Erm, that's not improvising. That's the main reason Tornado ADV's are stationed at Leuchars. The point is that NATO can't guarantee to maintain air superiority over Scandanavia and through the GIUK gap with the forces that are deployed there. Carriers are going to have to be sent to patrol the gap and defend against Tu-95's flying around the Kola Peninsula and over the Norwegian Sea in to the North Atlantic. What do you think that the CV-90's would be doing in a NATO/Soviet war if not that?
HMS EAGLE in the Falklands
- Thread starter flasheart
- Start date
Yeah there was a lot of speculation about this
I seem to recall a number of issues were raised. That being said my recollection is that acquiring French made SSN's was believed by some to be reasonably possible if the Canadians were prepared to pay for them. Acquiring the skills to operate them may have been another issue .
Uhm CANDU most certainly can be used to burn natural uranium into plutonium and also produces tritium in usable quantities. That the Canadians did not want to use it for plutonium production is only a matter of choice.
Not much in comparison to US preparations to put REFORGER in to action. In a situation where tensions are escalating every defensive preparation is interpreted as a marker of war intentions, but no one would recommend making no defensive preparations.
After nearly 2 years, a word document that grew into 423 pages and a Turtledove along the way we have finally arrived at the conclusion of this TL.
A look ahead into the not too distant but very different future.
Massive thank you to everyone who has read and contributed to this TL and I hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
I may be tempted to write a spin off or an appendix later on or produce a story only thread but in the meantime please enjoy what grew in to an admittedly rather large update.
Flasheart
A look ahead into the not too distant but very different future.
Massive thank you to everyone who has read and contributed to this TL and I hope that you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it.
I may be tempted to write a spin off or an appendix later on or produce a story only thread but in the meantime please enjoy what grew in to an admittedly rather large update.
Flasheart
A Grand Day Out
HMNB Portsmouth, 2nd May 2022
The old man had been looking forward to this day for quite a while. As he sat on the train already, he was spotting other men who were clearly making the journey for the same reason as him. They were instantly recognisable in that they were all at least 60 years old, wearing dark suits and had the tell tale give away of a British Armed Forces veterans badge on their suit jackets.
In Britain and on the Falkland Island’s themselves what had become known as the Falklands War was usually commemorated on the 30th of May which was the date that the Argentine forces had surrendered.
On the Falklands this date was one of almost religious significance and was referred to as Liberation Day. The commemorations there included a service of remembrance at the cathedral in Port Stanley and the laying of wreaths at the Liberation Memorial.
In Argentina the 2nd of April was celebrated as Malvinas Day as that was the date when Argentine forces had first landed on the islands.
For the Royal Navy however there was a date even more important than the 30th of May. The RN celebrated the 2nd of May which was the anniversary of the Battle of The Falkland Islands where they had won a decisive and crushing victory over the Argentine foe in a battle that become the stuff of legend.
This was the reason why the old man was making this journey down to Portsmouth. For along with the increasing number of men who were roughly his age and dressed just like him he was a member of the HMS EAGLE Association which every year held an reunion of the men who had served aboard HMS EAGLE during the Falklands War to mark the anniversary of the Battle of The Falklands. This year was especially significant as it marked the 40th anniversary of the battle.
Thus, this year the reunion was being hosted in Portsmouth aboard the flagship of the Royal Navy the current HMS EAGLE.
As the train made its way through more and more stops on its journey to Portsmouth Harbour the old man began feel overjoyed as he recognised faces and be reunited with friends he hadn’t seen in many years or even decades. The increasingly large group of veterans joked to each other about how they had gotten even uglier in the many years since. The old man had been in his twenties during the Falklands War along with most of the old friends he now shared a carriage with. Forty years on he was now well into his sixties and a grandfather along with most of the men. In fact, the youngest EAGLE Falklands veteran would now be 58. The passage of time meant that there would be plenty much older than him and a few who could not attend having sadly run out of time in life.
As the train arrived in Portsmouth Harbour and disgorged what was now a fairly sizeable chunk of the crew of the former HMS EAGLE the old man felt almost as if he was in his twenties again as he and his old shipmates walked past many of those same pubs that they used to frequent as they made their way towards the dockyard. Like many of the old sailors present today the Old man’s wife (whom he hadn’t met until after he had left the navy) had declined to accompany him on the grounds that previous reunions had taught her that today would probably be little more than an exercise in drinking too much.
Walking through Portsmouth Historic Dockyard past the magnificently restored HMS WARRIOR and HMS VICTORY the veterans were met by a coach which transported them to Middle Slip Jetty where EAGLE was berthed.
The sight of the 64,000 ton 285 long ship dominating the dockyard brought back a flood of memories of all those times he had seen his HMS EAGLE do the same. As the coach pulled up by the gangway it was difficult not to feel insignificant when stood next to the gigantic ship.
As they made their way up to the top of the gangway the veterans were greeted by the sight of the ships Battle Honours Board.
In total there had been 19 Royal Navy ships named HMS EAGLE with the first one having been commissioned in 1592. Over the course of 430 years the name EAGLE had been awarded 17 battle honours starting with Portland in 1653. The men of the previous HMS EAGLE still had proud memories of the day in 1983 when the ship had been presented with a new and updated Battle Honours Board that now had Falkland Islands 1982 on it. Of course, in later years even that board had ultimately been replaced by yet another updated one that bore the honour Al Flaw 2003.
The men were led into the hangar where a reception was taking place as the men of the old HMS EAGLE mingled with the crew of the current EAGLE, the ships affiliates and generally the great and the good.
The old man as always was struck by the sheer size of the cavernous hangar. This was despite it not really being that much bigger by volume than the one he had spent so much of his life in aboard the old EAGLE. The difference was that aboard the old EAGLE the hangar was split up into two decks whereas the hangar aboard the current EAGLE was one massive space. The old EAGLE had been designed during the second world war when aircraft were piston powered and much smaller. The problem was that in the following decades the piston powered WWII era aircraft had been replaced by jet aircraft that increased in size at an alarming rate. He remembered how difficult it used to be to try and squeeze Phantom’s and Buccaneer’s into a space that had been intended to accommodate aircraft of such size. Indeed, fitting everything into the hangar had required aircraft to be parked with sometimes only centimetres of space around them.
Spread around the hangar of the current EAGLE were displays of the various departments and their capabilities. The old man noticed photos of the current hangar when filled with aircraft and was struck by how much space they had around them and how easy the current generation of aircraft technicians had it compared to his own.
His thoughts were interrupted when over the ships intercom he heard the distinctive sound of pipes being blown on the gangway followed by the Quartermaster ordering the ships company to face towards the gangway and salute a certain VVIP. The former First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Cunningham Kirkwood Slater better known as Jock Slater formerly the Commanding Officer of HMS EAGLE during the Falklands Conflict had arrived. Since relinquishing command of HMS EAGLE over to the then Captain Alan Grose Jock Slater had had a very distinguished career and ultimately become the head of the Royal Navy and retired in 1998. The old man overheard some members of the current EAGLE’s ships company with sight smirks on their faces noting how the current commanding officer of EAGLE seemed slightly nervous in the presence of his predecessor and living legend.
Slater along with many of his former senior officers was now well into his 80’s. There was one other man who had become a naval legend as a result of HMS EAGLE’s actions in the Falklands who was sadly absent. Admiral Sandy Woodward who had made EAGLE his flagship during that conflict had sadly passed away almost 10 years previously. His name however lied on in the navy in many ways. For example, today many new recruits arriving for basic training at HMS RALEIGH find themselves members of Woodward Division.
Looking around at the members of the current ships company the old man thought to himself that despite many decades having past they looked, sounded and acted like he and his shipmates had when they were their age. It was amazing how some of the younger ratings looked almost exactly the same as men he had known all those years ago. That’s when it dawned on him that there probably were some currently serving onboard who were the children or grandchildren of the men who had been aboard the previous EAGLE. Indeed, he had happy memories of showing his own father around that ship a very long time ago. He came from a long line of navy men and his father had served in the RN during the second world war and once recounted how he had shown his father around the battleship HMS VANGUARD.
These happy thoughts were suddenly interrupted when an officer tapped the old man on the shoulder and asked if he would like to join a tour of the ship. An offer which the old man enthusiastically accepted.
The current HMS EAGLE was now about 25 years old and having a connection with the ship this wasn’t the first time the old man had been aboard and so he had some familiarity with the ship. This time however things were very different. In 2020 EAGLE had completed a very expensive 2 year midlife overhaul/service life extension refit which had been almost a complete rebuild and dramatically altered and modernised the ship.
As he toured the ship the old man listened as the officer guiding the group rattled off various facts and figures about the many extensive changes that had been made including the miles of piping and cabling that had been ripped out and replaced. In the Operations Room he heard about how the ships old combat information system ADAWS which in its earliest form dated back to the 1970’s and had been used aboard the INVINCIBLE class, TYPE 42 Destroyers and HMS BRISTOL had been finally declared obsolete and removed. In its place had come CMS which was the system used aboard the TYPE 45 Destroyer’s. Doing this had necessitated ripping out nearly every console in the Operations Room and replacing them with brand new state of the art equipment. Looking around the old man found it hard to believe that this Operations Room was on a ship well over two decades old as it looked like it should belong on a ship that was brand new. In a brief chat with some of the ships company one of the weapons engineers perfectly illustrated the difference a few decades had made when he described the ships computer room. Located just below the Ops Room the Computer Room held the banks of computer hardware that were required to make the computerised Operations Room function. During the refit this elderly hardware had naturally been ripped out and replaced with the hardware required to support CMS. The difference was that nearly 30 years advancement in computer technology meant that the new hardware occupied less than a quarter of the space while having vastly more processing power. The Weapons Engineer recounted how they had been at something of a loss as to what to do with the large amount of newly empty space freed up in the compartment and now used it as a workshop/WE storage compartment.
Carrying on the tour through out the ship there didn’t seem to be a single area untouched by the refit. Deck coverings had been replaced, the galley had been completely rebuilt, the ship now had a dedicated gym in a compartment that had been freed up due to a slightly reduced crew complement thanks to greater automation.
Up on the vast flight deck was where the changes were the most obvious. The Island superstructure had been completely remuddled.
The Type 1022 air search radar which had sat above the bridge was gone. In its place was a much larger and much more powerful Type 1046 radar that was also found aboard the TYPE 45 Destroyer. The much larger and much heavier radar along with its associated machinery had resulted in the front end of the superstructure above the bridge having to be significantly enlarged to accommodate it. Further back along the superstructure the Type 996 target indication radar had been replaced with the much more modern Type 997 as had happened aboard the TYPE 23 Frigates. In terms of armament the four Phalanx CIWS’s had been upgraded and the 16 Sea Wolf SAM’s located right at the aft end of the flight deck either side of the glide path had been replaced with the new and massively more capable Sea Ceptor.
Being ex Fleet Air Arm the old man was naturally interested in the upgrades made to the aircraft operating facilities on the flight deck.
He was particularly impressed by a large flat screen TV that was now mounted onto the superstructure and visible from most of the flight deck. Apparently, it was quite effective for conveying information to those on the flight deck. A far cry from his day when they had to rely to a large extend on hand signals and runners.
Lined up along the centre line of the flight deck was a selection of aircraft that represented each type that made up the air group of the modern HMS EAGLE. Seeing this brought back memories of all the times he had helped line up Phantoms and Buccaneers in similarly impressive formations on the deck of the old EAGLE.
Stranding by the aircraft were a number of youngish men and women in uniform who were obviously the FAA’s current generation of aircrew. These younger airmen were visibly in awe of the group of older men they were talking to. The older men were now mostly into their 70’s but the old man was delighted to recognise the familiar faces. These men a long time ago had been aircrew themselves and had flown the aircraft that had destroyed both the Argentine Navy and Air Force. A good number of the Phantom crews were the only living British air aces.
Captain Nigel “Sharkey” Ward who had commanded 892 Naval Air Squadron and EAGLE’s Phantoms during that conflict was present. Now nearly 80 years old the young pilots who had not even been born when the Falklands War occurred were clearly holding on to his every word as the man who had been awarded a DSO and DFC for his leadership of the squadron and bravery in the air and had shot 3 Argentine Mirage’s out of the sky chatted pleasantly to them. EAGLE’s Phantom pilots had become living legends in the military aviation community and in the yards following the conflict had been highly sought after in instructor roles and even all these decades later were still occasionally asked to give lectures about their experiences to modern military pilots all over the world. The 1986 American movie Top Gun had reflected this by portraying one of the instructor pilots as a British Falklands veteran.
The Buccaneer crews were also legendary but alongside this were infamous in some circles. In Britain they were celebrated as the men who had destroyed an enemy fleet and pounded an army into near submission and could be argued to have won the war themselves. In Argentina they were accused mass murder and war crimes (without any detail of the basis of this last claim). For that reason, the men formerly of 809 Naval Air Squadron generally kept out of the public eye a little more than their former Phantom flying counterparts.
The Falklands War was still an open and sore wound for Argentina even 40 years later. The old man remembered having travelled to Argentina some years ago as part of an official exchange of veterans to help repair bridges between the two nations. He had attended a very solemn ceremony at the Monument to the Fallen in the Malvinas in Buenos Aires which bore the names of all 2772 Argentinians who had died during the conflict. He had even travelled south to Puerto Belgrano Naval Base where he had viewed the Naval memorial to the Argentine sailors lost at sea with each ship having its own plaque. He had gotten the very distinct feeling that the Argentine military personnel who had accompanied the British contingent throughout the trip were really bodyguards. He’d been struck at how significant the Falklands Conflict seemed to be in the Argentine national psyche when compared to Britain. He had concluded that this was due to it being the only significant international conflict that Argentina had taken part in within living memory and the far reaching national consequences that had resulted. Namely the overthrow of the Argentine military government.
This contrasted to Britain where the Falklands was increasingly just one amongst many other international conflicts that Britain had fought in within living memory.
One thing that annoyed many in Britain was the habit of successive Argentine governments to try to rekindle the Falklands sovereignty dispute whenever they needed a quick popularity boost or a political distraction. The position of the British government on the issue was that the Falklands were British territory populated by British citizens and that was the end of the matter. There would also be the occasional implied hint of “If you are thinking of doing anything stupid remember what happened last time”.
There were plenty of recent examples of how the Falklands War even years later was still able to stir up a strong emotional response from many within Argentina.
In 2014 while filming their “Patagonia Special” in Argentina the presenters and crew of the BBC programme Top Gear had been forced to abandon filming and flee the country to escape what they described as a “lynch mob” after locals took offence to a vehicle number plate. This incident caused a diplomatic spat between Britain and Argentina and was shown to have hurt Argentina’s image abroad as many English speaking countries for a short while advised their citizens against non-essential travel to Argentina.
In November of 2018 the wreak of the submarine ARA SAN LUIS was discovered, proving the British claim to have sunk her during the Battle of the Falkland Islands. News of the discovery had resulted in protests outside of the British embassy and a demand for an apology from the British Government for destroying the boat. The demand had been given a stiff ignoring by the British.
Many of the surviving Phantom’s, Buccaneer’s and Gannet’s that had served with the RN and in some cases subsequently served with the RAF had found their way into various museum collections following retirement. The old man volunteered at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton which possessed a number of Phantom’s and Buccaneer’s that had been repainted in their former RN colours complete with kill markings. There had been incidents where the aircraft had been targeted by anti war activists as perceived symbols of British imperialism. In one incident swift and somewhat brutal intervention by the old man despite his age had prevented damage to the exhibits.
The old man’s attention now turned to the impressive line up of modern aircraft before him. Having worked in the aerospace industry since leaving the RN he was familiar with these aircraft and the stories behind them.
First up was the Goshawk. Essentially a navalised version of the BAE Hawk trainer (which had proven itself to be a massive export success and was still in production after nearly 50 years) the Goshawk was used to train pilots in the art of operating from the deck of a carrier. Compared to the loss of almost a third of the RN’s Phantom fleet in accidents barely a handful of the Hornet’s that had succeeded it had been lost due to accidents. This had proven the value of a naval specific fast jet trainer. The US Navy operated more than 200 examples of the type and even the French Aeronavale had purchased a small number of the type. Goshawk’s weren’t just used for training new pilots. Aircrew who hadn’t landed aboard a carrier for more than 6 months were required to requalify using the Goshawk. Small numbers of Goshawk’s were usually carried as a standard component of the air group for training purposes.
The example on display today was one of the still fairly new Goshawk T2’s. The Goshawk had first entered service with the RN in 1991. Service at sea takes its toll on aircraft due to the harsh conditions meaning that they often have shorter lifespans than their land based counterparts. Has the first generation of Goshawk’s had begun to approach the end of their service lives the RN had decided to replace them with new build modernised Goshawk’s. The RAF had already been in the process of developing what would become known as the Hawk T2. Many of their requirements in terms of modernisation were almost identical to what the RN wanted and the production lines were still open meaning that a joint project had been undertaken.
The Goshawk T2 featured a glass cockpit with modern avionics that were designed to as closely as possible resemble the layout of the cockpit of the frontline aircraft that students would transition onto.
The USN had placed a big order for the Goshawk T2 which they referred to as the T45 Goshawk C and which like the original Goshawk was manufactured in the US by Boeing (who had taken over McDonnel Douglas).
The land based Hawk continued to receive export orders from all over the world and was considered a reliable source of income for the British aviation industry.
Next up was another new build aircraft, the Hawkeye AEW aircraft. As with the Goshawk the E-2C Hawkeye’s that the RN operated had eventually begun to struggle with obsolescence and simple aircraft age. The USN which operated the same type had faced the same issues. Their solution had been to develop what became known as the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. The E-2D as with the Goshawk was a modernised version of an existing aircraft. The new Hawkeye featured a new and much more capable radar, modern avionics a much more powerful onboard mission computer and communications and information exchange suite. All of these made the E-2D a significant improvement over the E-2C that had originally been purchased by the RN.
The 2015 Defence Review which had sought in part to undo some of the damage inflicted by the 2010 review had resulted in the procurement of 8 E-2D Advanced Hawkeye’s from the US as part of a wider upgrade of the UK’s ISTAR capabilities.
As part of this revamping of ISTAR capability significant numbers of UAV’s were to be procured and new types developed as Britain tried to muscle its way into the UAV market. Indeed, all RN ships now carried a UAV of some description such as the Boeing ScanEagle.
The 2015 review had called for the eventual retirement and replacement of the venerable Nimrod MPA. The current version was the Nimrod MRA4 which had been in service for just over 10 years now. The MRA4 aircraft were essentially rebuilt and thoroughly modernised MR2’s. Unfortunately, there were a number of issues with the MRA4. Cost overruns, delays and budget cuts as a result of the 2010 Strategic Defence Review had seen the planned number of aircraft reduced to a final count of 9 which had been further reduced to 8 after one was lost in an accident which wasn’t really enough to do the job. There was no getting around the fact that despite the rebuilds the individual airframes were already pretty old as was a lot of the equipment onboard meaning that maintenance and maintaining sources of spare parts had always been disproportionately and increasingly difficult and expensive. An issue exacerbated by the non standardisation of many aspects of the individual aircraft.
It had been concluded that rather than continuing to press ahead with maintaining aircraft that were gradually becoming money pits a new aircraft should be purchased off the shelf. It had been decided to by something off the shelf rather than develop a new aircraft in order to save money on development costs which would allow the RAF to purchase and operate the greater number of aircraft they felt they required. To this end the first of a planned 16 Boeing P8 Poseidon’s would enter service in 2025.
