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Fleets of the Royal Navy

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  • Fleets of the Royal Navy

    having a bit of discussion arising from that email joke about an English aicraft carrier approaching the Kerry coast.

    Is the Royal Navy currently divided into fleets? or are they formed and disbanded as required?

    I would check the Royal Navy website but the powers that be at work have set the Websense to restrict sites that come under the category military. Bastards are out to get me!

  • #2
    What people refer to as the Royal Navy is often in fact a number of organisations grouped under one command.
    Visiting their Website you find mention of the 4 main fighting arms of the Navy,namely
    #Surface Ships
    further subdivided into Frigates and destroyers,Mine countermeasures, Hydrographic and Ice patrol vessels, and the fishery protection squadron sits in there too.
    #Submarines
    Again subdivided into Ballistic and fleet submarines
    #Fleet Air Arm
    which is divided into squadrons,which are attached to shore bases and/or ships
    #Royal Marines
    Including the Commandos and the attached army units

    Combined with this you have the Reserve attachments
    #Royal Naval reserve
    #Royal Marines Reserve
    #University Royal Naval Units

    There is another Naval unit that carries out Tug and support duties to ships at the Bases,similar to the DoD boats we have here.
    Do not forget either the RFA,who crew the Tankers and support Ships that follow the fleet to war.
    They have a relatively large fleet of 20 Ships including Tankers, Stores ships(RAS), Landing ships, and other support ships.
    At this stage the RN are beginning to look a bit like the New Air Corps Organisation,which has more squadrons than aircraft..
    The website lists 99 active vessels,but this includes the small University Boats,Research ships,and the Fearless class LPDs, Survey ships, Frigates, submarines, Minesweepers and Patrol vessels that were recently sold.

    I believe that a Naval review was planned last year for the Queenies Jubilee,but they decided against it at the last minute as they could only guarantee less than 40 vessels,15 of them being "Major warships" including the One the queen was to take the review on.. Britannia rule the waves indeed!

    Their recent record at sea has been less than PR friendly,with numerous collisions,including the almost disasterous Grounding of HMS Nottingham off the Australian coast last year. The worst part of it was she is only just out of an 18 month refit!

    To put the grounding in a local context, it would be like Eithne going onto the Calf rock in Kerry.

    For a change we have no reason to envy the Royal Navy:D HMS Nottingham photos
    Last edited by Goldie fish; 25 January 2003, 06:29.


    Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.

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