Kind of dispiriting when you have two big boats left and…
A Royal Navy aircraft carrier has failed to set sail for a Nato exercise, a week after its sister ship pulled out because of a mechanical fault. HMS Prince of Wales was due to replace HMS Queen Elizabeth in Exercise Steadfast Defender - the largest Nato exercise since the Cold War.
However, the £3bn warship has remained in Portsmouth and the harbour mouth has been reopened to normal marine traffic. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the departure had been “postponed”.
Hundreds of people lined Portsmouth Harbour to watch the carrier’s scheduled departure at 12:15 GMT. However, after MoD police boats secured the area and the harbour mouth was closed, the channel was reopened and the crowd dispersed.
I find the whole thing to be amazing. The largest commercial ships generally go out on time regularly, that includes container ships, tankers, and cruise ships. And aircraft generally go out on time. So it appears that for mission critical, profit-wise or safety-wise, somehow everyone manages to make things work. But for mission critical military stuff, they can’t.
Also, keep in mind the HMS Prince of Wales was first floated out of drydock in 2017. If it ever took that long to deploy a cruise ship, or any other ship, they’d be out of business in a flash.
This came up on a FB page I follow. PoW’s departure was delayed a few hours by delays in loading stores. The UK media does the same thing the US media does: promote hysteria and hype.
