Navy gets big boats to play with...

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most of the building work will be done in Scotland. Wee Gordie Broon,

Not a nice sound, is it, nests being feathered?

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Last I heard was that Scotland was still part of Britain. Should the people of middlesex (for instance) be upset that they aren't being built there?
 
On a different tack.... I'm intrigued at the choice of names - Queen Elizabeth, and Prince of Wales are both battleship names. I thought the tradition was to use battlecruiser names. Oh well, so much for history.
 
Cynical, me?

Nah, just intrigued that the Scots Nats kicked Labour's airse in the Scottish Parliamentary Elections, then a month or so later a Scottish PM and a Scottish MoD give Scotland contracts worth billions for building two bloody great ships that don't seem to fit any logical definition of the UK's current military requirements.

Meanwhile the army, which is actually the service currently doing the biffing, is starved of men and materiel to the extent that Generals (normally recalcitrant in public) are incensed enough to bleat.

Anyone tell me what these ships are actually going to be used for (apart from job creation)?
 
According to news reports at the time when a US WWII battleship came into Portsmouth Harbour in the eighties it was the largest vessel ever to enter said harbour. I believe these battle wagons went about 50000 tons (I'm not sure if that's US tons or long tons) If that's true these 65000 tonne babys will be a tight squeeze. By the way are they nuke powered? If so it's hard to believe top speed is only 25+ knots, the Queen Mary averaged over 32 knots in an Atlantic crossing back in the 1930,s and hull their hull speed would be about 42Knots.
 
I guess that the nine American 'Nimitz' class carriers would be way too big for Pompey harbour then - they are 102,000 tons, and have 6,000 crew on board......
Oh and their propulsion power is 260,000 hp (194 MW) - I think that the 'old' Ark Royal (not the present Invincible class carrier) displaced 54,000 tons, and used to have 156,000 hp on tap - about the same as the Emma Maersk, the largest container vessel in the world now (12,000 containers carried on board...)

It baffles me as to why the Authorities want to build two new massively huge carriers - I thought it was well proven that the 'smaller' Invincible class carriers were generally much more versatile (and everything else, including a billion or two cheaper!) for modern day operations.
 
I think you had better re-read the article, before making statements like that! Plus of course, the planning for this pre-dates Mr. Bruins premiership by quite a few years! The clyde needs the work, so does all the other places that are being used, lots of them, not just in Scotland!
Got something against the Scots?
 
There is some truth to the cynisism here. This is old news, rehashed in classic New Labour style for a particular audience. The fact that the carriers are being built, and being built in Scotland, has nothing to do with the Scotish election result, but the reannouncement does. Of course, if they were half as good at this as the old mob they would have made the announcement before they got beaten about at the polls, but they're not so they didn't.
 
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You really are a true cynic. Just about every major Royal Navy warship built in the last hundred years has been built in Scotland.

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So where were HMS Invincible, HMS Ark Royal and HMS Illustrious built?

Scotland may have built some of the big ships of the last 100 years - but there's no way you can qualify "nearly all"
 
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You really are a true cynic. Just about every major Royal Navy warship built in the last hundred years has been built in Scotland.

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Little boatbuiders in Belfast, tiny one man and a dog place really, has built a couple of ships, one of which is still floating London river way. Warland and Holf or summat I think they are. Nar, Wolf, that's the dog innit?

A hundred years ago the battlewagons were built in the Naval dockyards, the arms race with germany exceeded capacity and private builders became far more involved. Vickers, Cammel-Laird, Beardmores, not all Clyde based.
 
It's Portsmouth v Devonport.

By 2014 I doubt whether the RN will feel the need for, or be able to justify, 2 South Coast bases. And my money is on Devonport as the main base.

Perhaps they will keep a toehold on Portmouth because (a) it would be a bore to move the Victory and (b) it's a good location for Flag Officers who can nip up to Whitehall for a meeting and a spot of lunch, Plymouth takes rather longer on the train.

But the big ships will move West.

Only guessing, but we will see.

Chris
 
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It's Portsmouth v Devonport.

By 2014 I doubt whether the RN will feel the need for, or be able to justify, 2 South Coast bases. And my money is on Devonport as the main base.

Perhaps they will keep a toehold on Portmouth because

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The Des Brown claimed during a TV interview that yesterday's announcement confirmed a longterm commitment to the 3 main RN ports, not that I have any personal interest... actually if all those RN basins in Portsmouth were converted to marinas it might create a balance in supply & demand.

I suppose the value of RN dockside land in Portsmouth is higher but the market for dockside apartments in the area seems saturated at the moment judging by the move-in for £99 deals seen on the Gosport side.
 
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