Another aircraft being replaced was the Sentry AEW.1 AWACS aircraft. The Sentry had proven itself worth its weight in gold in terms of the capability it offered. However, the aircraft had been beginning to show their age and would not remain cutting edge forever and so a requirement for a replacement had been identified. At the time the American’s were not looking to develop a replacement aircraft and the RAF hadn’t felt that the other smaller AWACS aircraft available really met their requirements.
To this end a new British developed AWACS aircraft had been procured. The BAE/Airbus Guardian AEW.2 was an Airbus A330 airframe fitted with a large and powerful British made active electronically scanned array. The A330 had already been chosen as the RAF’s new AAR Tanker aircraft meaning that there was already experience with the type and existing supply chains. The aircraft was large meaning that it could carry a large radar and its associated machinery long with large computer banks and communications equipment. The Guardian AEW.2 was a massive step up from the Sentry AEW.1 that it was replacing and 7 examples had been ordered for the RAF. With the Americans deciding to press ahead with upgrades to their existing fleet of Sentry’s the Guardian was easily the newest and most modern AWACS aircraft available for export and had already attracted an order from France (who already manufactured the A330 airframes) who intended to procure 4 of the aircraft to replace their own Sentry’s and strong interest from Saudi Arabia and possibly other nations.
Next up were the frontline helicopter types operated by the RN. First was the AgustaWestland AW101 known in the RN as the Merlin which had now completely replaced the venerable Sea King which had been operated by the RN for close to four decades.
Two variants were in service with the FAA. The first was the HM2 ASW variant. The Merlin being a large helicopter leant itself well to the ASW role as it had the space and lift capacity for an impressive loadout of ASW weapons and sonobuoys along with a powerful dipping sonar and surface search radar and an onboard acoustic data processing system while still having a respectable amount of spare capacity for passengers and cargo. With the exception of the small ships the Merlin was capable of being operated from pretty much every vessel in the RN’s order of battle. Much like the old HMS EAGLE had routinely carried at least 6 Sea King’s onboard for ASW defence (with the notable exception of the Falklands War) the modern HMS EAGLE was never without a flight of Merlin HM2’s for the same reason.
The other variant of the Merlin operated by the FAA was the HC4 commando transport which had replaced the old Sea King HC.4’s within the Commando Helicopter Force. The troop carrying variant of the Merlin was also operated in large numbers by the RAF where it had been procured to replace the Westland Wessex and had also ultimately ended up replacing the Westland Puma. In total the UK operated just over 70 of the type with only very minor differences between the RN and RAF aircraft. The Merlin was another British built aircraft that had been widely exported.
In recent years it had become standard practise for the RN’s carriers to carry a pair of Merlin HC4’s onboard along with a detachment of Royal Marines onboard to provide a combat search and rescue capability. This had come about as a consequence of the carriers being used to conduct airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria where the ultimate nightmare scenario had been an aircraft being lost resulting in a pilot trapped behind enemy lines in ISIL territory.
Next to the pair of Merlin’s was another aircraft that looked familiar yet very different to the aircraft the old man remembered. Originally the Merlin had been intended to replace all types of frontline helicopter in service with the RN including the Westland Lynx. The RN however had been unwilling to dispense with the Lynx for the larger Merlin as they felt they still had a need for a smaller and more nimble light utility helicopter. Furthermore, they had identified the continuing need for a helicopter capable of ASUW warfare as the Merlin (which only carried torpedoes and depth charges) was unable to carryout this role. In recent years the rise in the perceived threat of swarm attacks from small craft in chokepoints such as the Straits of Hormuz and the RN’s commitments to anti piracy and anti smuggling operations had reinforced the need for what was essentially a small and very fast helicopter gunship which could also carry a small number of commandos for boarding operations. There was also the fact that whereas the RN’s frigates and destroyers had enough hanger space for one Merlin sized aircraft two smaller Lynx sized helicopters could be squeezed in. The result was what had been known as the Surface Combatant Maritime Rotorcraft project unofficially known as Future Lynx. The MOD did receive some criticism for pressing ahead with an updated Lynx rather than holding an open competition or considering other options. The intention had originally been to rebuild and thoroughly modernise existing Lynx helicopters. As the list of requirements had grown along with the estimated costs of fitting the various bits of modern technology demanded by the RN it had been decided that in the long term it would be better to build completely new airframes as this would allow the designers and engineers greater freedom to do what was necessary and provide for a longer aircraft service life. Politically this had played well as a great many more jobs were sustained by building completely new airframes. The result of this had been an aircraft that while externally looking near enough like the Lynx that it was developed from in actuality comprised 95% completely new components.
The aircraft had been named Lynx Wildcat but this had soon been changed to Wildcat reflecting that this was a completely new aircraft.
The Wildcat was armed with a formidable array of weaponry. Most notably it could carry 20 of the new Martlet light air to surface missiles which had been specifically designed to take on small fast moving craft such as those used by smugglers, pirates and Iran’s IRGC. Along with Martlet the Wildcat could also carry the larger Sea Venom ASM for taking on larger targets, heavy machine guns and ASW weapons in the form of torpedoes and depth charges. It had become standard practise for ships deploying to the Middle East to carry Wildcat in the place of Merlin.
Onboard HMS EAGLE a pair of Wildcat’s were carried for general utility work and because they had proven quite good in the plane guard role.
The Wildcat was a relatively recent addition to the RN but was already gaining export orders. South Korea which faced the similar threats of small fast craft and small submarines from North Korea had found the Wildcat ideally suited to their needs and placed a significant order. The Philippines had also purchased the aircraft as they felt it would be ideal for policing the various straits and waterways between the islands that made up that nation. Other nations such as Brazil and Bangladesh had also expressed an interest.
The British Army had previously planned to purchase what would become the Wildcat to replace their own fleet of Lynx AH.7’s. However, this had not come to pass. The Army had already purchased the Apache to replace the Lynx in the attack helicopter role and had been looking to replace it in the light troop transport role due to the age and limitations of the aircraft. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had clearly shown the Lynx’s shortcomings and put the Army Air Corps in the position of urgently needing a replacement. The use of roadside IED’s had forced British forces to try and conduct as many movements as possible by helicopter to try and negate the IED threat. Unfortunately, Britain had found that it didn’t posses the required number of helicopters meaning that there was still the need to resupply forward operating bases by road and that casualties were still being sustained that might otherwise had been avoidable. The Army weren’t particularly happy with the Wildcat as they felt that it still had many of the limitations of the Lynx. Namely its small size limiting its troop carrying capacity. Crucially they felt that it would be less than ideal in the vital CASEVAC role as the medics would have difficulty treating casualties in such a small space and that the medics and door gunners would probably get in each other’s way. Furthermore, at the time the Wildcat was still in development and the Army had made the case that they couldn’t wait around for what would be a less than ideal aircraft. Instead they had decided to go with an off the shelf solution that could be brought into service relatively quickly and had purchased 45 Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk’s from the US. The British were already familiar with the Blackhawk having worked closely with US Army Aviation on operations and through exchange programmes already had a body of experience with operating the aircraft. The deciding factor had been the fact that there would be no need to pay for development costs and that the Americans could be persuaded to divert some of their aircraft already in production to the British meaning that the Blackhawk was able to fulfil the urgent need for new helicopters.
Finally, at the end of the line of aircraft the old man came to the centrepiece and real muscle of EAGLE’s air group. The Super Hornet FGR3 and FGR4.
The end of the Cold War had resulted in brutal cut backs to military development budgets all over the world including the USA with many new equipment projects cancelled. One such project was the McDonnell Douglas A12 Avenger II. Originally the Advanced Tactical Aircraft programme the A12 had been intended to be a stealth strike aircraft to replace the obsolete A6 Intruder and A7 Corsair II in US Navy service. In hindsight the A12 was considered to have been far too ambitious. As a result, the programme had been beset by endless technical difficulties which resulted in massive cost overruns and its expected entry into service being pushed back again and again. These and other issues had resulted in the A12 finding itself amongst many other aircraft that were cancelled in the early 1990’s.
With budgets already stretched and not having the time to press ahead with the development of a completely new aircraft the USN had decided to pursue an updated version of an existing aircraft to replace the A6 and A7. McDonnell Douglas had naturally put forward their own F/A-18 Hornet proposing a new generation of the design.
another programme that had been cancelled was the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter which had aimed to create a navalized variant of the Lockheed Martin F22 Raptor stealth air superiority fighter that was being developed for the USAF to replace the F15.
This left the USN with the Grumman F14D Super Tomcat as its primary air defence aircraft. The USN operated a total of 132 F14D’s along with a number of older F14B’s. The F14D was a relatively young aircraft with the first example having entered service in 1990. However, it was recognised that having been originally developed in the 1960’s the F14 design was not far off reaching the point where it would no longer be able to keep up with newer more modern designs. Therefore, the USN had decided that the A6, A7 and ultimately F14 should be replaced with a common design mainly for cost reasons. The last F14D would leave service in 2017. The choice had come down to a new incarnation of the F/A-18 or an updated version of the F14. The F/A-18 had been chosen since it had been designed from the outset to be a multirole aircraft as opposed to the F14 which was an air superiority which had some capability to perform air to ground missions. The decision to go with a common design was somewhat controversial as many argued that the resulting aircraft would be a jack of all trades but likely inferior in a given role when compared to an aircraft dedicated to that role. The resulting aircraft was called the F/A-19 E/F Super Hornet and despite a similar name and appearance was an almost entirely different aircraft compared to the older F/A-18 Hornet. The Super Hornet was significantly larger and had a much greater performance such as maximum take off weight and effective range compared to the earlier Hornet.
The Super Hornet also included a significant amount of British design input and British made components. British Aerospace (now BAE) and McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) had established a strong partnership in relation to the Hornet. When Britain had made the decision to by Hornets for the Rn and RAF back in 1983 a lot of work had gone into producing a variant of the Hornet tailored to their needs which had resulted in the Hornet FGR1 and FGR2. Many of the British innovations such as conformal fuel tanks for the Hornet had been taken up by the Americans for their F/A-18’s. The British aircraft industry had played a much larger role in the development of the Super Hornet despite Britain at the time not yet intending to purchase the aircraft. Many European nations such as Spain, Switzerland, Finland, Italy and others operated the F/A-18 and Britain had become effectively the European hub for manufacturing and support and supply chains with many components and spare parts manufacture under licence in Britain. The Americans had wanted to keep this partnership going as they felt it would help European sales prospects and the British wanted to keep it going to be able to continue supporting their own fleet of Hornet’s and to support the British aircraft industry. The first Super Hornet’s had entered service with the USN in 2001.
One of the most surprising aspects of the 2010 Defence Review and regarded by many as the only positive thing to come from that review was the decision to procure the Super Hornet as an interim replacement for the RN and RAF’s legacy Hornet’s. A total of 260 Hornet FGR1’s and FGR2’s had been procured where they had replaced the Phantom, Buccaneer and ultimately Jaguar in RAF service and the Sea Harrier in FAA service. At the time the RAF’s fast jet fleet had consisted of Hornet’s, Harrier GR9’s, Tornado GR4’s and elderly Tornado F3 interceptors. The review had been brutal with the Harrier being immediately retired without replacement, the Tornado F3 scheduled for retirement within the next few years and a number of older Hornets and a smaller number of Tornado GR4’s retired. Both the Hornet and Tornado were getting on in years and would need to be replaced within the next few years. There were some projects in the works for long term replacements but those were still many years away at the time. The Super Hornet had been a relatively obvious choice at it was based upon a proven design that the UK already operated while offering superior capabilities and without the need to pay much in the way of development costs was regarded as cost effective. The deciding factor had been political considerations which were twofold. The Super Hornet already used a great deal of British components and could be assembled within the UK the same way the original Hornets had sustaining a great many jobs within the British aircraft industry. Unlike the original Hornet which had required a lot of money and effort to “Anglicise” the baseline Super Hornet design already contained a significant proportion of British manufactured and British compatible equipment. The only major difference between the baseline F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and the British versions that would become known as the FGR3 (single seat) and FGR4 (twin seat) was the replacement of the APG-79 Radar with a British developed and manufactured CAPTOR active electronically scanned array radar. CAPTOR had been developed from the Blue Vixen radar which was already used by the Hornet FGR1 and FGR2.
The second reason was the desire by the British Government to try and break the increasing stranglehold the French were developing on the European aircraft market by selling Super Hornets assembled in Britain to other European nations as had happened with the original Hornet. The French had traditionally gone to great lengths to maintain a strong and independent domestic defence industry including aircraft. With a few exceptions the French Armed Forces were unique in possessing almost exclusively domestically manufactured equipment.
Over the years there had been various pan European attempts to produce a jointly produced combat aircraft. These projects had been given nicknames such as “Eurofighter”. All of these attempts had failed mostly due to a lack of interest from the potential largest partners. When Britain had decided to purchase the F/A-18 in the early 1980’s it had symbolised a general pivot on the part of the British towards partnership with the Americans in terms of aircraft. As a result, they hadn’t really been interested in a joint European project. The French had decided that it would be in their best interest not to participate seeing as without them such a project would likely never get off the ground and would likely push more nations into having to purchase French aircraft.
Without Britain or France onboard Germany had felt that they couldn’t commit to such a programme seeing as they felt they didn’t have the technical expertise or willingness to commit to what they felt would be the lions share of any such project and had opted to purchase American aircraft instead. The Luftwaffe had been very pleased with their F15 Eagle’s and F15E Strike Eagle’s and also continued to operate the Tornado. France had been part of the various attempts to produce a European fighter aircraft and in the aftermath of its failure had chosen to take what they had developed so far and go it alone. The result had been a delta wing, canard, twin engine multi role fighter manufactured by Dassault known as the Rafale. The Rafale was now the backbone of the French Air Force and French Naval Aviation and had been exported to a number of countries around the world.
The 2010 Defence review had committed to the purchase of 200 Super Hornet FGR3’s and FGR4’s to replace the legacy Hornet FG1’s and FGR2’ in FAA and RAF service. The RAF would also use the Super Hornet to replace the Tornado F3 in the short term. The First UK Super Hornet’s would enter service in 2014.
The 2015 defence review had been conducted against the backdrop of increased tensions with Russia and the increased likelihood of high intensity high technology warfare. As a result it had committed the UK to the procurement of yet another variant of the F/A-18. The Boeing E/A-18 Growler was an electronic warfare variant of the Super Hornet that had been developed to replace the EA-6 Prowler in USN service.
Now finding themselves desperately in need of a boost to their electronic warfare and SEAD capabilities in order to face Russian air defence systems such as the fearsome S-4000 SAM (SA-21 Growler) the UK had leapt on the chance to purchase the E/A-18. Already operating the Super Hornet and having the infrastructure in place to operate it the E/A-18 was regarded as offering a significant boost in capability and mission success chances for a relatively modest price. 36 Growlers had been procured with 12 going to the RN and 24 to the RAF.
Of course, there was more to the UK aircraft industry than just licence building Hornet’s and Super Hornet’s.
In 1997 the Labour Party had won a landslide in the general election and formed a new government. The labour government had promised to halt what it described as the long term decline of the British aircraft industry and return it to something approaching its former glory. It had been decided that the best way to do this was through a number of big ticket development programmes that would not only sustain jobs but develop expertise and the industrial base necessary for the industry to survive in the long term. Unfortunately for them there is a reason why few nations develop their own aircraft. It’s hellishly expensive, requires a level of expertise that most nations don’t posses and only really makes sense of you are intending to purchase the resulting aircraft in significant numbers. Thus, it had been decided that some sort of joint programme with another nation would be the best way ahead in order to help develop British industry to the point of being able to take on an independent project in the long term.
The Americans had been approached to see if they were interested in collaboration on what would become the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to replace the Tornado F3 interceptor. Many in the US would later claim that the British made their offer a few years earlier it would have probably been taken up. As it was by the time the British expressed an interest in the aircraft in 1998 the first prototypes had been flying for well over a year and most of the development work had already been carried out and paid for. For the American’s the main benefit of having the British aboard would have been having someone to share the massive development costs and the lower unit price achieved through having more aircraft built. Another problem was that the F22 contained a large amount of cutting edge and extremely secret stealth technology and onboard computer systems which had led the US Congress to impose a ban on exports of the aircraft. Had the British persisted they could have probably eventually been granted special permission to purchase the aircraft but it was made clear that even this would be a reduced specification export model.
On the British side when it became clear how difficult and expensive it would be to obtain the F22 interest rapidly drained away. The RAF felt that they wouldn’t be able to afford to field adequate numbers of F22’s and weren’t interested in a dedicated air superiority fighter. Going forward the preference was for multirole combat aircraft.
Far from going home with their tail between their legs the British had come back to the Americans with a new proposal. In the aftermath of the Cold War a lot of American aircraft projects had been cancelled meaning that they were in need of a new aircraft project to replace the variety of frontline types they had in service such as the F16. At the same time, they were looking to use what they had learnt with the F22 to develop a cheaper stealth fighter that could be exported. The British had proposed a joint programme to develop a common aircraft to meet the American’s and their own needs for a 5th Generation multirole aircraft. They had offered a 50/50 split of the development costs which had convinced the US government to approve the programme. The Joint Strike Fighter Programme had begun in 2001 and despite taking many years longer and costing more than it should have had produced perhaps the most advanced combat aircraft in service today. The Lockheed Martin/BAE produced aircraft was known in US service as the F35 and in British service as the Thunderchief II. The project had been successful in its aim to produce a cheaper version of the F22 stealth fighter that was exportable. The F35 Thunderchief visually looked quite similar to the F22 which had been the baseline for the design of the airframe. Britain’s contribution was the powerful Rolls Royce jet engine, various onboard systems and electronics such as the cutting edge ECM/ESM suite and much more. About 40% of each aircraft was manufactured in Britain, most notably the Rolls Royce engine and parts of the wings and fuselage and many other components. Other nations had also become involved carrying out subcontracting work to supply components.
The F35 Thunderchief II had been controversial on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain the controversy was due to the sheer cost with questions being asked as to why the Americans weren’t paying more when they would obviously be the largest users of the aircraft. Behind closed doors many were angered by the fact that it would be politically and diplomatically impossible for them to back out of what at times looked to become an unaffordable project.
On the American side many were angered by the joint nature of the project and how large of a manufacturing share Britain had claiming that American jobs and industry were being sacrificed in order to save money. For this reason, final assembly of all aircraft including those intended for export took place in Lockheed Martin’s in Fort Worth, Texas.
The first prototype had flown in 2008 and the first production aircraft had been delivered to the USAF in 2013. Already more than 500 examples had been built with the USAF being by far and away the biggest operator followed by the RAF who planned to procure a total of 150 examples (meaning that going forward its fast jet fleet would be comprised of Thunderbolt’s and Super Hornets). The F35 being the only 5th Generation fighter available on the market had been a run away export success with nations queueing up to buy it and just over 100 aircraft already in service with these countries. Australia, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Finland, Japan, South Korea and many other nations had already placed orders with more from other nations expected. All together it was estimated that well over 2000 aircraft would be ultimately produced, much to the delight of the by then British Conservative Government who were happy to take the credit for what could be creatively interpreted as a British export success.
