British Aircraft Carrier For Sale On Auction Site 224
Hugh Pickens writes "Time Magazine reports that just in time for the holidays, the British Navy has put the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale on an eBay-like website. The proud 690-foot warship sailed Her Majesty's seas from 1980 to 2005, and took part in the Falklands, Balkans and Iraq campaigns. The ship underwent a major refit in 2004 but was decommissioned in 2005 with the proviso that she could be 'reactivated' at 18 months notice if a crisis beckoned but over the years her engines, pumps and gear boxes were cannibalized for use in other ships. If interested go to the auction site and put her to your 'wish list,' or add her to your 'cart.' Interestingly enough, the Australian government had originally planned to purchase the ship in 1982 but the Falklands war intervened and in July 1982 the British Ministry of Defence announced that it had withdrawn its offer to sell Invincible and that it would maintain a three-carrier force."
Re:Hubris (Score:3, Informative)
Became a traditional name in the Royal Navy after the capture of the French 74 L'Invincible in 1747
Re:Ramp (Score:5, Informative)
The ramp is kinda neat. How come US aircraft carriers don't have one?
The Invincible class is designed to basically fly only one jet aircraft, the Harrier, plus helicopters. Harriers have a very useful quality for aircraft carrier operations: STOVL, or short takeoff/vertical landing. (They can technically take off vertically, but a fully loaded Harrier burns fuel so fast doing so that it's essentially an airshow stunt, not something practical to do for real missions. For the same reason, they tend to do slow landings rather than vertical, though it's not as bad by landing time since the airplane has expended most of its fuel and/or ordnance and is a lot lighter.) By doing a takeoff roll with the thrust nozzles directed partially downward to add some lift, the Harrier can take off at a much lower airspeed (and therefore a much shorter takeoff roll) than conventional jet aircraft of similar weight and engine performance.
It turns out you can shorten the takeoff roll even further if you add the ramp. This is nice if you're making small aircraft carriers on a budget, as the British were.
There are some carriers out there which use ramps for non-STOVL aircraft, but they're restricted to lighter planes with a high thrust-to-weight ratio.
The big US carriers are designed to operate a wide variety of aircraft, ranging from small and light to large and heavy. Not many of them are STOVL. Even with the long deck, the big ones can't possibly accelerate fast enough to be above stall speed before running out of deck. So US carriers use catapult-assisted takeoff instead. If you look at the launch area of the deck, you can see the catapult slots. There's a mating thingy which sticks up through the slot and pushes on the nose gear of an aircraft during takeoff. It's pulled along the deck by some very powerful machinery.
Re:An odd object... (Score:3, Informative)
Are Exocets in the Falklands really a great example? The best they did was to cripple HMS Sheffield, it's not like it even sunk it directly- the Sheffield was afloat for 6 days after being hit but it was the rough seas coupled with the damage and the fact the crew was removed and hence couldn't deal with such problems that eventually took it under. The Atlantic Conveyor, a mere merchant navy ship took two exocets and stayed afloat. Other than the Sheffield they were pretty ineffective, certainly didn't prove to be quite the threat that was presumed and of course, the Invincible never took a hit.
The effect of exocets was rather lacklustre and of course British subs did far more damage to the Argentine navy than the exocets did to the British as demonstrated by the sinking of the Belgrano. Perhaps the biggest testament to this was the fact the British won the war, despite being much further from home and vastly more dependent on naval forces than the Argentinians.
All in all with the massive home advantage the Argentinians had I'd say the Falklands showed that a heavily anti-ship missile equipped force working from it's own shores can't even do much harm to a well equipped navy.
Re:Hubris (Score:5, Informative)
1. The first Invincible was a 74 gun ship of the line built in 1765. She was lost in 1801 during a gale after being driven ashore.
2. The second Invincible was another 74 gun ship of the line built in 1809. She was scrapped in 1861.
3. The third Invincible was a central battery ironclad (Audacious class) and was built in 1870. She sank in 1914 while under tow to a scrap yard.
4. The fourth Invincible was a battlecruiser (name ship of the class) and was built in 1906-07. She blew up following a magazine explosion at the Battle of Jutland in 1916.
5. The fifth Invincible is the subject of this article.