RFA Fort Victoria suffered a minor fire while alongside in Portland on the morning of the 10th May. It was extinguished by the crew with no serious injuries. This ship is the sole UK solid stores support ship available to replenish the carrier strike group.
After a week of participating in a workup in UK waters with the CSG, Fort Vic returned to Portland. Local fire and ambulance services were called to the ship at 0732 but the fire was extinguished by the ship’s company. Fortunately, it appears no one was seriously hurt, although some of the crew were treated at the scene and 4 of the crew were taken to hospital. All sailors are highly trained in firefighting but it is standard procedure for civilian firefighters to be called to any fire when alongside. Fires in confined spaces are potentially deadly and smoke inhalation is a particular hazard. The ship is equipped with fixed firefighting systems but Fort Vic recently embarked a full load of fuel, ammunition and stores for the forthcoming deployment. A speedy and professional response to any fire on board is obviously vital.
Fires onboard ship are not uncommon but are usually contained when the ship is fully manned and the crew is alert. Even the world’s foremost navies suffer shipboard fires on a regular basis. The French submarine FS Perle experienced a major fire while in refit in Jun 2020 and the entire forward section was destroyed (In an epic ‘cut and shut’ operation, it is being replaced by a section from decommissioned sister FS Saphir).
In July 2020 the US Navy had to write off a 40,000-tonne tonne LDH, USS Bonhomme Richard when consumed by fire when nearing the end of a major refit. The Russians and Chinese Navies have also had serious shipyard fires. The RN has a good track record of containing occasional small fires. The last really serious fire experienced by the RN was on board HMS Fearless at sea in the Mediterranean in November 2000. A boiler fire was contained by the bravery and dedication of the ship’s company but at one point they came close to losing the ship.
For the upcoming deployment, Fort Vic has over 230 personnel on board. Besides to core RFA crew of around 100, she has embarked sailors of 1700 Naval Air Squadron who provide a range of aircraft handling, weapon engineering and support to the civilian crew. Three Merlin Mk4s of 845 Naval Air Squadron, along with aircrew and engineers add to the total. The Merlins have multiple roles, providing logistic support to the carrier group – Maritime Intra Theatre Lift (MITL), Joint Personnel Recovery (JPR), and vertical replenishment (VERTREP).
Fort Vic had earlier conducted a landmark replenishment at sea off the UK coast with HMS Queen Elizabeth that represented the culmination of many years of work and planning. This was the first time solid stores and munitions had been passed to one of the QEC carriers at sea. Fort Vic had to be significantly modified so her jackstay rigs have geometry compatible with the high Heavy RAS-capable rigs of the carrier.
When the carrier group is on operations at distance away from friendly ports for any length of time, they will be heavily reliant upon the auxiliaries to keep them supplied. RFA Tidespring will provide fuel for the group and she, in turn, will be kept topped up by another tide class tanker providing more distant support. The RN can call upon the services of four active tankers (Plus another laid up and another in refit) and therefore has a few more options, should one of them suddenly become unavailable. It is not just the aircraft carrier that requires regular replenishment but the 6 escorts are also arguably even more reliant on regular supplies of fuel and stores.
The CSG’s dependence upon a single vessel for solid support is the result of decisions made over a decade ago to scrap sister ship, RFA Fort George. She was selected for the axe in 2010 simply because she was due for a major refit and the two older Forts class vessel were cheaper to run. RFA Fort Rosalie and Fort Austin could not be adapted to support the carriers and are so old that the sensible decision to scrap them was announced in the March 2021 Defence Command Paper. The problem has been further compounded by the failure to place orders for new vessels during the 2010-20 ‘lost decade of austerity’.
The DCP confirmed three new Fleet Solid Support Ships will be built but the competition for the contract has still not been restarted and it will be the late 2020s at least before the first of the new ships are in service.
Hopefully, the fire was not serious enough to delay Fort Vic in joining the deployment. Although no slouch, with a top speed of about 20 knots she is the slowest of the vessels in the task group. For this deployment, the aircraft carrier will be marginally less reliant on replenishment at sea than in future. HMS Queen Elizabeth has a good reserve of fuel and plenty of storage space available. Taking 7 Merlins and 18 F-35s on this trip, she is at about 50% of her designed aircraft capacity but these numbers will increase for future deployments. Planned combat operations in support of Operation Shader against Daesh in Syria will likely have modest munitions requirements.
So much focus at the time on scrapping Ark Royal, the T22’s and Harriers but for my money getting rid of Fort George purely to avoid a refit and selling Largs Bay for a paltry few million had to be the stupidest penny pinching decisions that SDSR 2010 came up with.
As stated it might have been barely acceptable if a FSS program was launched in the following few years, but here we are 11 years later and still waiting!
The loss of the Bay was a tragedy.
A tragedy? Really? We still have 3. The Real tragedy was cutting our escort fleet to just 19 ships.