The Lockheed Martin/BAE F35 Thunderchief II wasn’t the only fast jet project that Britain was currently involved in.
The Hawker Harrier VSTOL aircraft had been originally developed back in the 1960s and was still in service around the world most notably with the USMC. Britain had operated the Harrier in one form or another for more than 40 years but in all that time had regarded it as more of a nice to have. The Sea Harrier had only been developed for the RN as a way of maintaining some form of fixed wing capability following the decision in the 1970’s to dispense with conventional carrier aircraft. The Royal Navy hadn’t really held the aircraft in very high regard and had gotten rid of it as soon as was possible with the introduction of the Hornet. Within the history of the Fleet Air Arm the Sea Harrier was regarded as an interesting but not particularly important footnote in history. The RAF had originally procured the aircraft as they envisioned it operating from hidden rough airfields in the German countryside as they expected their air bases to be quickly put out of action by a Soviet attack. While the Harrier had been a pretty respectable ground attack and strike aircraft in later years the RAF felt that VSTOL capability was something they could manage without. The main reason why the Harrier had survived as long as it had with the RAF was that it was still pretty good at its given role and there had never been any serious attempt at replacing it. In 2010 when it became clear that savage cuts were going to be imposed on the defence budget the RAF had decided to offer up the Harrier as a sacrifice to the treasury executioners in order to safeguard their other assets.
In contrast to the Harrier’s creators in Britain the USMC were absolutely in love with the aircraft as it was capable of operating from amphibious assault ships and didn’t require a runway ashore meaning that it was ideal for providing fixed wing close air support.
VSTOL capability was something that the USMC was desperate to keep. The Harrier also continued to be operated by the Indian, Italian and Spanish Navy’s from the decks of their small carriers.
The USMC had been offered the option of buying the F35 Thunderchief II but had turned it down on the grounds that it was not capable of operating from a carrier and that they really wanted to focus on obtaining a new VTOL aircraft. They had however procured the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet to replace some of their older Hornets.
In the early days of the Joint Strike Fighter programme that eventually became the F35 a number of proposals for different variants had been looked at including a VSTOL capable variant. Pursuing this option had been decided against as it was considered that trying to shoehorn VTOL into an existing aircraft design would be far too technically difficult and expensive and would likely compromise the F35 design. It was felt that any new VTOL aircraft should be something designed for that role from the outset rather than a modification of an existing design.
The Americans had originally been interested in pursuing a joint programme with the British similar to the Joint Strike Fighter seeing as the British were regarded as the world leaders in VTOL aircraft design. However, when the British Government had decided to scrap their Harrier’s in 2010, they had made it clear that they were not interested in procuring a direct replacement. This had forced the US into having to go it alone in developing a Harrier replacement. The resulting aircraft was the Lockheed Martin AV-19 Hellcat II. The old man remembered seeing a picture of the proposed design for the first time and how the aircrafts appearance had reminded him of the Hawker Siddeley P1154 or a Harrier on steroids. Many aspects of the new aircraft were similar to the Harrier with a single engine that would switch between vertical and normal flight, downwards thrust in the centre of the fuselage and a relatively small wing. The AV-19’s main improvement over the Harrier was its superior performance with the ability to fly at supersonic speeds and to take off vertically with a full fuel and munitions load out. Though it had aspects of stealth technology onboard the AV-19 wasn’t a stealth aircraft to the same extent that the F22 and F35 were, instead relying on its performance for survivability.
Though the British Armed Forces weren’t interested in purchasing the aircraft themselves British companies had been heavily involved in its development using the experience they had with the Harrier. BAE had helped to design the airframe and Rolls Royce had provided considerable assistance and guidance in designing a new engine based upon their own Pegasus engine that powered the Harrier. The AV-19 Hellcat II was due to enter frontline service with the USMC sometime in the mid 2020’s. In the meantime, the USMC was pressing ahead with an upgrade of their existing Harrier fleet to keep them viable until they were replaced by the AV-19.
There was one Royal Navy aircraft that wasn’t represented aboard HMS EAGLE just yet. Both the RN and USN were mindful of the fact that while the Super Hornet was a relatively new and very capable aircraft it was a generation behind what the RAF/USAF would very soon be operating and that potential adversaries such as Russia and China were known to be developing 5th generation aircraft. Therefore, in the long term there was a need for a 5th generation stealth carrier capable fighter. The simplest course of action and the one that had been pursued was to develop a naval version of the F35 as an offshoot of that ongoing programme.
History teaches that generally aircraft that are successful in operating both from land and sea (such as the F4 Phantom) are usually aircraft that started out life as naval aircraft designed for carrier operations as it is easier to remove something that is no longer needed (such as arrestor hooks and a strengthened airframe) than it is to add something to an existing design. This had caused the Lockheed Martin/BAE team to go right back to basics to just the bare bones of the F35 design and start over. The resulting aircraft still shared the overwhelming majority of its components with the F35. The main differences were a slightly different airframe form (most notably a greater wing area to assist with catapult take offs), a greatly strengthened airframe and undercarriage to cope with the stresses of carrier take offs and landings and an arrestor hook. All of this strengthening came at the price of greater weight. The penalty of this was a lower fuel and munitions lift capability compared to the land based F35 in order to get the weight down to the point where the aircraft was light enough for carrier operations.
It had been decided that there was enough difference between this aircraft and the F35 for it to be classed as a separate type rather than just a variant of the F35. Therefore, the aircraft was known as the Lockheed Martin/BAE Tempest.
Prototype aircraft had been flying for a few years now and the first aircraft were expected to be delivered to the FAA’s operational evaluation unit in 2025. With the Super Hornet still being relatively young with plenty of flying hours left on them there wasn’t really that much of a rush on the part of the RN to get the new aircraft into service and thus the first batches of production aircraft would be going to the USN.
The old man had had a very enjoyable time looking at the aircraft on the flight deck and talking to the pilots and aircraft handlers. He had been particularly interested in the fact that two of the pilots were exchange officers from the US Navy and French Navy and had enjoyed talking to them about how EAGLE and the Fleet Air Arm compared to their own employers.
As he began to make his way back down to the hangar via a stairwell that had been set up on the Portside aircraft lift, he had noticed a harbour tender that approached and then proceeded to tie up to the Port side of EAGLE. He was then informed that the tender would be taking groups of the old EAGLE men on tours of the dockyard and he was very welcome to partake. The old man had been very pleased to accept this offer and after embarking aboard the harbour tender along with a number of old friends they had set off to see the ships of the modern Royal Navy. It was a completely different navy to the one they had served in. All of the ships they had known were now just names and photographs in RN history books and all of the men they had served with were like them civilians again. The old man had remembered seeing a news article not long ago about how the last Falklands veteran had left the British armed forces. Even the current First Sea Lord had joined the RN after the Falklands War. Soon the last Cold War era servicemen would be gone. The old man remembered when he had joined as a 16 year old all those decades ago how there were some crusty old chiefs and warrant officers around back then who had served in the second world war. It was interesting to think that those men who had trained him had probably been trained by men who had served in the first world war.
As the tender began to move away from the berthing bay from which he had embarked the old man was once again overawed by the sheer size of EAGLE. At just under 300m in length the carrier took up the entire length of Middle Slip Jetty and also dominated the adjacent Sheer Jetty by taking up just enough of its length with her stern lines to make Sheer Jetty unusable as a berth for any other ship while the carrier was in port. When only one carrier was in port it would nearly always be berthed on Middle Slip Jetty.
The next berth along the wall was Victory Jetty. A ship berthed here has a prime view of the magnificently restored HMS VICTORY, the building that contained the preserved remains of the MARY ROSE, the first world war era Monitor M33 and the Georgian era buildings of the Historic Dockyard that were generally much easier on the eye than the industrial buildings that made up most of the naval base. A ship berthed here was also very much in the public eye as it would be in full view of the visitors to the Historic Dockyard. For these reasons Victory Jetty was regarded as the prestige berth. When both of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers alongside one would be berthed here as Victory Jetty was also the only other berth large and deep enough to accommodate such massive vessels. Visiting warships would also be berthed here as the view from the berth was used by the RN as a subtle way to show off and it had the added bonus of keeping foreign personnel away from the dockyard’s main operation. Today there was a visiting warship berthed here but it was not a foreigner. HMS BULWARK was one of the RN’s pair of ALBION class of amphibious assault ships. The Albion class were homeported in Devonport. BULWARK was currently undertaking operational sea training as part of her workup for a deployment and was alongside for a few days for a bit of respite and maintenance from the gruelling training schedule. Nearly every single person on the harbour tender had grim memories of going through OST. With a displacement of 23,000 tons and a length of 206m the ALBION Class were impressive ships. The ships had been built to replace ageing FEARLESS Class LPD’s and had entered service in the late 1990’s. The ALBION’s were essentially a combined LPH and LPD type design and visually looked like light aircraft carriers with a large stern ramp covering the entrance to a large well deck. There were clear parallels with the INVINCIBLE class light aircraft carriers and obvious design influences. The ALBION class’s internal layout was dominated by two extremely large internal spaces. The aircraft hangar which provided space for an air group of 18 helicopters and below that a vehicle deck located just in front of a well deck capable of holding up to 4 large LCU Mark 10 landing craft internally. A further 4 smaller LCVP Mark 5 landing craft were held by davits in berthing bays on the ships side along with the ships own boats. BULWARK’s air group usually consisted of 12 Merlin HC4’s from the Commando Helicopter Force along with 6 other aircraft from the Army Air Corps or the RAF. Apache attack helicopters from the AAC’s 656 squadron were routinely carried onboard and the UK was the only nation in the world to operate the type at sea. RAF Chinook helicopters were also regular features onboard but came with the drawback that they could not be stowed in the hangar without having their rotor blades removed seeing as they lacked a blade folding mechanism meaning that they had to be stowed on the flight deck. The ALBION class was theoretically capable of embarking any UK Military helicopter and other types from the FAA/AAC/RAF were infrequent visitors. The sheer size of the hangar and vehicle deck/well dock had presented quite a challenge to the naval architects who had designed the ALBION class and careful control and oversight had been required to prevent the design from rapidly ballooning into something that would have been completely unaffordable. The at the time recent experience of the QUEEN ELIZABETH Class aircraft carrier programme had been put to good use in the ALBION Class. Cammell Laird had been selected to build the first ship HMS ALBION as they were at the time still finishing off HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH and thus had the facilities and experience of building large and complicated warships. HMS BULWARK had been built by what had then been VSEL at Barrow in Furness for the same reasons on the same slipway that had given birth to HMS EAGLE. Though over the last 20 or so years they had become much more involved in civilian ship building and downsized somewhat Cammell Laird was still one of the UK’s most active ship building yards. In Barrow in Furness VSEL was now BAE Systems was still as busy as ever and committed entirely to the naval side of things.
In terms of troop carrying capacity the ALBION Class stats were impressive with the ability to carry 600 men (850 for short periods) not including the personnel who were required to support the embarked air group and a significant number of vehicles depending on type ranging from 40+ small vehicles to 6 MBT’s but usually around 30 trucks or armoured vehicles.
The French had also adopted the concept of combining an LPH with and LPD in their 21,500 ton MISTRAL Class. Though they would never comment many suspected that the French had been at least partially influenced by the ALBION class.
South of HMS BULWARK was South Railway Jetty which was occupied by one of the Royal Navy’s newest and certainly most modern vessel. The TYPE 26 frigate HMS LONDON. The TYPE 26 had been bourne out of a requirement in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review to develop a replacement for the TYPE 22 and ultimately the TYPE 23 frigates under what had been called the Future Surface Combatant programme with the first ship planned to enter service in 2015. 2015 was when the Batch 3 Type 22’s and the first Type 23’s would be starting to hit the 25 years old mark. Unfortunately, due to the usual reasons of budgetary restrictions and delays, technical difficulties and good old fashioned administrative and management incompetence the original planned in service sate of 2015 had been missed by quite a long way. The first ship HMS GLASGOW (named after the TYPE 42 destroyer that had been lost during the Falklands War) had been commissioned in late 2019. HMS LONDON was the second ship of the class joining the fleet the previous year having had her entry to service delayed by the effects of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic. The next ship of the class was HMS BIRMINGHAM which was currently embarking on her builder’s trials up in Scotland.
Whatever the delays there was no denying that the TYPE 26 TOWN Class frigates were seriously impressive ships. The LONDON had smooth angular sides strongly reminiscent of the slightly older TYPE 45 destroyers that reduced the ships radar signature. The ship was equipped with the latest sensors and electronics including the Type 997 radar and 2087 towed array sonar that had also been fitted to the remaining TYPE 23’s and some new cutting edge and extremely sophisticated ESM/ECM equipment. The TYPE 26 was an extremely capable ASW vessel and getting sufficient numbers into service with the RN would go a long way towards countering the increasing threat from Russia’s submarine fleet. In terms of armaments the TYPE 26’s included a number of firsts. For the first time all of the ships missiles would be carried in a vertical launch system. The TYPE 26 was equipped primarily with the Sea Ceptor SAM that had recently been fitted to HMS EAGLE and the TYPE 23 frigates replacing the older Sea Wolf. As well as Sea Ceptor the class would also carry the new American built LRASM that was being introduced to replace the elderly Harpoon SSM in RN service. In time even the stealthy LRASM would be replaced by the currently under development British/French Perseus stealthy, hypersonic cruise missile. As well as SAM’s and SSM’s the TYPE 26 VLS was also capable of carrying the Tomahawk TLAM and ASROC. HMS LONDON was also one of the first ships to be equipped with the Martlet light anti-ship missile as a form of point defence against small fast moving craft. This was part of an effort by the RN to counter the threat of swarm attacks from the IRGC in the Straits of Hormuz. In terms of guns the TYPE 26 carried the 5 inch gun that in the long run would become the standard RN naval gun replacing the 4.5 inch gun. As well as this the TYPE 26 was equipped with a pair of the latest version of the Phalanx CWIS as well as a pair of 30mm cannons and the usual array of GPMG’s and Miniguns.
The TYPE 26 had been a runaway success even before the first ship touched the water. The most recent defence review had reiterated the Royal Navy’s requirement for a fleet of 30 frigates and destroyers to meet its needs. Thus as things stood 18 TYPE 26’s would be built for the Royal Navy replacing the TYPE 23’s on a one for one basis. The slightly lower manning requirement of the TYPE 26 compared to the TYPE 23 would also over time relieve some pressure on the seemingly constantly undermanned RN.
The TYPE 26 was also turning into a massive export success for Britain with Australia, Canada and New Zealand getting ready to introduce their own locally built TYPE 26’s.
The Royal Australian Navy already operated the TYPE 45 destroyer (known as the HOBART class in RAN service) and had chosen the TYPE 26 to replace their fleet of ANZAC class frigates. The Australian ships would include some design changes to meet their particular needs and would be known as the HUNTER class. The first of the planned 9 ships of the HUNTER class HMAS HUNTER was already under construction in Australia at BAE’s yard in Osbourne where the Australian TYPE 45’s had been built.
Like the Australians the Royal New Zealand Navy had also chosen the TYPE 26 to replace their ageing ANZAC class frigates. The RNZN had chosen to procure a pair of the Australian HUNTER class version of the TYPE 26 to be built alongside the RAN’s ships in Osbourne as part of their aim of maintaining interoperability with the RAN.
After a rather protracted bidding process Canada had chosen the TYPE 26 to replace the HALIFAX class frigates in what was a near complete replacement of the Royal Canadian Navy’s surface fleet. In Canadian service the class would be known as the CANADA class and would be named after Canadian provinces and towns. The planned 15 ships of the class would be built in Canada by Irving Shipbuilding at their yard in Halifax where the first of the class HMCS ONTARIO was due to begin construction in the next year.
A lot of effort was being expended by the British Government into persuading Brazil and other nations to procure the TYPE 26 frigate.
HMS LONDON’s berth at South Railway Jetty was the furthest most part of HMNB Portsmouth. After heading a little further south in order to give the old EAGLE men a good view of the preserved and still afloat 162 year old iron clad HMS WARRIOR (who had once been the most powerful ship in the world) the harbour tender made a 180 degree turn and headed north again passing HMS LONDON, HMS BULWARK and HMS EAGLE before clearing the bow of HMS EAGLE and making the turn around the corner where Middle Slip Jetty and North Corner met. As he saw the two ships at North Corner berthed 2 abreast the old man reflected on the fact that while the Royal Navy was considerably smaller in terms of numbers than in his day the ships themselves kept getting bigger and bigger putting berthing space at a premium. In fact, when the TYPE 45 destroyers had started to be introduced replacing the much smaller TYPE 42’s there had had to be something of a reorganisation with a number of TYPE 23 frigates transferred to Devonport to free up enough space in Portsmouth.
In his day due to the sheer number of ships it had been fairly common to see ships alongside tied up 2 or even 3 abreast due to a lack of berth space. Today the same thing seemed to be happening again only this time the lack of berth space was being caused by the sheer size of the RN’s current ships with the current generation of destroyers being the size of the cruisers of old. All of this placed a great strain on the dockyard which had been built mostly during the 18th and 19th centuries when ships were only a fraction of the size and was now struggling to cope with the demands of a fleet that had far outgrown anything those long dead builders and architects could have possibly imagined. Indeed, there were plenty of sometimes centuries old drydocks within the dockyard that were essentially abandoned due to being far to small to even accommodate even the smallest ships in the RN’s fleet and buildings that were old enough to be listed.
The pair of ships tied up abreast of each other on North Corner were the TYPE 45 destroyers HMS DEMON and HMS DUCHESS. Both of these ships were Batch 2 TYPE 45’s. In total the Royal Navy operated 12 TYPE 45’s all of which were based at Portsmouth. Their towering pyramid shaped mainmasts were very distinctive meaning that it was generally pretty easy for the casual observer to count how many TYPE 45’s were in port at any one time.
The six Batch 2 TYPE 45’s differed somewhat from their older Batch 1 sister ships. The Batch 1’s had been plagued by propulsion problems caused by intercoolers that were unreliable when the ships were operating in warmer waters. This had resulted in the Batch 1’s having to undergo expensive and technically challenging defect rectification work. As a result of this the Batch 2’s had been built with different machinery including an additional diesel generator. In terms of war fighting capability the main difference between the Batch 1’s and 2’s was the switching of the 4.5 inch naval gun for a 5 inch gun. In the long run it was planned to refit the older TYPE 45’s with the 5 inch gun. As the tender made its way past the two ships the old man noticed the difference in SSM armament with HMS DEMON having recently been refitted to carry the LRASM while HMS DUCHESS was still carrying the older Harpoon. Both missiles were carried in quad launchers in the space forward between the VLS and the superstructure.
As the tender passed North Corner it came upon South West Wall and an extremely unusual visitor to HMNB Portsmouth. The Irish Naval Service’s LE GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. Though many in Britain probably weren’t aware The Republic of Ireland did in fact maintain its own armed forces including a navy of sorts.
No one could remember a visit by an Irish Naval Service vessel to a Royal Navy dockyard having taken place before. Militarily Ireland had traditionally maintained a firmly neutral stance having not taken part in any conflicts or foreign deployments outside of the occasional UN peacekeeping mission and not being a part of NATO. The Royal Navy had never really had a relationship or much interaction with their Irish counterparts. At just a little over 2,250 tons the LE GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was the largest Irish military vessel with the rest of the Irish fleet being comprised of just over half a dozen active OPV’s. The official reason for the Irish visit was a simple goodwill visit a PR opportunity although many suspected that this was a tentative step on the part of the Irish towards possible cooperation with their much larger neighbouring fleet. As well as tours of the dockyard and visits to British ships Irish Naval Service personnel had been undertaking firefighting and damage control training at the RN’s world class facilities on Whale Island. The old man reckoned that if both sides were serious about forging closer ties then the next logical step would be an Irish Naval Service vessel undertaking training conducted by the RN’s legendary FOST organisation.
