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ship in 1982 but the Falklands war intervened and in July 1982 the British Ministry of Defence announced that it had withdrawn its offer to sell Invincible and that it would maintain a three-carrier force."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:Potential Buyer (Score:5, Interesting)
she's too small for the PRC. They're going for carriers easily twice this size. I would have expected india to consider purchasing the ship (as they have in the past) but frankly, the invincible class is small, old and not the sort of thing of interest to the future naval powers. Spain has modernish carriers about the size of invincible, and those would be much easier to buy designs for. Though PRC doesn't need to learn to build carrier systems on this size when they have much bigger russian carriers already, and india is in basically the same situation.
The other thing is this isn't exactly a sale to the highest bidder. Basically the MOD is looking for the best value for the money they can get, and will assess from there. She might be broken up for scrap, if someone can throw together a good deal she'll end up a museum ship (though that would be presumably hard), or any number of other schemes.
Re:An odd object... (Score:4, Interesting)
As a big support ship for black ops vs a new medium sized amphibious assault ships?
Brazil, India, South Korea, Thailand do like to buy the bigger navy club toys.
Re:Ramp (Score:4, Interesting)
What's funny (in a non-humorous way) is that the US attempt to build a jump jet, that the UK plans on purchasing, is way behind schedule, over budget and having all kinds of issues [warisboring.com]. Which makes the Harrier, for all its warts, maybe not look quite as bad.
Re:An odd object... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Apparently, the Exocet would have been more effective earlier in the war, if it had been set up correct. I gather the fuse was set up to penetrate armor while most targets which were hit were unarmored and small. For some period of time, the missiles passed through the target causing little damage.
By the time, the Exocet was fixed, the UK had air superiority, meaning any (crazy) Argentina pilots had to come in fast and only had one shot at hitting anything.