Absolutely, typical of Cameron’s gambling defence cuts….
Replacement ships were needed 3 years ago….!
Be in no doubt. Cameron didn’t dispose of Fort George or Largs Bay. The Navy made the choice, prioritising other things. The Navy also put the FSS work ongoing at the time on hold, not restarting it until 2016.
Easy to say we should have x,y,z. It was a bit different at the time.
The Forts are fantastic ships. But cost a fortune to run.
Its 2020 , nothing is cheap. I just looked it up, charter a mid sized 8000 teu containership is $50,000 per day
The numbers for Fort Victoria are at the high end.
If we had all 4 up and running it would be a good chunk of the RFA’s budget.
I do have some idea of costs of shipping thank you for the interesting but tenuous example,
How do you know the running costs of the Forts?
Your friends in the Kremlin!!
You use Google and type in “annual running cost Fort class RFA”.
And you get official open source HMG documents.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/458670/Revised_2015-06440_Average_costs_RN_Surface_vessels.pdf
Thanks for providing this info Richard.
Shows Fort Victoria is £40,000 per day
Let’s not forget the reason they got so complicated was the T23 project – they were supposed to be mother ships for the brood with active weapons systems, radar as well as command and control.
So there is a load of capability and spaces built into the Fort Vics that were never really used to full effect.
Being built with a big complex crewing in mind they will need more resources to run than an equivalent modern ship.
Yes they were built FFBNW Sea Wolf and extra crew. But they are a not complicated ship because of that. All those systems from the trackers to the VLS could have been easily accommodated on the big hull never mind the extra bodies. They are complex because they are designed to house and dispense a huge variety of stores from the humble fish finger to helicopter gearboxes and many other things in between. All in a hull that has to be able to pace fast moving warships.
The Sea Wolf VLS can be seen at the centre of the picture. Compare how little space it takes up with the similar system aboard the T23’s on each beam.
http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i11/darrenpyper/highlight.jpg
So seawolf silos were actually installed, but never actually used?
There are no such things as SW silos. The space (and covers) were there, but the various internal seatings, missile control units, trackers etc were never fitted.
Sorry. I have should have been clearer.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Back in the day, both AOR needed rebuilds to comply with MARPOL, whereas the old Forts didn’t. So understandable to a degree that one of them went.
What MoD hadn’t figured out was that there would be a reason the old Forts wouldn’t be allowed alongside QEC.
The whole hoopla about UK build has cost at least two years and will probably result in much less capable ships. If they can be shoehorned in between T31, T32, MROSS and all the other shiny gizzits. Shame there were two UK designs a couple of years ago – neither of which were BAES/ Babcock.
This one will run and run.
Any idea where did Fort George went to?
Aliaga.
For anyone interested in where old RN/RFA ships end up
DESA ship recycling reports – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Is it really a single point of failure though. The whole point of Nato and these European defense alliances is that we can benefit from other nato support ships including as part of a carrier strike group. Unfortunately the European navies have been cut to the bone with no expeditionary ships worth talking about so they can spend their money on building two or three high end Frigates with barely any missiles. Germany sharing the Karel Dorman being a fine example of lack of logistics. I’d like to think the USA, Australia and Japan would be able to offer support ships in the Pacific.
Dont forget the 4 ships of the Point Class PFI. 23,000 tons each
Point Class PFI runs until 2025. They’re out of service before Fort Vic.
Rolling it over ? The ships surely have a longer life
Something else that should have been addressed in the Command Paper but wasn’t.
‘’Id like to think the USA, Australia and Japan would be able to offer support ships in the Pacific.”
Yes . Australia has its new HMAS Supply ( 19,000 T)now in service, while NZ has just taken delivery of its new HMNZS Aotearoa( 23,000T)
The downside of their navies wanting the Mk. 41 VLS! With No money left in the budgets for support ships. I am sure there are cheaper ways to launch Tomahawk?
Well they used to be launched by hand.
Would it make sense for the Royal Navy to have have its own fire service, like the RAF has? Also RAF Stations have own fire engines.
Civilian water carrying fire engines, I am sure, are unsuitable for the type of fires on ships.
Portland stopped being a Naval Base and Airstation decades ago ( I was based there in the mid 80s as part of FOST FMG . The FMG group was on the actual pier in the photo which is Coaling Pier leading onto Deep water jetty where the vessel is moored.). The airstation, HMS OSPREY had its own fire station that serviced the airfield and the adjoining naval base.
The advantage for the RFA and RN is everyone who joins a vessel does a mandatory firefighting course. It’s not just first aid fire fighting with extinguishers but wearing fire suits , BA sets, multi hose fire fighting using foam and water in smoke filled compartments. In addition you have a cadre of NBCD Q qualified senior rates who do a 6 week course on fire fighting and other damage control to fall back on.