Within Ireland itself the poor pay and conditions endured by personnel within the Irish Defence Forces was becoming something of a national scandal and the cause of a serious manpower crisis. It was noted how some of those who were leaving the Irish Defence Forces were eventually finding their way into the British Armed Forces who still recruited from the Republic of Ireland. The better pay and conditions and perceived better lifestyle and career were quite attractive to some in Ireland. When personnel from Northern Ireland were taken into account the British Armed Forces easily employed more Irishmen than the Irish Defence Forces. In fact, in the case of the RN and RAF there were probably more citizens of the Republic of Ireland serving in those organisations than in their Irish counterparts.
As the harbour tender passed South West Wall the old man got a good look at 2 Basin. Due to its small size 2 Basin was used to host MCMV’s of the HUNT class (with the RN’s other MCMV class the SANDOWN class being based at HMNB CLYDE in Scotland) and a number of other small vessels miscellaneous including UK Border Force cutters.
The tender now turned north passing the drydocks that were the entry and exit points for the much larger non tidal 3 Basin. Within the drydocks and 3 Basin itself there were plenty of ships undergoing refit and various other forms of work. The dominating feature of the basin was the gigantic shipbuilding hall that had been built over what had been Drydock 13. The sheer volume of the building was illustrated by how it dwarfed the TYPE 45 destroyer right next to it in Dock 14 undergoing refit. Originally built and operated by Vosper Thornycroft but now (like most things) run by BAE the shipbuilding hall had produced superblocks for the TYPE 45’s and other ships that had been built using modular construction and since then had built the RIVER class OPV’s.
As they proceeded north the old EAGLE men came upon the most visible and dramatic change to the dockyard since their day on what had once been known as North West Wall. When HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH arrived in Portsmouth for the first time the Royal Navy had found itself in the awkward position of not possessing a drydock big enough to accommodate a ship so large. With HMS EAGLE on the way it was estimated that there would be a requirement for a QE class ship drydocking to take place on average of once every 18 months. As things had stood the lack of capacity to do this was considered to be unacceptable. This was an issue that had been known even before the first ship had been laid down. From the outset it had been recognised that any solution to the drydocking issue would not be easy and certainly not cheap. With budgets already strained by the costs of building the aircraft carriers themselves the standard government response of kicking the can down the road had been adopted. This had happened again and again and it wasn’t until the 1998 Strategic defence review that the tough decisions had been made and the issue had finally begun to be dealt with. The then new government like the old one had been convinced by the argument of the long term need for a larger drydock somewhere. The difference was that when the new government had taken power the carriers had largely been paid for freeing up the necessary finance to fund a new drydock project.
The chosen solution to the problem however had taken some by surprise and been somewhat controversial. The option that most commentators had expected the MOD to pursue had been to enlarge the existing D Lock within HMNB Portsmouth. The MOD however had gone for something radically different. Falklands Dock as it was known was a completely new drydock built on an area of reclaimed land that jutted out from what had been North West Wall (where some of the now landlocked bollards still remained). The decision to go with a completely new drydock had been heavily criticised due to its expense (costing almost as much as building a third QE class ship) and the disruption it caused to shipping in the harbour both naval and civilian. Portsmouth City Council had been up in arms about the project owing to the disruption that it had caused to the ferry and merchant ship services at the ferry port just north of the naval base. They had even gone as far to directly blame the disruption for P&O’s decision to cease operations at Portsmouth (despite P&O themselves never officially making any such claim).
The MOD had felt that a completely new drydock (very similar to the one proposed back in the 1960’s for the CVA-01 carriers) would be better in the long run as it would allow for a much larger dock to be built as a form of future proofing and would create badly needed extra berthing space and real estate within HMNB Portsmouth. The government despite the costs had backed this proposal on the grounds that the number of jobs created played well politically. The project had required yet another dredging programme to be undertaken within Portsmouth Harbour to allow enough deep water for ships to manoeuvre into the new dry dock and for large ferries to have enough room to sail past. The southernmost sand banks that appear in Portsmouth Harbour at low tide had completely disappeared. Several new hills had been created on the shore at the northern end of the harbour with all of the mud that had been sucked up from the sea bed and dumped there.
The drydock project had been expected to be completed by 2005 but as per usual had been delayed and not been completed until 2009. The delays had resulted in significant cost overruns. Part of the problem had been the disruption caused by the repeated discoveries and disposals of unexploded German bombs left over from the second world war.
Today Falklands Dock was occupied. HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH was well into the same two year rebuild that her younger sister had recently undertaken.
On paper the Royal Navy had 4 capital ships excluding the SSBN’s. The pair of QE class supercarriers and the pair of ALBION class assault ships. In reality only 2 of these ships HMS EAGLE and HMS BULWARK were active. The fact was that the RN didn’t have the money or manpower to operate all four ships at the same time without laying up a number of escorts alongside which was something that they were not prepared to do. Since 2010 the RN had kept one of their ALBION class ships in “extended readiness” which in reality meant mothballed alongside without a crew. The ships would be swapped around every few years which as well as reliving pressure on manpower had the added advantage o extending the ships lifespans by keeping their mileage lower than it would have otherwise been. The aircraft carrier overhaul programme meant that for a period of about 5 years they RN was only required to fully crew one ship which released a massive burden on manpower. The issue was that in just over a year HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH would come back into service and be in need of a crew. The RN’s most recent recruitment campaign was in response to this need as manpower levels had recently been allowed to drop far too low.
Rounding Falklands Dock to the northern perimeter of the dockyard the tender came upon the 800m long Fountain Lake Jetty where a number of TYPE 23 frigates were berthed. The TYPE 23’s had been the backbone of the RN’s frigate force for about 20 years now and despite their age were still capable ships with many years ahead of them. The 13 youngest ships of the class had been refitted to carry Sea Ceptor, the Type 997 Radar and Type 2087 towed array sonar. Now that the TYPE 26 frigates were beginning to enter service the oldest TYPE 23’s were starting to be retired. In Devonport HMS NORFOLK, HMS ARGYLL and most recently HMS MARLBOROUGH were laid up in a basin having been decommissioned where they were in the process of slowly being gutted for spare parts before being ultimately scrapped or expended as targets. With 15 TYPE 23’s still in RN service plus those serving in the Chilean and Republic of Singapore Navy’s there was a high demand for older out of production parts.
The Tender now again headed north away from HMNB Portsmouth and towards Whale Island. Whale Island was occupied by the shore establishment HMS EXCELLENT. HMS EXCELLENT had once been home to the Royal Navy’s gunnery school which had closed in 1985. Today HMS EXCELLENT hosted a number of training schools and lodger units including the Navy Command Headquarters building and an RNR unit. HMS EXCELLENT’s most important lodger was located on the north part of Whale Island. HMS PHEONIX was the Royal Navy’s firefighting and damage control training school. Boasting world class facilities, the training provided by HMS PHEONIX to all Royal Navy personnel was envied by many other navy’s around the world and even civilian fire brigades. The Royal Navy still held the reputation for being the world leaders in shipboard fire fighting and damage control that it had established as a result of the Falklands War.
It wasn’t HMS EXCELLENT that held the attention of the men on the harbour tender though but as they were reunited with yet another old friend and Falklands veteran. The TYPE 82 destroyer HMS BRISTOL had become legendary for her exploits in the Falklands. For much of the time she had served as the air defence escort for HMS EAGLE. Her most notable action had been during the Argentine air attacks on the British fleet in San Carlos Water. Located west of the Falkland Islands HMS BRISTOL accompanied by HMS EXETER and HMS BRILLIANT had detected and disrupted the Argentine mass of aircraft as they made their way towards San Carlos. In doing so she had downed a number of A4 Skyhawks and the civilian Learjet that had been guiding them with her Sea Dart SAM system. Later on, that day the BRISTOL group had successfully defeated an attack by an Exocet missile launched by an Argentine Super Etendard. Bristol had later gone on to provide naval gunfire support to the SAS/SBS force during their capture of Pebble Island airfield. Better still at the time HMS BRISTOL had been commanded by a man who was well liked and highly respected by the men of HMS EAGLE. The then Captain (now a retired Vice Admiral) Alan Grose DSO KBE had commanded BRISTOL during the Falklands campaign and had gone on to become the last commander of HMS EAGLE. Although he had been invited to todays event aboard HMS EAGLE Vice Admiral Grose had politely declined owing to having a prior engagement.
Since retiring from active service in 1993 the now 59 year old HMS BRISTOL had been the RN’s harbour training vessel permanently berthed at Whale Island. Probably every single member of the Royal Navy for the last 30 years would have undertaken some form of training aboard HMS BRISTOL at one point or another.
As the Harbour tug carrying the old EAGLE men drew closer, they began to wave at the many men of the same age as them on the decks of HMS BRISTOL. The men of the BRISTOL waved back at them. The old man envied the BRISTOL men. It was one thing to have a reunion with your old shipmates, a special thing to have such a reunion aboard your old ships namesake but something else entirely to be able to have a reunion with your old shipmates aboard your old ship!
There had been a rumour going around recently that HMS BRISTOL was to be retired from her training role and disposed of. Already an HMS BRISTOL preservation society had been formed. In the old man’s opinion such a ship should be preserved for the nation as a reminder of an era that was now just a memory. It would be a black day for the RN if BRISTOL was sent to the breakers yard. As they noticed a certain familiar figure step out onto the bridge wing of his old command the old EAGLE men stood to attention while the uniformed officers chaperoning them saluted. High up above them Vice Admiral Grose acknowledged the compliment paid by his old ships company.
Moving westwards away from Whale Island and HMNB Portsmouth the tender headed towards the centre of Portsmouth Harbour. Here they came across the TYPE 45 destroyer HMS DEFENDER which was tied up alongside another new addition to the dockyard, the ammunitioning jetty. Munitions and fuel for the Portsmouth based ships were stored bunkers and buried tanks at a large MOD facility on the western side of the harbour. In the case of fuel barges would take on fuel from the tanks and transport head over to the ships alongside at the naval base to fill their tanks. Using barges towed by tugs was a lot easier and a lot quicker than moving the ships themselves over to the fuelling facility on the western edge of the harbour.
For obvious safety reasons munitions handling is something best done well away from anywhere else. For safety reasons it had eventually become judged to be unacceptably risky to continue transferring munitions to and from ships that were tied up alongside within the dockyard. Therefore, a new purpose built munitions handling facility had been built within the centre of the harbour far enough away from the dockyard that hopefully in the event of a catastrophic munitions handling accident some ships and parts of the dockyard would survive.
Beyond the munitions handling jetty right up in the north west corner of the dockyard was a conspicuously empty bit of water. The area of the harbour that had traditionally been known as Rotten Row was where the RN traditionally anchored its old retired ships to keep them out of the way while they awaited their fates. Many ships of the old man’s generation had ended their days slowly rusting there while they waited for the ship breakers to come and collect them. Until previously the area had been occupied by a pair of ex Royal Fleet Auxiliary ROVER class small fleet tankers until they had been towed away to a scrapyard in Turkey. Before them the space had been filled with decommissioned TYPE 42 destroyers and TYPE 22 frigates. Soon TYPE 23’s would begin to appear there. The old man remembered his father showing him photographs from the late 1940’s of Portsmouth and Plymouth filled with entire fleets of decrepit old ships left over from the second world war including dozens of giant battleships and aircraft carriers. What a sight that must have been!
Apart from the Dockyard the Royal Navy still operated many other establishments in and around Portsmouth including the Maritime Warfare School at HMS COLLINGWOOD and the engineering training establishment at HMS SULTAN. The harbour tender now made its way south towards another RN location, this time in Gosport.
HMS DOLPHIN was the spiritual home of the Royal Navy’s submarine service. This was despite the fact that no submarines had been based there since 2012 when the last of the UPHOLDER class SSK’s had left for its new home at Devonport as part of a rationalisation to save money. The UPHOLDER class and diesel powered submarines in general were now a thing of the past in the Royal Navy. The 2010 Defence Review had cancelled the planned UPHOLDER class replacement programme. While the UPHOLDER’s had provided certain useful niche capabilities many had felt that they didn’t provide anything that couldn’t be provided by nuclear boats. With budgets already tight the RN’s Submarine Service had found itself having to make a choice whether to press ahead with developing a new class of SSK’s or becoming an all nuclear force. They had chosen the latter option as doing so allowed them to build more ASTUTE class SSN’s which were considered to be much more valuable. At the time the MOD was also planning and budgeting for what would become the DREADNOUGHT class building programme to replace the VANGUARD class SSBN’s and felt that they couldn’t spare the money to press ahead with building a new class of SSK’s. The potential for export success as had happened with the UPHOLDER class held little weight as the world SSK market was probably more crowded than ever before with Germany, Sweden, France, Russia and now China building SSK’s for export likely squeezing out any potential UK exports.
The Submarine Service’s fleet was now at its lowest every strength with only 12 boats in service. The 4 VANGUARD class SSBN’s continued their 50 year unbroken cycle of nuclear deterrent patrols. The last TRAFALGAR class SSN HMS TRIUMPH had recently been decommissioned being replaced in service by the ASTUTE class HMS AJAX. There were currently 2 more ASTUTE class boats under construction which would give the Royal Navy a total fleet of 10 of the class by 2024.
Although HMS DOLPHIN no longer hosted submarines it was still a very busy port. The Royal Navy’s submarine school had largely moved their operations to HMS RALEIGH and HMNB CLYDE into more modern facilities closer to their submarine bases. However, the 40m tall Submarine Escape Training Facility was still very much in operation.
Gosport also played host the Royal Navy Submarine museum who’s exhibits included the RN’s first submarine HOLLAND 1 and the preserved second world war era HMS ALLIANCE.
The RN’s Fishery Protection Squadron was now homeported in Gosport. Comprised of RIVER Class OPV’s the ships of the squadron protected the UK’s coast and some were permanently deployed overseas as they patrolled the waters around the UK’s overseas territories including the Falklands and even undertook some limited counter piracy and anti smuggling work in the Caribbean. Doing this freed up other more capable frigates and destroyers from these duties. This was important as it allowed the RN more flexibility to effectively counter the increasing threat from the resurgent Russian Navy and ever expanding Chinese Navy. The RIVER class OPV’s had all been built in Portsmouth and had become larger and more capable with each new addition to the class with the ships divided up into 3 distinct batches. The RN operated 9 examples of the class which had also been successfully exported. Thailand operated a pair of locally built vessels known as the KRABI class. Brazil had been persuaded to purchase 3 ships that had been built for the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard who had cancelled their order at the very last minute despite the ships having already been completed and personnel already training aboard them. In Brazilian service they were known as the AMAZONAS class.
The RIVER class design had also been the basis for the KHAREEF class corvettes that had been built in Portsmouth for the Royal Navy of Oman. The Royal Navy had a very close relationship with the Royal Navy of Oman with many British officers and ratings imbedded within the Omani navy. Britannia Royal Navy College at Dartmouth was usually full of Omani officer cadets alongside other overseas cadets.
Just beyond HMS DOLPHIN the old man could make out the top of the roof of another vital RN establishment in Portsmouth. The Royal Navy Hospital Haslar. The UK’s last remaining military hospital had once been marked for closure but had been given a reprieve to meet the demands of war. The hospital had been used to treat wounded servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan and for a time had been the busiest trauma centre and rehabilitation hospital in the UK by far. Over the course of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of experience had been gained and a lot of money had been spent on keeping the hospitals facilities as up to date as possible. The military medical services had worked very closely with the NHS who had routinely seconded medical staff to the hospital in order to gain hands on experience of dealing with trauma wounds and had on occasion sent over civilian patients with injuries that required the sort of treatment that Haslar led the field in. Of course, since the end of those conflicts things within the hospital had quietened down quite a bit. This had allowed the MOD to embark upon the sort of comprehensive overhaul that the hospital had really needed but had been unable to undertake due to the demands placed upon it by the needs of war. These days the patients within the hospital were much more likely to be civilians sent to Haslar to relieve overcrowding at the hospitals in Portsmouth and Southampton or in need of the specialist services provided there as part of a deal between the MOD and NHS.
The harbour tender now began to make its way back towards HMS EAGLE. As it did so the old man and his friends got a glimpse of the Gunwharf Quays shopping centre and Spinnaker Tower that had been built on the land once occupied by the RN’s mine warfare and diving training school HMS VERNON.
Later on, that afternoon the event aboard HMS EAGLE had come to an end and the old EAGLE men had begun to depart. Admiral Jock Slater and the former senior officers of HMS EAGLE (many of whom had gone on to become very senior within the RN) had remained onboard for a mess dinner in the wardroom. Of the men who had departed ashore some had headed straight for home but many more had packed into one of the pubs along the waterfront immediately outside Victory Gate. As the afternoon had turned into the evening and into the night the veterans of HMS EAGLE in the Falklands had indulged in the traditional sailor’s pastime of drinking far too much and swapping increasingly exaggerated stories of their recent exploits. As he drank with his old messmates and oppo’s as they tried to relive their youth’s the conversation was mostly centred around what each man had been up to during the recent months long lockdown resulting from the global Coronavirus pandemic. When it came to the old mans turn, he had replied that been too lazy to work on getting fit, too old to work on having more children, had already done all of the gardening and DIY jobs around the house anyway and couldn’t spend the time watching TV as he and his wife could never agree on what to watch and didn’t fancy. Instead to pass the time he had taken up writing and had written an alternate history novel about the Falklands War. The story was about an alternate Falklands war in which HMS EAGLE had not partaken. The point of divergence had been HMS EAGLE being damaged during an entry to harbour resulting in her being decommissioned in 1972 a decade before the Falklands. In his alternate timeline the Royal Navy had been forced to face the Argentines with only Sea Harriers carried aboard HMS INVINCIBLE and a refitted Harrier capable HMS HERMES.
Of course, Britain had still prevailed but it had been very much a hard fought by the skin of their teeth affair and certainly not the almost one sided curb stomp of the Argentines that had occurred in reality.
He had come across a small online forum called aLternatehistory.com and had been uploading his story as he had written instalments. The feedback he had received had been that the whole premise of Britain even fighting the Falklands War without HMS EAGLE let alone actually wining had been complete ASB.
The old man had been looking forward to this day for quite a while. As he sat on the train already, he was spotting other men who were clearly making the journey for the same reason as him. They were instantly recognisable in that they were all at least 60 years old, wearing dark suits and had the tell tale give away of a British Armed Forces veterans badge on their suit jackets.
In Britain and on the Falkland Island’s themselves what had become known as the Falklands War was usually commemorated on the 30th of May which was the date that the Argentine forces had surrendered.
On the Falklands this date was one of almost religious significance and was referred to as Liberation Day. The commemorations there included a service of remembrance at the cathedral in Port Stanley and the laying of wreaths at the Liberation Memorial.
In Argentina the 2nd of April was celebrated as Malvinas Day as that was the date when Argentine forces had first landed on the islands.
