State of the fleet!!!

HMs exeter unsafe to go to sea even tho it was in the middle of the sea when told this!!!!! How safe are we all at sea??????

 

A mate of mine was chippies pom on HMS Norfolk a few years ago (he's outside time done now) and was duty one weekend.
"As you do", he was bored and down the CTO having a look at anything he could get his hands on when he came across the Lloyds of London certification for the ship, which basically said NO CHANCE!! We are NOT insuring this heap for anything but scrap!
Ah, the old MOD get-out clause for warships!!

 

Can I ask a bone question?

I have never served onboard a type 23, but instead a 42, 22s, MWs and briefly on a CVS.

I have only briefly visited type 23s, and having come off a grotty 42 I always thought they seemed lovely. Why do they get such a raw deal from people? At least I could stand up in them, unlike on much of a type 42!!

(This is a serious question)

Cheers.

 

My last ship was the Norfolk, straight out of build, and to say it was culture shock comparing it to my previous ship, the Glasgow, would be an understatement.

As a Killick Greenie, I went from 1 in 15 duties on the Glasgow, to 1 in 5 on the Norfolk - midday to midday handover to boot!

Did that suck, or what?

Constant scrubbing out on the Norfolk, as there were hardly any JRs. In fact the sole reason there were JRs was to scrub out.

On the whole, I preferred the Glasgow.

 

I believe this was due to the 'reverse pyramid' manning policy, which they were supposed to get rid of :? .

I've only had one Type 23 as a 3-week jolly (after spending all of my previous career at the time on Type 82/Leanders/Type 42s and I have to agree with your comments about Type 23s. But at the end of the day it's different ships - different cap tallies!

 

Gleaming G 1st class ship - whats duties, heard some rumours but blue card interfered with my hearing

 

Why was ExETER considered 'unsafe' though? Sometimes even safety is not black and white

 

Safety is NEVER black and white, there's always a balance to be struck; everything we do involves an element of risk, usually we work in the acceptable region, frequently move to the tolerable region, and then progress to barely tolerable and finally unacceptable (and no, there are no defined boundaries between these regions either, its all a matter of judgement!).

Much of what we see reported in the popular press about "safety" is actually fatuous and based solely on the severity of consequences not the overall risk, i.e. the combination of likelihood and severity. If someone somewhere has taken a decision to withdraw a major surface platform from service then my guess is that its likely to be either a smokescreen to disguise the fact that we can't afford to operate her, or there are serious underlying design factors affecting the safety of the ship and her crew.

 

Flag Wagger - disagree, mostly it is black and white. Its totally common dog that you stop at red lights, or in a ship remain within the navigable channel entering harbour. etc etc. Risk management of safety is a pretty formalised system now which covers the grey areas doesn't it?

 

Now is safety was as simple as that a couple of my engineers would be out of a job. They spend their lives on statistical analysis of certain safety aspects

 

I think that is somewhere near the truth. All ships require constant maintenance/refit/refurbishment if they are to remain operationally effective and safe. I suspect the cost to ensure Exeter remains safe and /or operational is now prohibitive.

Watch this space for more shock announcements?

 

HMS Exeter is the oldest ship in the Fleet.
She runs on an old fashioned scheme of complement which is manpower heavy.
The Navy needs to make in-year savings quickly.
Can you guess what might happen.....? 8O

 

Being the oldest ship means nothing - it is the state the ship is in and where she is in her long term maintenance cycle. I know of other ships that are far further past there sell by date.

If we're getting rid of old ships why did we sell of a couple of 23s recently?

As for the SOC, although they carry more people, current 42s aren't that much different to the rest of the surface fleet.

 

At this level, yes there are elements that at face value appear black and white. However, if you look a little deeper they can be actually hide quite sophisticated safety issues. Take the red light example - jumping a red light (from a safety engineer's perspective at least) is not in itself hazardous, the hazard is that you enter a road junction that someone else is potentially occupying, the use of traffic lights to control traffic flow is a measure to reduce the risk of this happening to acceptable levels. There may be times when it is perfectly safe to proceed through a red light, say for example at 0300 when the junction is quiet; how do you distinguish between these occasions? Typically we don't and end up with a general rule, (such as stop!) to address the worst case scenario.

Risk management may be formalised, but much of it comes down to engineering judgement - the reason that we see stories in the press about "safety" that defy common dog is that quite simply someone has taken the black and white approach; the grey areas actually rely on appropriate application of engineering judgement (and common sense), while a formalised approach to risk taking attempts to take the tick box mentality. In general (and I hate generalisations!) its usually obvious when a "system" is clearly safe or clearly unsafe, the interesting problems are when things change slowly and start moving from safe to unsafe - at what point does the level of risk become intolerable?

One other area that you may want to consider, is that society does not have an absolute tolerance of safety/risk. Many people are happy to jump onto a plane to take them off on their holidays yet are unwilling to, say, live next door to a nuclear power plant, yet statistically it could be argued that flying is inherently more hazardous than living near Sizewell!

 

Suspect it's because her DP4 is due shortly and as she's not part of the "Liverpool 5" (directed refits under SSS) it could be easily cut. As Letsbe Ave points out above, in-year savings are current flavour. Doubt that safety is actually an issue for the ship as she's had the WCFT A&A, unless MWIPT have come across something seriously awry in their previous calcs........