in a full on land conflict with Russia. I was being facetious about defence priorities. That’s why I put ‘joking aside’
The T90’s aren’t coming. But you are right in a way.
The UK should have left Europe (except Norway) in the 1950s when we had enough A-bombs. Defence funding should have concentrated on the RN and RAF. And the Army re-rolled along the same lines as the USMC. Defence of Western Europe on land should have been left to Germany and France.
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Bing bing Bong Bong ding dong Ching Chong Dong ding dong, ok ping pong long tong big bong., I think
Absolutely fantastic photos 👏