For the Royal Navy however there was a date even more important than the 30th of May. The RN celebrated the 2nd of May which was the anniversary of the Battle of The Falkland Islands where they had won a decisive and crushing victory over the Argentine foe in a battle that become the stuff of legend.
This was the reason why the old man was making this journey down to Portsmouth. For along with the increasing number of men who were roughly his age and dressed just like him he was a member of the HMS EAGLE Association which every year held an reunion of the men who had served aboard HMS EAGLE during the Falklands War to mark the anniversary of the Battle of The Falklands. This year was especially significant as it marked the 40th anniversary of the battle.
Thus, this year the reunion was being hosted in Portsmouth aboard the flagship of the Royal Navy the current HMS EAGLE.
As the train made its way through more and more stops on its journey to Portsmouth Harbour the old man began feel overjoyed as he recognised faces and be reunited with friends he hadn’t seen in many years or even decades. The increasingly large group of veterans joked to each other about how they had gotten even uglier in the many years since. The old man had been in his twenties during the Falklands War along with most of the old friends he now shared a carriage with. Forty years on he was now well into his sixties and a grandfather along with most of the men. In fact, the youngest EAGLE Falklands veteran would now be 58. The passage of time meant that there would be plenty much older than him and a few who could not attend having sadly run out of time in life.
As the train arrived in Portsmouth Harbour and disgorged what was now a fairly sizeable chunk of the crew of the former HMS EAGLE the old man felt almost as if he was in his twenties again as he and his old shipmates walked past many of those same pubs that they used to frequent as they made their way towards the dockyard. Like many of the old sailors present today the Old man’s wife (whom he hadn’t met until after he had left the navy) had declined to accompany him on the grounds that previous reunions had taught her that today would probably be little more than an exercise in drinking too much.
Walking through Portsmouth Historic Dockyard past the magnificently restored HMS WARRIOR and HMS VICTORY the veterans were met by a coach which transported them to Middle Slip Jetty where EAGLE was berthed.
The sight of the 64,000 ton 285 long ship dominating the dockyard brought back a flood of memories of all those times he had seen his HMS EAGLE do the same. As the coach pulled up by the gangway it was difficult not to feel insignificant when stood next to the gigantic ship.
As they made their way up to the top of the gangway the veterans were greeted by the sight of the ships Battle Honours Board.
In total there had been 19 Royal Navy ships named HMS EAGLE with the first one having been commissioned in 1592. Over the course of 430 years the name EAGLE had been awarded 17 battle honours starting with Portland in 1653. The men of the previous HMS EAGLE still had proud memories of the day in 1983 when the ship had been presented with a new and updated Battle Honours Board that now had Falkland Islands 1982 on it. Of course, in later years even that board had ultimately been replaced by yet another updated one that bore the honour Al Flaw 2003.
The men were led into the hangar where a reception was taking place as the men of the old HMS EAGLE mingled with the crew of the current EAGLE, the ships affiliates and generally the great and the good.
The old man as always was struck by the sheer size of the cavernous hangar. This was despite it not really being that much bigger by volume than the one he had spent so much of his life in aboard the old EAGLE. The difference was that aboard the old EAGLE the hangar was split up into two decks whereas the hangar aboard the current EAGLE was one massive space. The old EAGLE had been designed during the second world war when aircraft were piston powered and much smaller. The problem was that in the following decades the piston powered WWII era aircraft had been replaced by jet aircraft that increased in size at an alarming rate. He remembered how difficult it used to be to try and squeeze Phantom’s and Buccaneer’s into a space that had been intended to accommodate aircraft of such size. Indeed, fitting everything into the hangar had required aircraft to be parked with sometimes only centimetres of space around them.
Spread around the hangar of the current EAGLE were displays of the various departments and their capabilities. The old man noticed photos of the current hangar when filled with aircraft and was struck by how much space they had around them and how easy the current generation of aircraft technicians had it compared to his own.
His thoughts were interrupted when over the ships intercom he heard the distinctive sound of pipes being blown on the gangway followed by the Quartermaster ordering the ships company to face towards the gangway and salute a certain VVIP. The former First Sea Lord Admiral Sir John Cunningham Kirkwood Slater better known as Jock Slater formerly the Commanding Officer of HMS EAGLE during the Falklands Conflict had arrived. Since relinquishing command of HMS EAGLE over to the then Captain Alan Grose Jock Slater had had a very distinguished career and ultimately become the head of the Royal Navy and retired in 1998. The old man overheard some members of the current EAGLE’s ships company with sight smirks on their faces noting how the current commanding officer of EAGLE seemed slightly nervous in the presence of his predecessor and living legend.
Slater along with many of his former senior officers was now well into his 80’s. There was one other man who had become a naval legend as a result of HMS EAGLE’s actions in the Falklands who was sadly absent. Admiral Sandy Woodward who had made EAGLE his flagship during that conflict had sadly passed away almost 10 years previously. His name however lied on in the navy in many ways. For example, today many new recruits arriving for basic training at HMS RALEIGH find themselves members of Woodward Division.
Looking around at the members of the current ships company the old man thought to himself that despite many decades having past they looked, sounded and acted like he and his shipmates had when they were their age. It was amazing how some of the younger ratings looked almost exactly the same as men he had known all those years ago. That’s when it dawned on him that there probably were some currently serving onboard who were the children or grandchildren of the men who had been aboard the previous EAGLE. Indeed, he had happy memories of showing his own father around that ship a very long time ago. He came from a long line of navy men and his father had served in the RN during the second world war and once recounted how he had shown his father around the battleship HMS VANGUARD.
These happy thoughts were suddenly interrupted when an officer tapped the old man on the shoulder and asked if he would like to join a tour of the ship. An offer which the old man enthusiastically accepted.
The current HMS EAGLE was now about 25 years old and having a connection with the ship this wasn’t the first time the old man had been aboard and so he had some familiarity with the ship. This time however things were very different. In 2020 EAGLE had completed a very expensive 2 year midlife overhaul/service life extension refit which had been almost a complete rebuild and dramatically altered and modernised the ship.
As he toured the ship the old man listened as the officer guiding the group rattled off various facts and figures about the many extensive changes that had been made including the miles of piping and cabling that had been ripped out and replaced. In the Operations Room he heard about how the ships old combat information system ADAWS which in its earliest form dated back to the 1970’s and had been used aboard the INVINCIBLE class, TYPE 42 Destroyers and HMS BRISTOL had been finally declared obsolete and removed. In its place had come CMS which was the system used aboard the TYPE 45 Destroyer’s. Doing this had necessitated ripping out nearly every console in the Operations Room and replacing them with brand new state of the art equipment. Looking around the old man found it hard to believe that this Operations Room was on a ship well over two decades old as it looked like it should belong on a ship that was brand new. In a brief chat with some of the ships company one of the weapons engineers perfectly illustrated the difference a few decades had made when he described the ships computer room. Located just below the Ops Room the Computer Room held the banks of computer hardware that were required to make the computerised Operations Room function. During the refit this elderly hardware had naturally been ripped out and replaced with the hardware required to support CMS. The difference was that nearly 30 years advancement in computer technology meant that the new hardware occupied less than a quarter of the space while having vastly more processing power. The Weapons Engineer recounted how they had been at something of a loss as to what to do with the large amount of newly empty space freed up in the compartment and now used it as a workshop/WE storage compartment.
Carrying on the tour through out the ship there didn’t seem to be a single area untouched by the refit. Deck coverings had been replaced, the galley had been completely rebuilt, the ship now had a dedicated gym in a compartment that had been freed up due to a slightly reduced crew complement thanks to greater automation.
Up on the vast flight deck was where the changes were the most obvious. The Island superstructure had been completely remuddled.
The Type 1022 air search radar which had sat above the bridge was gone. In its place was a much larger and much more powerful Type 1046 radar that was also found aboard the TYPE 45 Destroyer. The much larger and much heavier radar along with its associated machinery had resulted in the front end of the superstructure above the bridge having to be significantly enlarged to accommodate it. Further back along the superstructure the Type 996 target indication radar had been replaced with the much more modern Type 997 as had happened aboard the TYPE 23 Frigates. In terms of armament the four Phalanx CIWS’s had been upgraded and the 16 Sea Wolf SAM’s located right at the aft end of the flight deck either side of the glide path had been replaced with the new and massively more capable Sea Ceptor.
Being ex Fleet Air Arm the old man was naturally interested in the upgrades made to the aircraft operating facilities on the flight deck.
He was particularly impressed by a large flat screen TV that was now mounted onto the superstructure and visible from most of the flight deck. Apparently, it was quite effective for conveying information to those on the flight deck. A far cry from his day when they had to rely to a large extend on hand signals and runners.
Lined up along the centre line of the flight deck was a selection of aircraft that represented each type that made up the air group of the modern HMS EAGLE. Seeing this brought back memories of all the times he had helped line up Phantoms and Buccaneers in similarly impressive formations on the deck of the old EAGLE.
Stranding by the aircraft were a number of youngish men and women in uniform who were obviously the FAA’s current generation of aircrew. These younger airmen were visibly in awe of the group of older men they were talking to. The older men were now mostly into their 70’s but the old man was delighted to recognise the familiar faces. These men a long time ago had been aircrew themselves and had flown the aircraft that had destroyed both the Argentine Navy and Air Force. A good number of the Phantom crews were the only living British air aces.
Captain Nigel “Sharkey” Ward who had commanded 892 Naval Air Squadron and EAGLE’s Phantoms during that conflict was present. Now nearly 80 years old the young pilots who had not even been born when the Falklands War occurred were clearly holding on to his every word as the man who had been awarded a DSO and DFC for his leadership of the squadron and bravery in the air and had shot 3 Argentine Mirage’s out of the sky chatted pleasantly to them. EAGLE’s Phantom pilots had become living legends in the military aviation community and in the yards following the conflict had been highly sought after in instructor roles and even all these decades later were still occasionally asked to give lectures about their experiences to modern military pilots all over the world. The 1986 American movie Top Gun had reflected this by portraying one of the instructor pilots as a British Falklands veteran.
The Buccaneer crews were also legendary but alongside this were infamous in some circles. In Britain they were celebrated as the men who had destroyed an enemy fleet and pounded an army into near submission and could be argued to have won the war themselves. In Argentina they were accused mass murder and war crimes (without any detail of the basis of this last claim). For that reason, the men formerly of 809 Naval Air Squadron generally kept out of the public eye a little more than their former Phantom flying counterparts.
The Falklands War was still an open and sore wound for Argentina even 40 years later. The old man remembered having travelled to Argentina some years ago as part of an official exchange of veterans to help repair bridges between the two nations. He had attended a very solemn ceremony at the Monument to the Fallen in the Malvinas in Buenos Aires which bore the names of all 2772 Argentinians who had died during the conflict. He had even travelled south to Puerto Belgrano Naval Base where he had viewed the Naval memorial to the Argentine sailors lost at sea with each ship having its own plaque. He had gotten the very distinct feeling that the Argentine military personnel who had accompanied the British contingent throughout the trip were really bodyguards. He’d been struck at how significant the Falklands Conflict seemed to be in the Argentine national psyche when compared to Britain. He had concluded that this was due to it being the only significant international conflict that Argentina had taken part in within living memory and the far reaching national consequences that had resulted. Namely the overthrow of the Argentine military government.
This contrasted to Britain where the Falklands was increasingly just one amongst many other international conflicts that Britain had fought in within living memory.
One thing that annoyed many in Britain was the habit of successive Argentine governments to try to rekindle the Falklands sovereignty dispute whenever they needed a quick popularity boost or a political distraction. The position of the British government on the issue was that the Falklands were British territory populated by British citizens and that was the end of the matter. There would also be the occasional implied hint of “If you are thinking of doing anything stupid remember what happened last time”.
There were plenty of recent examples of how the Falklands War even years later was still able to stir up a strong emotional response from many within Argentina.
In 2014 while filming their “Patagonia Special” in Argentina the presenters and crew of the BBC programme Top Gear had been forced to abandon filming and flee the country to escape what they described as a “lynch mob” after locals took offence to a vehicle number plate. This incident caused a diplomatic spat between Britain and Argentina and was shown to have hurt Argentina’s image abroad as many English speaking countries for a short while advised their citizens against non-essential travel to Argentina.
In November of 2018 the wreak of the submarine ARA SAN LUIS was discovered, proving the British claim to have sunk her during the Battle of the Falkland Islands. News of the discovery had resulted in protests outside of the British embassy and a demand for an apology from the British Government for destroying the boat. The demand had been given a stiff ignoring by the British.
Many of the surviving Phantom’s, Buccaneer’s and Gannet’s that had served with the RN and in some cases subsequently served with the RAF had found their way into various museum collections following retirement. The old man volunteered at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton which possessed a number of Phantom’s and Buccaneer’s that had been repainted in their former RN colours complete with kill markings. There had been incidents where the aircraft had been targeted by anti war activists as perceived symbols of British imperialism. In one incident swift and somewhat brutal intervention by the old man despite his age had prevented damage to the exhibits.
The old man’s attention now turned to the impressive line up of modern aircraft before him. Having worked in the aerospace industry since leaving the RN he was familiar with these aircraft and the stories behind them.
First up was the Goshawk. Essentially a navalised version of the BAE Hawk trainer (which had proven itself to be a massive export success and was still in production after nearly 50 years) the Goshawk was used to train pilots in the art of operating from the deck of a carrier. Compared to the loss of almost a third of the RN’s Phantom fleet in accidents barely a handful of the Hornet’s that had succeeded it had been lost due to accidents. This had proven the value of a naval specific fast jet trainer. The US Navy operated more than 200 examples of the type and even the French Aeronavale had purchased a small number of the type. Goshawk’s weren’t just used for training new pilots. Aircrew who hadn’t landed aboard a carrier for more than 6 months were required to requalify using the Goshawk. Small numbers of Goshawk’s were usually carried as a standard component of the air group for training purposes.
The example on display today was one of the still fairly new Goshawk T2’s. The Goshawk had first entered service with the RN in 1991. Service at sea takes its toll on aircraft due to the harsh conditions meaning that they often have shorter lifespans than their land based counterparts. Has the first generation of Goshawk’s had begun to approach the end of their service lives the RN had decided to replace them with new build modernised Goshawk’s. The RAF had already been in the process of developing what would become known as the Hawk T2. Many of their requirements in terms of modernisation were almost identical to what the RN wanted and the production lines were still open meaning that a joint project had been undertaken.
The Goshawk T2 featured a glass cockpit with modern avionics that were designed to as closely as possible resemble the layout of the cockpit of the frontline aircraft that students would transition onto.
The USN had placed a big order for the Goshawk T2 which they referred to as the T45 Goshawk C and which like the original Goshawk was manufactured in the US by Boeing (who had taken over McDonnel Douglas).
The land based Hawk continued to receive export orders from all over the world and was considered a reliable source of income for the British aviation industry.
Next up was another new build aircraft, the Hawkeye AEW aircraft. As with the Goshawk the E-2C Hawkeye’s that the RN operated had eventually begun to struggle with obsolescence and simple aircraft age. The USN which operated the same type had faced the same issues. Their solution had been to develop what became known as the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. The E-2D as with the Goshawk was a modernised version of an existing aircraft. The new Hawkeye featured a new and much more capable radar, modern avionics a much more powerful onboard mission computer and communications and information exchange suite. All of these made the E-2D a significant improvement over the E-2C that had originally been purchased by the RN.
The 2015 Defence Review which had sought in part to undo some of the damage inflicted by the 2010 review had resulted in the procurement of 8 E-2D Advanced Hawkeye’s from the US as part of a wider upgrade of the UK’s ISTAR capabilities.
As part of this revamping of ISTAR capability significant numbers of UAV’s were to be procured and new types developed as Britain tried to muscle its way into the UAV market. Indeed, all RN ships now carried a UAV of some description such as the Boeing ScanEagle.
The 2015 review had called for the eventual retirement and replacement of the venerable Nimrod MPA. The current version was the Nimrod MRA4 which had been in service for just over 10 years now. The MRA4 aircraft were essentially rebuilt and thoroughly modernised MR2’s. Unfortunately, there were a number of issues with the MRA4. Cost overruns, delays and budget cuts as a result of the 2010 Strategic Defence Review had seen the planned number of aircraft reduced to a final count of 9 which had been further reduced to 8 after one was lost in an accident which wasn’t really enough to do the job. There was no getting around the fact that despite the rebuilds the individual airframes were already pretty old as was a lot of the equipment onboard meaning that maintenance and maintaining sources of spare parts had always been disproportionately and increasingly difficult and expensive. An issue exacerbated by the non standardisation of many aspects of the individual aircraft.
It had been concluded that rather than continuing to press ahead with maintaining aircraft that were gradually becoming money pits a new aircraft should be purchased off the shelf. It had been decided to by something off the shelf rather than develop a new aircraft in order to save money on development costs which would allow the RAF to purchase and operate the greater number of aircraft they felt they required. To this end the first of a planned 16 Boeing P8 Poseidon’s would enter service in 2025.
Another aircraft being replaced was the Sentry AEW.1 AWACS aircraft. The Sentry had proven itself worth its weight in gold in terms of the capability it offered. However, the aircraft had been beginning to show their age and would not remain cutting edge forever and so a requirement for a replacement had been identified. At the time the American’s were not looking to develop a replacement aircraft and the RAF hadn’t felt that the other smaller AWACS aircraft available really met their requirements.
To this end a new British developed AWACS aircraft had been procured. The BAE/Airbus Guardian AEW.2 was an Airbus A330 airframe fitted with a large and powerful British made active electronically scanned array. The A330 had already been chosen as the RAF’s new AAR Tanker aircraft meaning that there was already experience with the type and existing supply chains. The aircraft was large meaning that it could carry a large radar and its associated machinery long with large computer banks and communications equipment. The Guardian AEW.2 was a massive step up from the Sentry AEW.1 that it was replacing and 7 examples had been ordered for the RAF. With the Americans deciding to press ahead with upgrades to their existing fleet of Sentry’s the Guardian was easily the newest and most modern AWACS aircraft available for export and had already attracted an order from France (who already manufactured the A330 airframes) who intended to procure 4 of the aircraft to replace their own Sentry’s and strong interest from Saudi Arabia and possibly other nations.
Next up were the frontline helicopter types operated by the RN. First was the AgustaWestland AW101 known in the RN as the Merlin which had now completely replaced the venerable Sea King which had been operated by the RN for close to four decades.
Two variants were in service with the FAA. The first was the HM2 ASW variant. The Merlin being a large helicopter leant itself well to the ASW role as it had the space and lift capacity for an impressive loadout of ASW weapons and sonobuoys along with a powerful dipping sonar and surface search radar and an onboard acoustic data processing system while still having a respectable amount of spare capacity for passengers and cargo. With the exception of the small ships the Merlin was capable of being operated from pretty much every vessel in the RN’s order of battle. Much like the old HMS EAGLE had routinely carried at least 6 Sea King’s onboard for ASW defence (with the notable exception of the Falklands War) the modern HMS EAGLE was never without a flight of Merlin HM2’s for the same reason.
The other variant of the Merlin operated by the FAA was the HC4 commando transport which had replaced the old Sea King HC.4’s within the Commando Helicopter Force. The troop carrying variant of the Merlin was also operated in large numbers by the RAF where it had been procured to replace the Westland Wessex and had also ultimately ended up replacing the Westland Puma. In total the UK operated just over 70 of the type with only very minor differences between the RN and RAF aircraft. The Merlin was another British built aircraft that had been widely exported.