In a fire on a ship the local brigade is usually relegated to boundary cooling and search and rescue and then its by invitation only by the Officer of the Day or CO. The ship’s crew do the fire fighting because they are more familiar with the ship, its layout and compartments and the equipment to use. Another factor is the Local Brigades priority is to save life and all else is pretty much secondary. On a ship the crews priority is extinguish the fire to save the ship. If you don’t everyone gets wet.
Every person on board an RFA, RN vessel is trained in firefighting. It’s one big fire service.
But the civilian fire service are the experts to give support. They will liaise regularly with the RFA and have detailed plans on vessels that are likely to come across on a regular basis, just as they have detailed plans and will inspect large buildings where there are known risks.
Fire appliances have access to a range of retardants.
The whole Fire Fighting task is undertaken by the Ship’s Crew as has been shown in this incident with back up provided by Civvy Fire Fighters, let’s not add additional expenses.
Not the core subject but we squeezed 3 Merlins in to the hangar a long time ago in the early 2000s with mk1. Nice to see enough helicopters on board to do it again, but certainly not a first, despite what the Junglies would have you believe.
given the often said statement that steel is cheap, surely we should build hangers that are big enough to take the Helo’s without a folding tail. not sure how much this would save on the helo’s but it does seem to be a transfer of cost from one pot to another, when an extra metre or 2 length would cost a lot less and is always useful.
No. They could be 10 metres beamier and 10 metres longer and folding tails would still be useful. We need folding rotors on a squadron of CH47.
https://www.flightglobal.com/helicopters/us-army-europe-calls-for-more-ch-47-blade-folding-kits/123868.article
Exactly.
‘build hangers that are big enough …”
Could it be because the Sea Kings were 56 ft long while the Merlins are 64 ft ..plus tail rotor allowance
There’s only one carrier too.
Yes. And it is never to be deployed at any real tempo either. We would need three (perhaps four) times as many tankers and two to three times as many solid stores ships to do that. The USN operating CVN has saved them having to build a fair few numbers of hulls.
I was under the impression that the Tide class had a limited solid sores capability. If this is the case the AOR is not the only supply ship..
True. But only up to a point. Forts carry a huge range of items.
Limited means a few tens of square metres of stores holds and the odd reefer container. The FSS requirement is in the thousands.
Both Australia & New Zealand have shiny new AOR’s recently commissioned. As a fill in for Fort Vic (as per the basis of the article), do either cut the mustard? Realistically, who else in the area can fill in if they can’t?
Not really the same thing. The ships you reference are primarily tankers, with some limited space for solid stores and very limited space for munitions. They’re not intended or designed to support large scale task groups.
A carrier group can consume something like 25 tonnes of food per day, plus all the other stuff you need like bin bags, bog roll, cleaning products etc. That means you can easily be throwing over 100 or so pallets across every week.
That’s before you get to spares and munitions, which tend to be nationally owned, valuable and have monitored stowage and storage regimes (explosive safety regs are non-trivial). It’s a fairly big deal putting them on someone else’s storeship and therefore in their custody (however well you get on).
That’s why FSS is such a unique requirement and why there are no immediate off the shelf options for it. We’re making do with Fort Vic through necessity, not choice. Her solids capacity is actually quite low for her size because her entire mid-section is cargo fuel.
N-a-B
Thanks for the informative reply. Checked with the RAN website, new RAN AOR has 470t dry stores & 270t ammunition, so roughly 2-3 weeks supply.
Your post raised another question that I have not actually considered. What is the arrangement on something like this re ammunition for allied ships? There are 2 other navies ships at the start & others may join as they progress. Eg: All current RN escorts are armed with 4.5” main gun, but none of the others are. Most of the possible additional non RN escorts (Australia, New Zealand, Singapore etc) will have either 5” (127mm) or 3” (76mm) to add to the existing German & USN ships. Some of the smaller calibers may be in more general use & fuel is basic. At the moment only UK support ships are listed.
It’s not necessarily weight driven, lots of cargo types are area or volume driven/limited, so your RAN values may not match what can be fitted in. You’re also assuming it’s rigs are compatible with QNLZ, which may not be the case. Fuel is easy, solids not so much.
As for other nations ammo, who knows? Will depend on whether the individual ammunition types have been cleared for stowage aboard RFA and in what compatibility groups. This loggy stuff is non-trivial.
Don’t think the Germans are coming along though, suspect you mean the Cloggies.
Sorry, got confused with that German frigate that appears will be doing its own SCS cruise somewhere round the same time.
Was RFA Fort George really past it ??,
No. Of the two, she was in the better material condition, had not been bombed during build, had not been passed between three shipyards after the original build yard had the contract terminated and was the (slightly) younger of the two.
But she was due for a refit which meant capital outlay, which doomed her.
But either ship was only a stopgap wrt carrier strike. Not enough solid stores cargo capacity in an AOR.