Delightful day wandering around @DockyardChatham, seeing the former @RoyalNavy#museum ships - #WW2 destroyer HMS Cavalier (& having a sneaky sit in the Captain's chair), #ColdWar submarine HMS Ocelot & Victorian sloop HMS Gannet, too. Well worth a visit.
Other former @RoyalNavy joys included the 1920s Coastal Motor Boat CMB 103, #WW2 X-Craft mini-submarine XE-8, & just the sheer fascination of wandering around a historic dockyard, seeingthearchitecture, machinery, & so on.
Also managed to get to Great Lines Heritage park to see the @CWGC Chatham @RoyalNavy memorial - the last of the three I've visited (having seen the @HMNBPortsmouth & @HMNBDevonport memorials om various occasions before).
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Now, personally I am a fully paid-up member of the evil "Cats & Trap Mafia", who will automatically tell you the best military option was to put cats & traps on both @HMSQNLZ & @HMSPWLS & purchase two, full air groups of strike fighters, AEW aircraft, COD aircraft & helicopters.
However, with an essentially peacetime structure of around one air group worth of operational strike fighters to be shared between two @RoyalNavy aircraft carriers, *while* doubling up as the @RoyalAirForce's land-based, 5th gen strike force, STOVL was the only realistic choice.
1) Interesting catch from @larisamlbrown on reports of plans to reduce the @BritishArmy's current presence in Estonia, which was doubled after Russia invaded #Ukraine in February, back to its pre-war level of a single battlegroup, at the end of the year.
2) Inevitably, there's been some disquiet about them, with comments such as:
"many European nations [believe] that the “British army is now too small and doesn’t have enough soldiers to spare”
& "Getting troops out when Putin threatens to wipe half of Europe sends a bad message"
3) Certainly the @BritishArmy is something of a concern at the moment, in terms of both its size (reducing to 72,500) & equipment (reductions to Challenger tank numbers, scrapping of Warrior, Ajax...), & continental allies do place considerable store in contributions on land.
Just a guess, but I reckon with the amphibious Littoral Response Group (North) in the Mediterranean on Op #Achillean, @HMSTrent & her @42_commando@RoyalMarines team will probably be heading for the Gulf of Guinea for a bit of anti-piracy work?
While, of course, on the other side of the World, the @RoyalNavy's @OverseasPatrol remains busy, with @HMS_Tamar recently enforcing sanctions off Korea.
Obviously a lot more rumour that hard fact out there at the moment, but a few, preliminary thoughts on reports that @HMSPWLS' has a problem with one of her propeller shafts: 1) Yep, this is not a good thing (just to get the statement of the bleeding obvious out of the way).
2) Yes, this does happen & to other navies too - @NavyLookout notes HMS Illustrious' gearbox fire in 1986, others have mentioned the major electrical failure aboard @USSHARRYSTRUMAN in August 2019 & there are plenty more to choose from in between. news.usni.org/2019/08/31/uss…
3) How serious is it?
Well, any commentary right now is pure guesswork & should be taken as such (even @HMSPWLS' own engineers may have a complete picture yet), however, current speculation centres on the starboard propeller shaft, which was seemingly trailing as she sailed.
1) With gas supplies, storage & moves (or lack thereof) to improve both, making the news (still), it may be time for a brief (non-specialist) #thread🧵 on a couple of the #maritime aspects of it, starting with re-posting this little thread from January on where, how & from whom.
2) As mentioned in that thread, Britain already has three of Europe's largest facilities for handling Liquified Natural Gas & in March @Trafigura announced their intention to re-open the fourth at Teesport, though there seems to have been little news since gazettelive.co.uk/news/teesside-…
3) On the storage front, it is worth bearing in mind that while most people's mental picture of gas storage probably looks like the urban gas holder/gasometer (left), the bulk of Britain's gas storage is, in fact, held underground in a few, depleted gas field reservoirs (right).
1) A couple of concerning effects of Europe's reducing river levels on the #UkraineWar, perhaps the most direct of which is the effects of the declining levels of the Danube on Ukraine's ability to use that river to bypass the Russian #blockade of the country's Black Sea ports.
2) See this excellent continuing #thread🧵for details of efforts to expand use of the Danube - amongst other things - to bypass Russia's #blockade, which are necessarily ongoing, despite the agreement to open safe corridors from Ukraine's Black Sea ports.
3) It is worth bearing in mind that Ukraine (quite probably Russia too) is known to have been using rivers & other inland waterways for logistical supply to its forces, which will almost certainly be affected by this, though the degree can only be guessed.