In recent years it had become standard practise for the RN’s carriers to carry a pair of Merlin HC4’s onboard along with a detachment of Royal Marines onboard to provide a combat search and rescue capability. This had come about as a consequence of the carriers being used to conduct airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria where the ultimate nightmare scenario had been an aircraft being lost resulting in a pilot trapped behind enemy lines in ISIL territory.
Next to the pair of Merlin’s was another aircraft that looked familiar yet very different to the aircraft the old man remembered. Originally the Merlin had been intended to replace all types of frontline helicopter in service with the RN including the Westland Lynx. The RN however had been unwilling to dispense with the Lynx for the larger Merlin as they felt they still had a need for a smaller and more nimble light utility helicopter. Furthermore, they had identified the continuing need for a helicopter capable of ASUW warfare as the Merlin (which only carried torpedoes and depth charges) was unable to carryout this role. In recent years the rise in the perceived threat of swarm attacks from small craft in chokepoints such as the Straits of Hormuz and the RN’s commitments to anti piracy and anti smuggling operations had reinforced the need for what was essentially a small and very fast helicopter gunship which could also carry a small number of commandos for boarding operations. There was also the fact that whereas the RN’s frigates and destroyers had enough hanger space for one Merlin sized aircraft two smaller Lynx sized helicopters could be squeezed in. The result was what had been known as the Surface Combatant Maritime Rotorcraft project unofficially known as Future Lynx. The MOD did receive some criticism for pressing ahead with an updated Lynx rather than holding an open competition or considering other options. The intention had originally been to rebuild and thoroughly modernise existing Lynx helicopters. As the list of requirements had grown along with the estimated costs of fitting the various bits of modern technology demanded by the RN it had been decided that in the long term it would be better to build completely new airframes as this would allow the designers and engineers greater freedom to do what was necessary and provide for a longer aircraft service life. Politically this had played well as a great many more jobs were sustained by building completely new airframes. The result of this had been an aircraft that while externally looking near enough like the Lynx that it was developed from in actuality comprised 95% completely new components.
The aircraft had been named Lynx Wildcat but this had soon been changed to Wildcat reflecting that this was a completely new aircraft.
The Wildcat was armed with a formidable array of weaponry. Most notably it could carry 20 of the new Martlet light air to surface missiles which had been specifically designed to take on small fast moving craft such as those used by smugglers, pirates and Iran’s IRGC. Along with Martlet the Wildcat could also carry the larger Sea Venom ASM for taking on larger targets, heavy machine guns and ASW weapons in the form of torpedoes and depth charges. It had become standard practise for ships deploying to the Middle East to carry Wildcat in the place of Merlin.
Onboard HMS EAGLE a pair of Wildcat’s were carried for general utility work and because they had proven quite good in the plane guard role.
The Wildcat was a relatively recent addition to the RN but was already gaining export orders. South Korea which faced the similar threats of small fast craft and small submarines from North Korea had found the Wildcat ideally suited to their needs and placed a significant order. The Philippines had also purchased the aircraft as they felt it would be ideal for policing the various straits and waterways between the islands that made up that nation. Other nations such as Brazil and Bangladesh had also expressed an interest.
The British Army had previously planned to purchase what would become the Wildcat to replace their own fleet of Lynx AH.7’s. However, this had not come to pass. The Army had already purchased the Apache to replace the Lynx in the attack helicopter role and had been looking to replace it in the light troop transport role due to the age and limitations of the aircraft. Operations in Afghanistan and Iraq had clearly shown the Lynx’s shortcomings and put the Army Air Corps in the position of urgently needing a replacement. The use of roadside IED’s had forced British forces to try and conduct as many movements as possible by helicopter to try and negate the IED threat. Unfortunately, Britain had found that it didn’t posses the required number of helicopters meaning that there was still the need to resupply forward operating bases by road and that casualties were still being sustained that might otherwise had been avoidable. The Army weren’t particularly happy with the Wildcat as they felt that it still had many of the limitations of the Lynx. Namely its small size limiting its troop carrying capacity. Crucially they felt that it would be less than ideal in the vital CASEVAC role as the medics would have difficulty treating casualties in such a small space and that the medics and door gunners would probably get in each other’s way. Furthermore, at the time the Wildcat was still in development and the Army had made the case that they couldn’t wait around for what would be a less than ideal aircraft. Instead they had decided to go with an off the shelf solution that could be brought into service relatively quickly and had purchased 45 Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk’s from the US. The British were already familiar with the Blackhawk having worked closely with US Army Aviation on operations and through exchange programmes already had a body of experience with operating the aircraft. The deciding factor had been the fact that there would be no need to pay for development costs and that the Americans could be persuaded to divert some of their aircraft already in production to the British meaning that the Blackhawk was able to fulfil the urgent need for new helicopters.
Finally, at the end of the line of aircraft the old man came to the centrepiece and real muscle of EAGLE’s air group. The Super Hornet FGR3 and FGR4.
The end of the Cold War had resulted in brutal cut backs to military development budgets all over the world including the USA with many new equipment projects cancelled. One such project was the McDonnell Douglas A12 Avenger II. Originally the Advanced Tactical Aircraft programme the A12 had been intended to be a stealth strike aircraft to replace the obsolete A6 Intruder and A7 Corsair II in US Navy service. In hindsight the A12 was considered to have been far too ambitious. As a result, the programme had been beset by endless technical difficulties which resulted in massive cost overruns and its expected entry into service being pushed back again and again. These and other issues had resulted in the A12 finding itself amongst many other aircraft that were cancelled in the early 1990’s.
With budgets already stretched and not having the time to press ahead with the development of a completely new aircraft the USN had decided to pursue an updated version of an existing aircraft to replace the A6 and A7. McDonnell Douglas had naturally put forward their own F/A-18 Hornet proposing a new generation of the design.
another programme that had been cancelled was the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter which had aimed to create a navalized variant of the Lockheed Martin F22 Raptor stealth air superiority fighter that was being developed for the USAF to replace the F15.
This left the USN with the Grumman F14D Super Tomcat as its primary air defence aircraft. The USN operated a total of 132 F14D’s along with a number of older F14B’s. The F14D was a relatively young aircraft with the first example having entered service in 1990. However, it was recognised that having been originally developed in the 1960’s the F14 design was not far off reaching the point where it would no longer be able to keep up with newer more modern designs. Therefore, the USN had decided that the A6, A7 and ultimately F14 should be replaced with a common design mainly for cost reasons. The last F14D would leave service in 2017. The choice had come down to a new incarnation of the F/A-18 or an updated version of the F14. The F/A-18 had been chosen since it had been designed from the outset to be a multirole aircraft as opposed to the F14 which was an air superiority which had some capability to perform air to ground missions. The decision to go with a common design was somewhat controversial as many argued that the resulting aircraft would be a jack of all trades but likely inferior in a given role when compared to an aircraft dedicated to that role. The resulting aircraft was called the F/A-19 E/F Super Hornet and despite a similar name and appearance was an almost entirely different aircraft compared to the older F/A-18 Hornet. The Super Hornet was significantly larger and had a much greater performance such as maximum take off weight and effective range compared to the earlier Hornet.
The Super Hornet also included a significant amount of British design input and British made components. British Aerospace (now BAE) and McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) had established a strong partnership in relation to the Hornet. When Britain had made the decision to by Hornets for the Rn and RAF back in 1983 a lot of work had gone into producing a variant of the Hornet tailored to their needs which had resulted in the Hornet FGR1 and FGR2. Many of the British innovations such as conformal fuel tanks for the Hornet had been taken up by the Americans for their F/A-18’s. The British aircraft industry had played a much larger role in the development of the Super Hornet despite Britain at the time not yet intending to purchase the aircraft. Many European nations such as Spain, Switzerland, Finland, Italy and others operated the F/A-18 and Britain had become effectively the European hub for manufacturing and support and supply chains with many components and spare parts manufacture under licence in Britain. The Americans had wanted to keep this partnership going as they felt it would help European sales prospects and the British wanted to keep it going to be able to continue supporting their own fleet of Hornet’s and to support the British aircraft industry. The first Super Hornet’s had entered service with the USN in 2001.
One of the most surprising aspects of the 2010 Defence Review and regarded by many as the only positive thing to come from that review was the decision to procure the Super Hornet as an interim replacement for the RN and RAF’s legacy Hornet’s. A total of 260 Hornet FGR1’s and FGR2’s had been procured where they had replaced the Phantom, Buccaneer and ultimately Jaguar in RAF service and the Sea Harrier in FAA service. At the time the RAF’s fast jet fleet had consisted of Hornet’s, Harrier GR9’s, Tornado GR4’s and elderly Tornado F3 interceptors. The review had been brutal with the Harrier being immediately retired without replacement, the Tornado F3 scheduled for retirement within the next few years and a number of older Hornets and a smaller number of Tornado GR4’s retired. Both the Hornet and Tornado were getting on in years and would need to be replaced within the next few years. There were some projects in the works for long term replacements but those were still many years away at the time. The Super Hornet had been a relatively obvious choice at it was based upon a proven design that the UK already operated while offering superior capabilities and without the need to pay much in the way of development costs was regarded as cost effective. The deciding factor had been political considerations which were twofold. The Super Hornet already used a great deal of British components and could be assembled within the UK the same way the original Hornets had sustaining a great many jobs within the British aircraft industry. Unlike the original Hornet which had required a lot of money and effort to “Anglicise” the baseline Super Hornet design already contained a significant proportion of British manufactured and British compatible equipment. The only major difference between the baseline F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet and the British versions that would become known as the FGR3 (single seat) and FGR4 (twin seat) was the replacement of the APG-79 Radar with a British developed and manufactured CAPTOR active electronically scanned array radar. CAPTOR had been developed from the Blue Vixen radar which was already used by the Hornet FGR1 and FGR2.
The second reason was the desire by the British Government to try and break the increasing stranglehold the French were developing on the European aircraft market by selling Super Hornets assembled in Britain to other European nations as had happened with the original Hornet. The French had traditionally gone to great lengths to maintain a strong and independent domestic defence industry including aircraft. With a few exceptions the French Armed Forces were unique in possessing almost exclusively domestically manufactured equipment.
Over the years there had been various pan European attempts to produce a jointly produced combat aircraft. These projects had been given nicknames such as “Eurofighter”. All of these attempts had failed mostly due to a lack of interest from the potential largest partners. When Britain had decided to purchase the F/A-18 in the early 1980’s it had symbolised a general pivot on the part of the British towards partnership with the Americans in terms of aircraft. As a result, they hadn’t really been interested in a joint European project. The French had decided that it would be in their best interest not to participate seeing as without them such a project would likely never get off the ground and would likely push more nations into having to purchase French aircraft.
Without Britain or France onboard Germany had felt that they couldn’t commit to such a programme seeing as they felt they didn’t have the technical expertise or willingness to commit to what they felt would be the lions share of any such project and had opted to purchase American aircraft instead. The Luftwaffe had been very pleased with their F15 Eagle’s and F15E Strike Eagle’s and also continued to operate the Tornado. France had been part of the various attempts to produce a European fighter aircraft and in the aftermath of its failure had chosen to take what they had developed so far and go it alone. The result had been a delta wing, canard, twin engine multi role fighter manufactured by Dassault known as the Rafale. The Rafale was now the backbone of the French Air Force and French Naval Aviation and had been exported to a number of countries around the world.
The 2010 Defence review had committed to the purchase of 200 Super Hornet FGR3’s and FGR4’s to replace the legacy Hornet FG1’s and FGR2’ in FAA and RAF service. The RAF would also use the Super Hornet to replace the Tornado F3 in the short term. The First UK Super Hornet’s would enter service in 2014.
The 2015 defence review had been conducted against the backdrop of increased tensions with Russia and the increased likelihood of high intensity high technology warfare. As a result it had committed the UK to the procurement of yet another variant of the F/A-18. The Boeing E/A-18 Growler was an electronic warfare variant of the Super Hornet that had been developed to replace the EA-6 Prowler in USN service.
Now finding themselves desperately in need of a boost to their electronic warfare and SEAD capabilities in order to face Russian air defence systems such as the fearsome S-4000 SAM (SA-21 Growler) the UK had leapt on the chance to purchase the E/A-18. Already operating the Super Hornet and having the infrastructure in place to operate it the E/A-18 was regarded as offering a significant boost in capability and mission success chances for a relatively modest price. 36 Growlers had been procured with 12 going to the RN and 24 to the RAF.
Of course, there was more to the UK aircraft industry than just licence building Hornet’s and Super Hornet’s.
In 1997 the Labour Party had won a landslide in the general election and formed a new government. The labour government had promised to halt what it described as the long term decline of the British aircraft industry and return it to something approaching its former glory. It had been decided that the best way to do this was through a number of big ticket development programmes that would not only sustain jobs but develop expertise and the industrial base necessary for the industry to survive in the long term. Unfortunately for them there is a reason why few nations develop their own aircraft. It’s hellishly expensive, requires a level of expertise that most nations don’t posses and only really makes sense of you are intending to purchase the resulting aircraft in significant numbers. Thus, it had been decided that some sort of joint programme with another nation would be the best way ahead in order to help develop British industry to the point of being able to take on an independent project in the long term.
The Americans had been approached to see if they were interested in collaboration on what would become the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor stealth fighter to replace the Tornado F3 interceptor. Many in the US would later claim that the British made their offer a few years earlier it would have probably been taken up. As it was by the time the British expressed an interest in the aircraft in 1998 the first prototypes had been flying for well over a year and most of the development work had already been carried out and paid for. For the American’s the main benefit of having the British aboard would have been having someone to share the massive development costs and the lower unit price achieved through having more aircraft built. Another problem was that the F22 contained a large amount of cutting edge and extremely secret stealth technology and onboard computer systems which had led the US Congress to impose a ban on exports of the aircraft. Had the British persisted they could have probably eventually been granted special permission to purchase the aircraft but it was made clear that even this would be a reduced specification export model.
On the British side when it became clear how difficult and expensive it would be to obtain the F22 interest rapidly drained away. The RAF felt that they wouldn’t be able to afford to field adequate numbers of F22’s and weren’t interested in a dedicated air superiority fighter. Going forward the preference was for multirole combat aircraft.
Far from going home with their tail between their legs the British had come back to the Americans with a new proposal. In the aftermath of the Cold War a lot of American aircraft projects had been cancelled meaning that they were in need of a new aircraft project to replace the variety of frontline types they had in service such as the F16. At the same time, they were looking to use what they had learnt with the F22 to develop a cheaper stealth fighter that could be exported. The British had proposed a joint programme to develop a common aircraft to meet the American’s and their own needs for a 5th Generation multirole aircraft. They had offered a 50/50 split of the development costs which had convinced the US government to approve the programme. The Joint Strike Fighter Programme had begun in 2001 and despite taking many years longer and costing more than it should have had produced perhaps the most advanced combat aircraft in service today. The Lockheed Martin/BAE produced aircraft was known in US service as the F35 and in British service as the Thunderchief II. The project had been successful in its aim to produce a cheaper version of the F22 stealth fighter that was exportable. The F35 Thunderchief visually looked quite similar to the F22 which had been the baseline for the design of the airframe. Britain’s contribution was the powerful Rolls Royce jet engine, various onboard systems and electronics such as the cutting edge ECM/ESM suite and much more. About 40% of each aircraft was manufactured in Britain, most notably the Rolls Royce engine and parts of the wings and fuselage and many other components. Other nations had also become involved carrying out subcontracting work to supply components.
The F35 Thunderchief II had been controversial on both sides of the Atlantic. In Britain the controversy was due to the sheer cost with questions being asked as to why the Americans weren’t paying more when they would obviously be the largest users of the aircraft. Behind closed doors many were angered by the fact that it would be politically and diplomatically impossible for them to back out of what at times looked to become an unaffordable project.
On the American side many were angered by the joint nature of the project and how large of a manufacturing share Britain had claiming that American jobs and industry were being sacrificed in order to save money. For this reason, final assembly of all aircraft including those intended for export took place in Lockheed Martin’s in Fort Worth, Texas.
The first prototype had flown in 2008 and the first production aircraft had been delivered to the USAF in 2013. Already more than 500 examples had been built with the USAF being by far and away the biggest operator followed by the RAF who planned to procure a total of 150 examples (meaning that going forward its fast jet fleet would be comprised of Thunderbolt’s and Super Hornets). The F35 being the only 5th Generation fighter available on the market had been a run away export success with nations queueing up to buy it and just over 100 aircraft already in service with these countries. Australia, Canada, Italy, The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Israel, Finland, Japan, South Korea and many other nations had already placed orders with more from other nations expected. All together it was estimated that well over 2000 aircraft would be ultimately produced, much to the delight of the by then British Conservative Government who were happy to take the credit for what could be creatively interpreted as a British export success.
The Lockheed Martin/BAE F35 Thunderchief II wasn’t the only fast jet project that Britain was currently involved in.
The Hawker Harrier VSTOL aircraft had been originally developed back in the 1960s and was still in service around the world most notably with the USMC. Britain had operated the Harrier in one form or another for more than 40 years but in all that time had regarded it as more of a nice to have. The Sea Harrier had only been developed for the RN as a way of maintaining some form of fixed wing capability following the decision in the 1970’s to dispense with conventional carrier aircraft. The Royal Navy hadn’t really held the aircraft in very high regard and had gotten rid of it as soon as was possible with the introduction of the Hornet. Within the history of the Fleet Air Arm the Sea Harrier was regarded as an interesting but not particularly important footnote in history. The RAF had originally procured the aircraft as they envisioned it operating from hidden rough airfields in the German countryside as they expected their air bases to be quickly put out of action by a Soviet attack. While the Harrier had been a pretty respectable ground attack and strike aircraft in later years the RAF felt that VSTOL capability was something they could manage without. The main reason why the Harrier had survived as long as it had with the RAF was that it was still pretty good at its given role and there had never been any serious attempt at replacing it. In 2010 when it became clear that savage cuts were going to be imposed on the defence budget the RAF had decided to offer up the Harrier as a sacrifice to the treasury executioners in order to safeguard their other assets.
In contrast to the Harrier’s creators in Britain the USMC were absolutely in love with the aircraft as it was capable of operating from amphibious assault ships and didn’t require a runway ashore meaning that it was ideal for providing fixed wing close air support.
VSTOL capability was something that the USMC was desperate to keep. The Harrier also continued to be operated by the Indian, Italian and Spanish Navy’s from the decks of their small carriers.
The USMC had been offered the option of buying the F35 Thunderchief II but had turned it down on the grounds that it was not capable of operating from a carrier and that they really wanted to focus on obtaining a new VTOL aircraft. They had however procured the F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet to replace some of their older Hornets.
In the early days of the Joint Strike Fighter programme that eventually became the F35 a number of proposals for different variants had been looked at including a VSTOL capable variant. Pursuing this option had been decided against as it was considered that trying to shoehorn VTOL into an existing aircraft design would be far too technically difficult and expensive and would likely compromise the F35 design. It was felt that any new VTOL aircraft should be something designed for that role from the outset rather than a modification of an existing design.
