HMCS Hell’s gate has suffered a serious Breakdown during the exercise as she threw out her Propeller leaving her dead in the water. She will be out from the AA Portion of the exercise until she gets a new propeller. MV Asterix will pull along side Hells gate to conduct the repairs.
I had not developed that capability. Does the repair/service ship have a crane-extension the extends under the water, so it’s claw will take the prop off the drive shaft. Are divers involved? When the new propeller is mounted, is underwater welding needed? Do they use an Allen wrench, Torx screwdriver?
Is the crane articulated in 2 or 3 places?
Sorry, I do not know about this system.
Thank you.
Well first we need to assess the Damage done by the loss of her the propeller. Like the drive shaft and Seals to ensure that there is no water ingress. If the damage is quite severe to do it out at sea. she will have to be towed back home for dry docking. In the mean time Guards will be stationed in case the ROD marines tries to Board her as we are in the middle of the Pacific Trident exercise.
After a 3 month investigation into the sinking of the HMCS St Laurent and the mechanical break downs of her sister ships. The RCN has made the decision to terminate the Type 26 program. All active and unfinished Type 26s will be decommissioned immediately to be disposed of. The details of this investigation will not be disclosed. The RCN has resumed the NC Future Surface Combatant program and a new design team has been established to look for another ship to replace the failed class.
In other news a new law has been passed in NC Parliament today Bill NC-1959, The Protection of Military and Civil Projects Act. This bill bans Small Automatous engineering organizations like Skunkworks, access to government projects considering them to be unreliable and a danger to the defence and civil industry. This came as a response to the “Goose Works” incident last year.
NC Future Surface Combatant Project.
The new Design team has put forward 3 proposals for a future warship.
1. Finish the Uncompleted Type 26 Hulls into a new variant that will address its problems (Type 26A).
2. Build a combined fleet of County and Amazon class Destoryers refitted with modern missiles.
3. Go for the French Horizon or Singapore's Formidable class.
NC Future surface Combatant program
The New Design Team has started a 5 month long planning stage to figure out the best approaches needed to getting the Type 26 frigate viable again. The Team will split up into various committees based on their assigned tasks, like hull design, weapons, engines, radar etc. They are also working on a new class of Missile cruisers to replace the US Made Ticonderoga's.
In the Meantime the RCN has contracted the shipyards in BC and Nova Scotia to build a small number of a interim class of ships based on the Type 21s until the Type 26s are ready again.