….Morph into hapless men in broken down ships? Well, one could ask the British Ministry of Defense. The pride and joy of what is left of the Royal Navy, HMS Illustrious set sail from Portsmouth to lead a round of diplomatic port visits. They left on Monday. By Wednesday they were back in port with a broken refrigerator. No, really. They had to turn the aircraft carrier around to fix the fridge.
A FAULTY meat fridge is forcing a Royal Navy aircraft carrier to return to base today just two days after setting off for the Indian Ocean.
HMS Illustrious departed from Portsmouth Naval Base on Monday to head the multi-national Task Group Orion 08 which will be carrying out exercises and diplomatic visits during the next four months in the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean.
Navy spokesman Anton Hanney said a refrigeration unit used to store meat on the warship had been found to be in danger of breaking down.
He explained: "She has a minor problem with her refrigeration unit. It hasn't broken down but because she is off the south coast, the sensible thing is for her to come in and get that fixed before she goes off again.
"It wouldn't be prudent for her to go off with the chance of the unit breaking down while she was in warmer climates and then engineers would have to be flown out to her to fix it.
"It will not delay her programme in any significant way, she will be able to make up 24 hours without a problem."
I'm frankly appalled. What kind of engineering department does that ship have? If they needed a technician from back at base, it would have been vastly cheaper to fly one out to the ship – not a real hard thing to do on a freaking aircraft carrier – than the sail the entire ship back to port. You really have got to be kidding me. The Royal Navy has just illustrated that they would be unable to secure a bathtub, much less an ocean.
Nelson must be spinning in his grave right about now.
Nah, they use freon in those big walk-ins and, to comply with Kyoto, they can’t transport it. (/snark)
Actually, that wouldn’t surprise me.
The spokespersom said “refrigeration unit”. That does not say refrigerator holding food. It could be but it could be something totally different. A refrigeration unit could be necessary for other things.
A “refrigeration unit” that is “used to store meat.”
And dammit, the beer is warm, too.
I now work with refrigeration and would like to know if the annual maintenance on these, I’m guessing walkin boxes , are outsourced to outfits that work only in port? If that is the case the ship might not have all the equiptment needed (such as large vacuum pumps, recovery units and storage for the gas) to replace a simple hi/lo pressure switch.
Years ago you could just let the refrigerant blow, fix whatever it is, test with refrigerent ( a big no no ) and then fill and carry on cooling. Now you need thousands of dollars worth of equiptment and expertise to open a refrigeration system.
But I don’t know what the Navy has so I’m guessing.
The decline of the British Navy is one of the sadder trends of the modern age. Under current plans, their “fleet” will shrink to the smallest it’s been since the 16th century (!), and be smaller than Belgium’s or Turkey’s.
The ghosts of the men who beat the Armada weep.
NortonPete,
That may well be the case, but it’s a friggin’ aircraft carrier. Somebody should be able to jury rig something, at least until they get into the next port where they could be met by the outfit. It wasn’t even broken yet.
Didn’t any of these guys ever see Operation Petticoat?
Uncle Pinky,
I laugh because you just reminded me of a story my brother told me while on the aircraft carrier Kennedy. The Kennedy’s task force left a southern port and encountered a hurricane in the 1970s. All the other ships turned back except for the Kennedy. The captain was reported to say “This is a friggin’ aircraft carrier GD it”. Two days later the Kennedy was forced to return to port with millions of dollars of damage and about 300 injuries. My brother never forgot those two days. I think the captain was relieved of command.
The fine for just knowingly letting gas go in $28,000 and up, with commercial sized releases in the millions.
Arrr Matey! Just feed those swabbies on hard tack and rum.
NortonPete,
Had to replace my A/C compressor this summer and the one of the rental houses the year before so I know how paranoid the guys are about releasing the gas. The pump they were using on my house burned out and they had to call another truck in. I didn’t mind, I’d taken the whole day off and got to shoot the breeze with the guys. They did mind sitting around in the mosquito-y heat for an hour and a half. I offered them beer, but they declined. I suggested a deal where they would go to the other side of the house where I had left a cooler full of brews and I would stay by the compressor with my hammer and punch chisel. They laughed, but even joking about it made them ill-at-ease. Guess that’s a lesson that gets reinforced from the early training stages.
I’d kind of figured she was a nuke, so she’d have some gas pump and containment capabilities, but it looks like she’s diesel. Still, there’s almost always a work-around, like moving the icemaker next to the walk-in and designating shovel shifts.
Uncle Pinky,
You would get $15000 for turning them in! True, thats the deal the EPA offers, $28,000 fine and $15,000 to the whistleblower. This applies to household units, although I have never heard of it happening.
Good deal on the beer offer but that again is something of the past.
It just keeps getting harder and harder.
The refridgerant recovery machine is very specialized to the type of refridgerant. You can’t mix them or you get the fine.