The Americans had originally been interested in pursuing a joint programme with the British similar to the Joint Strike Fighter seeing as the British were regarded as the world leaders in VTOL aircraft design. However, when the British Government had decided to scrap their Harrier’s in 2010, they had made it clear that they were not interested in procuring a direct replacement. This had forced the US into having to go it alone in developing a Harrier replacement. The resulting aircraft was the Lockheed Martin AV-19 Hellcat II. The old man remembered seeing a picture of the proposed design for the first time and how the aircrafts appearance had reminded him of the Hawker Siddeley P1154 or a Harrier on steroids. Many aspects of the new aircraft were similar to the Harrier with a single engine that would switch between vertical and normal flight, downwards thrust in the centre of the fuselage and a relatively small wing. The AV-19’s main improvement over the Harrier was its superior performance with the ability to fly at supersonic speeds and to take off vertically with a full fuel and munitions load out. Though it had aspects of stealth technology onboard the AV-19 wasn’t a stealth aircraft to the same extent that the F22 and F35 were, instead relying on its performance for survivability.
Though the British Armed Forces weren’t interested in purchasing the aircraft themselves British companies had been heavily involved in its development using the experience they had with the Harrier. BAE had helped to design the airframe and Rolls Royce had provided considerable assistance and guidance in designing a new engine based upon their own Pegasus engine that powered the Harrier. The AV-19 Hellcat II was due to enter frontline service with the USMC sometime in the mid 2020’s. In the meantime, the USMC was pressing ahead with an upgrade of their existing Harrier fleet to keep them viable until they were replaced by the AV-19.
There was one Royal Navy aircraft that wasn’t represented aboard HMS EAGLE just yet. Both the RN and USN were mindful of the fact that while the Super Hornet was a relatively new and very capable aircraft it was a generation behind what the RAF/USAF would very soon be operating and that potential adversaries such as Russia and China were known to be developing 5th generation aircraft. Therefore, in the long term there was a need for a 5th generation stealth carrier capable fighter. The simplest course of action and the one that had been pursued was to develop a naval version of the F35 as an offshoot of that ongoing programme.
History teaches that generally aircraft that are successful in operating both from land and sea (such as the F4 Phantom) are usually aircraft that started out life as naval aircraft designed for carrier operations as it is easier to remove something that is no longer needed (such as arrestor hooks and a strengthened airframe) than it is to add something to an existing design. This had caused the Lockheed Martin/BAE team to go right back to basics to just the bare bones of the F35 design and start over. The resulting aircraft still shared the overwhelming majority of its components with the F35. The main differences were a slightly different airframe form (most notably a greater wing area to assist with catapult take offs), a greatly strengthened airframe and undercarriage to cope with the stresses of carrier take offs and landings and an arrestor hook. All of this strengthening came at the price of greater weight. The penalty of this was a lower fuel and munitions lift capability compared to the land based F35 in order to get the weight down to the point where the aircraft was light enough for carrier operations.
It had been decided that there was enough difference between this aircraft and the F35 for it to be classed as a separate type rather than just a variant of the F35. Therefore, the aircraft was known as the Lockheed Martin/BAE Tempest.
Prototype aircraft had been flying for a few years now and the first aircraft were expected to be delivered to the FAA’s operational evaluation unit in 2025. With the Super Hornet still being relatively young with plenty of flying hours left on them there wasn’t really that much of a rush on the part of the RN to get the new aircraft into service and thus the first batches of production aircraft would be going to the USN.
The old man had had a very enjoyable time looking at the aircraft on the flight deck and talking to the pilots and aircraft handlers. He had been particularly interested in the fact that two of the pilots were exchange officers from the US Navy and French Navy and had enjoyed talking to them about how EAGLE and the Fleet Air Arm compared to their own employers.
As he began to make his way back down to the hangar via a stairwell that had been set up on the Portside aircraft lift, he had noticed a harbour tender that approached and then proceeded to tie up to the Port side of EAGLE. He was then informed that the tender would be taking groups of the old EAGLE men on tours of the dockyard and he was very welcome to partake. The old man had been very pleased to accept this offer and after embarking aboard the harbour tender along with a number of old friends they had set off to see the ships of the modern Royal Navy. It was a completely different navy to the one they had served in. All of the ships they had known were now just names and photographs in RN history books and all of the men they had served with were like them civilians again. The old man had remembered seeing a news article not long ago about how the last Falklands veteran had left the British armed forces. Even the current First Sea Lord had joined the RN after the Falklands War. Soon the last Cold War era servicemen would be gone. The old man remembered when he had joined as a 16 year old all those decades ago how there were some crusty old chiefs and warrant officers around back then who had served in the second world war. It was interesting to think that those men who had trained him had probably been trained by men who had served in the first world war.
As the tender began to move away from the berthing bay from which he had embarked the old man was once again overawed by the sheer size of EAGLE. At just under 300m in length the carrier took up the entire length of Middle Slip Jetty and also dominated the adjacent Sheer Jetty by taking up just enough of its length with her stern lines to make Sheer Jetty unusable as a berth for any other ship while the carrier was in port. When only one carrier was in port it would nearly always be berthed on Middle Slip Jetty.
The next berth along the wall was Victory Jetty. A ship berthed here has a prime view of the magnificently restored HMS VICTORY, the building that contained the preserved remains of the MARY ROSE, the first world war era Monitor M33 and the Georgian era buildings of the Historic Dockyard that were generally much easier on the eye than the industrial buildings that made up most of the naval base. A ship berthed here was also very much in the public eye as it would be in full view of the visitors to the Historic Dockyard. For these reasons Victory Jetty was regarded as the prestige berth. When both of the Royal Navy’s aircraft carriers alongside one would be berthed here as Victory Jetty was also the only other berth large and deep enough to accommodate such massive vessels. Visiting warships would also be berthed here as the view from the berth was used by the RN as a subtle way to show off and it had the added bonus of keeping foreign personnel away from the dockyard’s main operation. Today there was a visiting warship berthed here but it was not a foreigner. HMS BULWARK was one of the RN’s pair of ALBION class of amphibious assault ships. The Albion class were homeported in Devonport. BULWARK was currently undertaking operational sea training as part of her workup for a deployment and was alongside for a few days for a bit of respite and maintenance from the gruelling training schedule. Nearly every single person on the harbour tender had grim memories of going through OST. With a displacement of 23,000 tons and a length of 206m the ALBION Class were impressive ships. The ships had been built to replace ageing FEARLESS Class LPD’s and had entered service in the late 1990’s. The ALBION’s were essentially a combined LPH and LPD type design and visually looked like light aircraft carriers with a large stern ramp covering the entrance to a large well deck. There were clear parallels with the INVINCIBLE class light aircraft carriers and obvious design influences. The ALBION class’s internal layout was dominated by two extremely large internal spaces. The aircraft hangar which provided space for an air group of 18 helicopters and below that a vehicle deck located just in front of a well deck capable of holding up to 4 large LCU Mark 10 landing craft internally. A further 4 smaller LCVP Mark 5 landing craft were held by davits in berthing bays on the ships side along with the ships own boats. BULWARK’s air group usually consisted of 12 Merlin HC4’s from the Commando Helicopter Force along with 6 other aircraft from the Army Air Corps or the RAF. Apache attack helicopters from the AAC’s 656 squadron were routinely carried onboard and the UK was the only nation in the world to operate the type at sea. RAF Chinook helicopters were also regular features onboard but came with the drawback that they could not be stowed in the hangar without having their rotor blades removed seeing as they lacked a blade folding mechanism meaning that they had to be stowed on the flight deck. The ALBION class was theoretically capable of embarking any UK Military helicopter and other types from the FAA/AAC/RAF were infrequent visitors. The sheer size of the hangar and vehicle deck/well dock had presented quite a challenge to the naval architects who had designed the ALBION class and careful control and oversight had been required to prevent the design from rapidly ballooning into something that would have been completely unaffordable. The at the time recent experience of the QUEEN ELIZABETH Class aircraft carrier programme had been put to good use in the ALBION Class. Cammell Laird had been selected to build the first ship HMS ALBION as they were at the time still finishing off HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH and thus had the facilities and experience of building large and complicated warships. HMS BULWARK had been built by what had then been VSEL at Barrow in Furness for the same reasons on the same slipway that had given birth to HMS EAGLE. Though over the last 20 or so years they had become much more involved in civilian ship building and downsized somewhat Cammell Laird was still one of the UK’s most active ship building yards. In Barrow in Furness VSEL was now BAE Systems was still as busy as ever and committed entirely to the naval side of things.
In terms of troop carrying capacity the ALBION Class stats were impressive with the ability to carry 600 men (850 for short periods) not including the personnel who were required to support the embarked air group and a significant number of vehicles depending on type ranging from 40+ small vehicles to 6 MBT’s but usually around 30 trucks or armoured vehicles.
The French had also adopted the concept of combining an LPH with and LPD in their 21,500 ton MISTRAL Class. Though they would never comment many suspected that the French had been at least partially influenced by the ALBION class.
South of HMS BULWARK was South Railway Jetty which was occupied by one of the Royal Navy’s newest and certainly most modern vessel. The TYPE 26 frigate HMS LONDON. The TYPE 26 had been bourne out of a requirement in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review to develop a replacement for the TYPE 22 and ultimately the TYPE 23 frigates under what had been called the Future Surface Combatant programme with the first ship planned to enter service in 2015. 2015 was when the Batch 3 Type 22’s and the first Type 23’s would be starting to hit the 25 years old mark. Unfortunately, due to the usual reasons of budgetary restrictions and delays, technical difficulties and good old fashioned administrative and management incompetence the original planned in service sate of 2015 had been missed by quite a long way. The first ship HMS GLASGOW (named after the TYPE 42 destroyer that had been lost during the Falklands War) had been commissioned in late 2019. HMS LONDON was the second ship of the class joining the fleet the previous year having had her entry to service delayed by the effects of the worldwide Coronavirus pandemic. The next ship of the class was HMS BIRMINGHAM which was currently embarking on her builder’s trials up in Scotland.
Whatever the delays there was no denying that the TYPE 26 TOWN Class frigates were seriously impressive ships. The LONDON had smooth angular sides strongly reminiscent of the slightly older TYPE 45 destroyers that reduced the ships radar signature. The ship was equipped with the latest sensors and electronics including the Type 997 radar and 2087 towed array sonar that had also been fitted to the remaining TYPE 23’s and some new cutting edge and extremely sophisticated ESM/ECM equipment. The TYPE 26 was an extremely capable ASW vessel and getting sufficient numbers into service with the RN would go a long way towards countering the increasing threat from Russia’s submarine fleet. In terms of armaments the TYPE 26’s included a number of firsts. For the first time all of the ships missiles would be carried in a vertical launch system. The TYPE 26 was equipped primarily with the Sea Ceptor SAM that had recently been fitted to HMS EAGLE and the TYPE 23 frigates replacing the older Sea Wolf. As well as Sea Ceptor the class would also carry the new American built LRASM that was being introduced to replace the elderly Harpoon SSM in RN service. In time even the stealthy LRASM would be replaced by the currently under development British/French Perseus stealthy, hypersonic cruise missile. As well as SAM’s and SSM’s the TYPE 26 VLS was also capable of carrying the Tomahawk TLAM and ASROC. HMS LONDON was also one of the first ships to be equipped with the Martlet light anti-ship missile as a form of point defence against small fast moving craft. This was part of an effort by the RN to counter the threat of swarm attacks from the IRGC in the Straits of Hormuz. In terms of guns the TYPE 26 carried the 5 inch gun that in the long run would become the standard RN naval gun replacing the 4.5 inch gun. As well as this the TYPE 26 was equipped with a pair of the latest version of the Phalanx CWIS as well as a pair of 30mm cannons and the usual array of GPMG’s and Miniguns.
The TYPE 26 had been a runaway success even before the first ship touched the water. The most recent defence review had reiterated the Royal Navy’s requirement for a fleet of 30 frigates and destroyers to meet its needs. Thus as things stood 18 TYPE 26’s would be built for the Royal Navy replacing the TYPE 23’s on a one for one basis. The slightly lower manning requirement of the TYPE 26 compared to the TYPE 23 would also over time relieve some pressure on the seemingly constantly undermanned RN.
The TYPE 26 was also turning into a massive export success for Britain with Australia, Canada and New Zealand getting ready to introduce their own locally built TYPE 26’s.
The Royal Australian Navy already operated the TYPE 45 destroyer (known as the HOBART class in RAN service) and had chosen the TYPE 26 to replace their fleet of ANZAC class frigates. The Australian ships would include some design changes to meet their particular needs and would be known as the HUNTER class. The first of the planned 9 ships of the HUNTER class HMAS HUNTER was already under construction in Australia at BAE’s yard in Osbourne where the Australian TYPE 45’s had been built.
Like the Australians the Royal New Zealand Navy had also chosen the TYPE 26 to replace their ageing ANZAC class frigates. The RNZN had chosen to procure a pair of the Australian HUNTER class version of the TYPE 26 to be built alongside the RAN’s ships in Osbourne as part of their aim of maintaining interoperability with the RAN.
After a rather protracted bidding process Canada had chosen the TYPE 26 to replace the HALIFAX class frigates in what was a near complete replacement of the Royal Canadian Navy’s surface fleet. In Canadian service the class would be known as the CANADA class and would be named after Canadian provinces and towns. The planned 15 ships of the class would be built in Canada by Irving Shipbuilding at their yard in Halifax where the first of the class HMCS ONTARIO was due to begin construction in the next year.
A lot of effort was being expended by the British Government into persuading Brazil and other nations to procure the TYPE 26 frigate.
HMS LONDON’s berth at South Railway Jetty was the furthest most part of HMNB Portsmouth. After heading a little further south in order to give the old EAGLE men a good view of the preserved and still afloat 162 year old iron clad HMS WARRIOR (who had once been the most powerful ship in the world) the harbour tender made a 180 degree turn and headed north again passing HMS LONDON, HMS BULWARK and HMS EAGLE before clearing the bow of HMS EAGLE and making the turn around the corner where Middle Slip Jetty and North Corner met. As he saw the two ships at North Corner berthed 2 abreast the old man reflected on the fact that while the Royal Navy was considerably smaller in terms of numbers than in his day the ships themselves kept getting bigger and bigger putting berthing space at a premium. In fact, when the TYPE 45 destroyers had started to be introduced replacing the much smaller TYPE 42’s there had had to be something of a reorganisation with a number of TYPE 23 frigates transferred to Devonport to free up enough space in Portsmouth.
In his day due to the sheer number of ships it had been fairly common to see ships alongside tied up 2 or even 3 abreast due to a lack of berth space. Today the same thing seemed to be happening again only this time the lack of berth space was being caused by the sheer size of the RN’s current ships with the current generation of destroyers being the size of the cruisers of old. All of this placed a great strain on the dockyard which had been built mostly during the 18th and 19th centuries when ships were only a fraction of the size and was now struggling to cope with the demands of a fleet that had far outgrown anything those long dead builders and architects could have possibly imagined. Indeed, there were plenty of sometimes centuries old drydocks within the dockyard that were essentially abandoned due to being far to small to even accommodate even the smallest ships in the RN’s fleet and buildings that were old enough to be listed.
The pair of ships tied up abreast of each other on North Corner were the TYPE 45 destroyers HMS DEMON and HMS DUCHESS. Both of these ships were Batch 2 TYPE 45’s. In total the Royal Navy operated 12 TYPE 45’s all of which were based at Portsmouth. Their towering pyramid shaped mainmasts were very distinctive meaning that it was generally pretty easy for the casual observer to count how many TYPE 45’s were in port at any one time.
The six Batch 2 TYPE 45’s differed somewhat from their older Batch 1 sister ships. The Batch 1’s had been plagued by propulsion problems caused by intercoolers that were unreliable when the ships were operating in warmer waters. This had resulted in the Batch 1’s having to undergo expensive and technically challenging defect rectification work. As a result of this the Batch 2’s had been built with different machinery including an additional diesel generator. In terms of war fighting capability the main difference between the Batch 1’s and 2’s was the switching of the 4.5 inch naval gun for a 5 inch gun. In the long run it was planned to refit the older TYPE 45’s with the 5 inch gun. As the tender made its way past the two ships the old man noticed the difference in SSM armament with HMS DEMON having recently been refitted to carry the LRASM while HMS DUCHESS was still carrying the older Harpoon. Both missiles were carried in quad launchers in the space forward between the VLS and the superstructure.
As the tender passed North Corner it came upon South West Wall and an extremely unusual visitor to HMNB Portsmouth. The Irish Naval Service’s LE GEORGE BERNARD SHAW. Though many in Britain probably weren’t aware The Republic of Ireland did in fact maintain its own armed forces including a navy of sorts.
No one could remember a visit by an Irish Naval Service vessel to a Royal Navy dockyard having taken place before. Militarily Ireland had traditionally maintained a firmly neutral stance having not taken part in any conflicts or foreign deployments outside of the occasional UN peacekeeping mission and not being a part of NATO. The Royal Navy had never really had a relationship or much interaction with their Irish counterparts. At just a little over 2,250 tons the LE GEORGE BERNARD SHAW was the largest Irish military vessel with the rest of the Irish fleet being comprised of just over half a dozen active OPV’s. The official reason for the Irish visit was a simple goodwill visit a PR opportunity although many suspected that this was a tentative step on the part of the Irish towards possible cooperation with their much larger neighbouring fleet. As well as tours of the dockyard and visits to British ships Irish Naval Service personnel had been undertaking firefighting and damage control training at the RN’s world class facilities on Whale Island. The old man reckoned that if both sides were serious about forging closer ties then the next logical step would be an Irish Naval Service vessel undertaking training conducted by the RN’s legendary FOST organisation.
Within Ireland itself the poor pay and conditions endured by personnel within the Irish Defence Forces was becoming something of a national scandal and the cause of a serious manpower crisis. It was noted how some of those who were leaving the Irish Defence Forces were eventually finding their way into the British Armed Forces who still recruited from the Republic of Ireland. The better pay and conditions and perceived better lifestyle and career were quite attractive to some in Ireland. When personnel from Northern Ireland were taken into account the British Armed Forces easily employed more Irishmen than the Irish Defence Forces. In fact, in the case of the RN and RAF there were probably more citizens of the Republic of Ireland serving in those organisations than in their Irish counterparts.
As the harbour tender passed South West Wall the old man got a good look at 2 Basin. Due to its small size 2 Basin was used to host MCMV’s of the HUNT class (with the RN’s other MCMV class the SANDOWN class being based at HMNB CLYDE in Scotland) and a number of other small vessels miscellaneous including UK Border Force cutters.
The tender now turned north passing the drydocks that were the entry and exit points for the much larger non tidal 3 Basin. Within the drydocks and 3 Basin itself there were plenty of ships undergoing refit and various other forms of work. The dominating feature of the basin was the gigantic shipbuilding hall that had been built over what had been Drydock 13. The sheer volume of the building was illustrated by how it dwarfed the TYPE 45 destroyer right next to it in Dock 14 undergoing refit. Originally built and operated by Vosper Thornycroft but now (like most things) run by BAE the shipbuilding hall had produced superblocks for the TYPE 45’s and other ships that had been built using modular construction and since then had built the RIVER class OPV’s.
As they proceeded north the old EAGLE men came upon the most visible and dramatic change to the dockyard since their day on what had once been known as North West Wall. When HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH arrived in Portsmouth for the first time the Royal Navy had found itself in the awkward position of not possessing a drydock big enough to accommodate a ship so large. With HMS EAGLE on the way it was estimated that there would be a requirement for a QE class ship drydocking to take place on average of once every 18 months. As things had stood the lack of capacity to do this was considered to be unacceptable. This was an issue that had been known even before the first ship had been laid down. From the outset it had been recognised that any solution to the drydocking issue would not be easy and certainly not cheap. With budgets already strained by the costs of building the aircraft carriers themselves the standard government response of kicking the can down the road had been adopted. This had happened again and again and it wasn’t until the 1998 Strategic defence review that the tough decisions had been made and the issue had finally begun to be dealt with. The then new government like the old one had been convinced by the argument of the long term need for a larger drydock somewhere. The difference was that when the new government had taken power the carriers had largely been paid for freeing up the necessary finance to fund a new drydock project.
The chosen solution to the problem however had taken some by surprise and been somewhat controversial. The option that most commentators had expected the MOD to pursue had been to enlarge the existing D Lock within HMNB Portsmouth. The MOD however had gone for something radically different. Falklands Dock as it was known was a completely new drydock built on an area of reclaimed land that jutted out from what had been North West Wall (where some of the now landlocked bollards still remained). The decision to go with a completely new drydock had been heavily criticised due to its expense (costing almost as much as building a third QE class ship) and the disruption it caused to shipping in the harbour both naval and civilian. Portsmouth City Council had been up in arms about the project owing to the disruption that it had caused to the ferry and merchant ship services at the ferry port just north of the naval base. They had even gone as far to directly blame the disruption for P&O’s decision to cease operations at Portsmouth (despite P&O themselves never officially making any such claim).
The MOD had felt that a completely new drydock (very similar to the one proposed back in the 1960’s for the CVA-01 carriers) would be better in the long run as it would allow for a much larger dock to be built as a form of future proofing and would create badly needed extra berthing space and real estate within HMNB Portsmouth. The government despite the costs had backed this proposal on the grounds that the number of jobs created played well politically. The project had required yet another dredging programme to be undertaken within Portsmouth Harbour to allow enough deep water for ships to manoeuvre into the new dry dock and for large ferries to have enough room to sail past. The southernmost sand banks that appear in Portsmouth Harbour at low tide had completely disappeared. Several new hills had been created on the shore at the northern end of the harbour with all of the mud that had been sucked up from the sea bed and dumped there.
The drydock project had been expected to be completed by 2005 but as per usual had been delayed and not been completed until 2009. The delays had resulted in significant cost overruns. Part of the problem had been the disruption caused by the repeated discoveries and disposals of unexploded German bombs left over from the second world war.
Today Falklands Dock was occupied. HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH was well into the same two year rebuild that her younger sister had recently undertaken.
On paper the Royal Navy had 4 capital ships excluding the SSBN’s. The pair of QE class supercarriers and the pair of ALBION class assault ships. In reality only 2 of these ships HMS EAGLE and HMS BULWARK were active. The fact was that the RN didn’t have the money or manpower to operate all four ships at the same time without laying up a number of escorts alongside which was something that they were not prepared to do. Since 2010 the RN had kept one of their ALBION class ships in “extended readiness” which in reality meant mothballed alongside without a crew. The ships would be swapped around every few years which as well as reliving pressure on manpower had the added advantage o extending the ships lifespans by keeping their mileage lower than it would have otherwise been. The aircraft carrier overhaul programme meant that for a period of about 5 years they RN was only required to fully crew one ship which released a massive burden on manpower. The issue was that in just over a year HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH would come back into service and be in need of a crew. The RN’s most recent recruitment campaign was in response to this need as manpower levels had recently been allowed to drop far too low.
Rounding Falklands Dock to the northern perimeter of the dockyard the tender came upon the 800m long Fountain Lake Jetty where a number of TYPE 23 frigates were berthed. The TYPE 23’s had been the backbone of the RN’s frigate force for about 20 years now and despite their age were still capable ships with many years ahead of them. The 13 youngest ships of the class had been refitted to carry Sea Ceptor, the Type 997 Radar and Type 2087 towed array sonar. Now that the TYPE 26 frigates were beginning to enter service the oldest TYPE 23’s were starting to be retired. In Devonport HMS NORFOLK, HMS ARGYLL and most recently HMS MARLBOROUGH were laid up in a basin having been decommissioned where they were in the process of slowly being gutted for spare parts before being ultimately scrapped or expended as targets. With 15 TYPE 23’s still in RN service plus those serving in the Chilean and Republic of Singapore Navy’s there was a high demand for older out of production parts.
The Tender now again headed north away from HMNB Portsmouth and towards Whale Island. Whale Island was occupied by the shore establishment HMS EXCELLENT. HMS EXCELLENT had once been home to the Royal Navy’s gunnery school which had closed in 1985. Today HMS EXCELLENT hosted a number of training schools and lodger units including the Navy Command Headquarters building and an RNR unit. HMS EXCELLENT’s most important lodger was located on the north part of Whale Island. HMS PHEONIX was the Royal Navy’s firefighting and damage control training school. Boasting world class facilities, the training provided by HMS PHEONIX to all Royal Navy personnel was envied by many other navy’s around the world and even civilian fire brigades. The Royal Navy still held the reputation for being the world leaders in shipboard fire fighting and damage control that it had established as a result of the Falklands War.
It wasn’t HMS EXCELLENT that held the attention of the men on the harbour tender though but as they were reunited with yet another old friend and Falklands veteran. The TYPE 82 destroyer HMS BRISTOL had become legendary for her exploits in the Falklands. For much of the time she had served as the air defence escort for HMS EAGLE. Her most notable action had been during the Argentine air attacks on the British fleet in San Carlos Water. Located west of the Falkland Islands HMS BRISTOL accompanied by HMS EXETER and HMS BRILLIANT had detected and disrupted the Argentine mass of aircraft as they made their way towards San Carlos. In doing so she had downed a number of A4 Skyhawks and the civilian Learjet that had been guiding them with her Sea Dart SAM system. Later on, that day the BRISTOL group had successfully defeated an attack by an Exocet missile launched by an Argentine Super Etendard. Bristol had later gone on to provide naval gunfire support to the SAS/SBS force during their capture of Pebble Island airfield. Better still at the time HMS BRISTOL had been commanded by a man who was well liked and highly respected by the men of HMS EAGLE. The then Captain (now a retired Vice Admiral) Alan Grose DSO KBE had commanded BRISTOL during the Falklands campaign and had gone on to become the last commander of HMS EAGLE. Although he had been invited to todays event aboard HMS EAGLE Vice Admiral Grose had politely declined owing to having a prior engagement.
Since retiring from active service in 1993 the now 59 year old HMS BRISTOL had been the RN’s harbour training vessel permanently berthed at Whale Island. Probably every single member of the Royal Navy for the last 30 years would have undertaken some form of training aboard HMS BRISTOL at one point or another.
As the Harbour tug carrying the old EAGLE men drew closer, they began to wave at the many men of the same age as them on the decks of HMS BRISTOL. The men of the BRISTOL waved back at them. The old man envied the BRISTOL men. It was one thing to have a reunion with your old shipmates, a special thing to have such a reunion aboard your old ships namesake but something else entirely to be able to have a reunion with your old shipmates aboard your old ship!
There had been a rumour going around recently that HMS BRISTOL was to be retired from her training role and disposed of. Already an HMS BRISTOL preservation society had been formed. In the old man’s opinion such a ship should be preserved for the nation as a reminder of an era that was now just a memory. It would be a black day for the RN if BRISTOL was sent to the breakers yard. As they noticed a certain familiar figure step out onto the bridge wing of his old command the old EAGLE men stood to attention while the uniformed officers chaperoning them saluted. High up above them Vice Admiral Grose acknowledged the compliment paid by his old ships company.
Moving westwards away from Whale Island and HMNB Portsmouth the tender headed towards the centre of Portsmouth Harbour. Here they came across the TYPE 45 destroyer HMS DEFENDER which was tied up alongside another new addition to the dockyard, the ammunitioning jetty. Munitions and fuel for the Portsmouth based ships were stored bunkers and buried tanks at a large MOD facility on the western side of the harbour. In the case of fuel barges would take on fuel from the tanks and transport head over to the ships alongside at the naval base to fill their tanks. Using barges towed by tugs was a lot easier and a lot quicker than moving the ships themselves over to the fuelling facility on the western edge of the harbour.
For obvious safety reasons munitions handling is something best done well away from anywhere else. For safety reasons it had eventually become judged to be unacceptably risky to continue transferring munitions to and from ships that were tied up alongside within the dockyard. Therefore, a new purpose built munitions handling facility had been built within the centre of the harbour far enough away from the dockyard that hopefully in the event of a catastrophic munitions handling accident some ships and parts of the dockyard would survive.
Beyond the munitions handling jetty right up in the north west corner of the dockyard was a conspicuously empty bit of water. The area of the harbour that had traditionally been known as Rotten Row was where the RN traditionally anchored its old retired ships to keep them out of the way while they awaited their fates. Many ships of the old man’s generation had ended their days slowly rusting there while they waited for the ship breakers to come and collect them. Until previously the area had been occupied by a pair of ex Royal Fleet Auxiliary ROVER class small fleet tankers until they had been towed away to a scrapyard in Turkey. Before them the space had been filled with decommissioned TYPE 42 destroyers and TYPE 22 frigates. Soon TYPE 23’s would begin to appear there. The old man remembered his father showing him photographs from the late 1940’s of Portsmouth and Plymouth filled with entire fleets of decrepit old ships left over from the second world war including dozens of giant battleships and aircraft carriers. What a sight that must have been!
Apart from the Dockyard the Royal Navy still operated many other establishments in and around Portsmouth including the Maritime Warfare School at HMS COLLINGWOOD and the engineering training establishment at HMS SULTAN. The harbour tender now made its way south towards another RN location, this time in Gosport.
HMS DOLPHIN was the spiritual home of the Royal Navy’s submarine service. This was despite the fact that no submarines had been based there since 2012 when the last of the UPHOLDER class SSK’s had left for its new home at Devonport as part of a rationalisation to save money. The UPHOLDER class and diesel powered submarines in general were now a thing of the past in the Royal Navy. The 2010 Defence Review had cancelled the planned UPHOLDER class replacement programme. While the UPHOLDER’s had provided certain useful niche capabilities many had felt that they didn’t provide anything that couldn’t be provided by nuclear boats. With budgets already tight the RN’s Submarine Service had found itself having to make a choice whether to press ahead with developing a new class of SSK’s or becoming an all nuclear force. They had chosen the latter option as doing so allowed them to build more ASTUTE class SSN’s which were considered to be much more valuable. At the time the MOD was also planning and budgeting for what would become the DREADNOUGHT class building programme to replace the VANGUARD class SSBN’s and felt that they couldn’t spare the money to press ahead with building a new class of SSK’s. The potential for export success as had happened with the UPHOLDER class held little weight as the world SSK market was probably more crowded than ever before with Germany, Sweden, France, Russia and now China building SSK’s for export likely squeezing out any potential UK exports.
The Submarine Service’s fleet was now at its lowest every strength with only 12 boats in service. The 4 VANGUARD class SSBN’s continued their 50 year unbroken cycle of nuclear deterrent patrols. The last TRAFALGAR class SSN HMS TRIUMPH had recently been decommissioned being replaced in service by the ASTUTE class HMS AJAX. There were currently 2 more ASTUTE class boats under construction which would give the Royal Navy a total fleet of 10 of the class by 2024.
Although HMS DOLPHIN no longer hosted submarines it was still a very busy port. The Royal Navy’s submarine school had largely moved their operations to HMS RALEIGH and HMNB CLYDE into more modern facilities closer to their submarine bases. However, the 40m tall Submarine Escape Training Facility was still very much in operation.
Gosport also played host the Royal Navy Submarine museum who’s exhibits included the RN’s first submarine HOLLAND 1 and the preserved second world war era HMS ALLIANCE.
The RN’s Fishery Protection Squadron was now homeported in Gosport. Comprised of RIVER Class OPV’s the ships of the squadron protected the UK’s coast and some were permanently deployed overseas as they patrolled the waters around the UK’s overseas territories including the Falklands and even undertook some limited counter piracy and anti smuggling work in the Caribbean. Doing this freed up other more capable frigates and destroyers from these duties. This was important as it allowed the RN more flexibility to effectively counter the increasing threat from the resurgent Russian Navy and ever expanding Chinese Navy. The RIVER class OPV’s had all been built in Portsmouth and had become larger and more capable with each new addition to the class with the ships divided up into 3 distinct batches. The RN operated 9 examples of the class which had also been successfully exported. Thailand operated a pair of locally built vessels known as the KRABI class. Brazil had been persuaded to purchase 3 ships that had been built for the Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard who had cancelled their order at the very last minute despite the ships having already been completed and personnel already training aboard them. In Brazilian service they were known as the AMAZONAS class.
The RIVER class design had also been the basis for the KHAREEF class corvettes that had been built in Portsmouth for the Royal Navy of Oman. The Royal Navy had a very close relationship with the Royal Navy of Oman with many British officers and ratings imbedded within the Omani navy. Britannia Royal Navy College at Dartmouth was usually full of Omani officer cadets alongside other overseas cadets.
Just beyond HMS DOLPHIN the old man could make out the top of the roof of another vital RN establishment in Portsmouth. The Royal Navy Hospital Haslar. The UK’s last remaining military hospital had once been marked for closure but had been given a reprieve to meet the demands of war. The hospital had been used to treat wounded servicemen from Iraq and Afghanistan and for a time had been the busiest trauma centre and rehabilitation hospital in the UK by far. Over the course of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan a lot of experience had been gained and a lot of money had been spent on keeping the hospitals facilities as up to date as possible. The military medical services had worked very closely with the NHS who had routinely seconded medical staff to the hospital in order to gain hands on experience of dealing with trauma wounds and had on occasion sent over civilian patients with injuries that required the sort of treatment that Haslar led the field in. Of course, since the end of those conflicts things within the hospital had quietened down quite a bit. This had allowed the MOD to embark upon the sort of comprehensive overhaul that the hospital had really needed but had been unable to undertake due to the demands placed upon it by the needs of war. These days the patients within the hospital were much more likely to be civilians sent to Haslar to relieve overcrowding at the hospitals in Portsmouth and Southampton or in need of the specialist services provided there as part of a deal between the MOD and NHS.
The harbour tender now began to make its way back towards HMS EAGLE. As it did so the old man and his friends got a glimpse of the Gunwharf Quays shopping centre and Spinnaker Tower that had been built on the land once occupied by the RN’s mine warfare and diving training school HMS VERNON.
Later on, that afternoon the event aboard HMS EAGLE had come to an end and the old EAGLE men had begun to depart. Admiral Jock Slater and the former senior officers of HMS EAGLE (many of whom had gone on to become very senior within the RN) had remained onboard for a mess dinner in the wardroom. Of the men who had departed ashore some had headed straight for home but many more had packed into one of the pubs along the waterfront immediately outside Victory Gate. As the afternoon had turned into the evening and into the night the veterans of HMS EAGLE in the Falklands had indulged in the traditional sailor’s pastime of drinking far too much and swapping increasingly exaggerated stories of their recent exploits. As he drank with his old messmates and oppo’s as they tried to relive their youth’s the conversation was mostly centred around what each man had been up to during the recent months long lockdown resulting from the global Coronavirus pandemic. When it came to the old mans turn, he had replied that been too lazy to work on getting fit, too old to work on having more children, had already done all of the gardening and DIY jobs around the house anyway and couldn’t spend the time watching TV as he and his wife could never agree on what to watch and didn’t fancy. Instead to pass the time he had taken up writing and had written an alternate history novel about the Falklands War. The story was about an alternate Falklands war in which HMS EAGLE had not partaken. The point of divergence had been HMS EAGLE being damaged during an entry to harbour resulting in her being decommissioned in 1972 a decade before the Falklands. In his alternate timeline the Royal Navy had been forced to face the Argentines with only Sea Harriers carried aboard HMS INVINCIBLE and a refitted Harrier capable HMS HERMES.
Of course, Britain had still prevailed but it had been very much a hard fought by the skin of their teeth affair and certainly not the almost one sided curb stomp of the Argentines that had occurred in reality.
He had come across a small online forum called aLternatehistory.com and had been uploading his story as he had written instalments. The feedback he had received had been that the whole premise of Britain even fighting the Falklands War without HMS EAGLE let alone actually wining had been complete ASB.
Very nice chapter there @flasheart - lovely descriptions and breakdown of the Navy's position.
Is this the end then?
Is this the end then?
Thank you @flasheart I found this story by chance after you posted a few updates and I thoroughly enjoyed every single one as did my father who was there during the events on RFA Resource and said on more than one occasion he prefers this history to the one he knows.
This, by way, is another lovely illustration of our old aphorism around here that alt-history fiction has to make sense - reality doesn't.
I expect that in this timeline's AH.com, opinion would more likely be closely divided, contentious like a Wiking-Obsessed Nuker dustup. Some would argue that it really is ASB, even imagining that the RN could pull off a win without the strike power that only the EAGLE could provide: "It's a bridge too far." But I do think there would be those who would look more closely at the woeful state of Argentine armed forces, and contend that maybe the RN didn't need the flashy victory over the VEINTICINO DE MAYO carrier group to win - though conceding that there'd be little margin for error for the Brits. The argument, of course, could never be settled.
But heavens, would the ASB brigade be astonished at the Falklands War of our timeline.
An excelent timeline and story.
Do you happen to have a doc with all of this? Or are you going to book-and-sell?
Do you happen to have a doc with all of this? Or are you going to book-and-sell?
BZ wonderful end to the story and, liked how the day unfolded for the old matelot. This seems like a far more capable RN and I'm fully supportive of that!
While, I admit that I wish the RAN had purchased Type 45s in lieu of the Alvaro de Bazan class.
While, I admit that I wish the RAN had purchased Type 45s in lieu of the Alvaro de Bazan class.
@flasheart
A fitting finale to an outstanding TL.
I particularly enjoyed the little differences (Nimrod MRA4 in service, the AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin, Haslar still open, and so on) mixed in with OTL (Gunwharf Quays shopping centre and Spinnaker Tower, etc). It was great fun working out what was actually 'real' as I read through.
In summary, thank you.
A fitting finale to an outstanding TL.
I particularly enjoyed the little differences (Nimrod MRA4 in service, the AgustaWestland AW101 Merlin, Haslar still open, and so on) mixed in with OTL (Gunwharf Quays shopping centre and Spinnaker Tower, etc). It was great fun working out what was actually 'real' as I read through.
In summary, thank you.
Bit harsh about the Irish naval service, it's been doing good work OTL in the Mediterranean sea on picking up refugees. Plus it is more like the US Coastguard and a fisheries protection agency than a true Navy.
However, it may well be a true comment OTL as well as here! 😅
Thanks Flashheart for a truly excellent and wondrous story.
Great sign off too. ( even with the slight dig at Ireland!!) 😀
Have to say I was almost expecting the old sailor to fall asleep on the way back to HMS Eagle and then wake up as his younger self back in 1982 and hard at work. Like the end to Titanic.
Congratulations
Great sign off too. ( even with the slight dig at Ireland!!) 😀
Have to say I was almost expecting the old sailor to fall asleep on the way back to HMS Eagle and then wake up as his younger self back in 1982 and hard at work. Like the end to Titanic.
Congratulations