Rear Admiral Steve Moorhouse has provided an update on the situation with HMS Prince of Wales, confirming what the UK Defence Journal was first to report.
We reported yesterday that aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales was feared to have suffered damage to her propellor shaft near the Isle of Wight. The UK Defence Journal was the first news website in the country to break this story.
The above image shows HMS Prince of Wales today being moved by tugs and was captured by @scottyc298 on Twitter.
Rear Admiral Steve Moorhouse said in a statement posted to Twitter.
“Good afternoon to you all, from HMS Prince of Wales off the coast of Portsmouth. I’m Rear Admiral Steve Morehouse, and I’m responsible for making sure Royal Navy ships are ready to deploy wherever they are needed. Shortly after the ship sailed on Saturday, a mechanical fault was discovered with the starboard shaft.
I’ve been to the ship today to see for myself what the issue is, and how we in the Royal Navy can work together to make sure that the ship can successfully returned to her tasking. After the initial assessment, it’s likely the fault will require repairs, which may impact the ship’s programme. The ship is now moving to a more sheltered anchorage for further inspection.
And then we’ll be able to provide further comments on the nature of the issue and the impact to her current schedule. We’ve reacted quickly to the emergent defect and are working closely with industry partners to resolve this as soon as we can. Rest assured the Royal Navy continues to meet its commitments to deliver operations. And to keep the UK our partners and allies safe.”
A video can be viewed below.
Rear Admiral Steve Moorhouse @smrmoorhouse updates on the situation with @HMSPWLS: “I’ve been to the ship today to see for myself what the issue is and how we in the Royal Navy can work together to make sure that the ship can successfully return to her tasking.” pic.twitter.com/yU9ogHVQDt
— Royal Navy (@RoyalNavy) August 29, 2022
Is this damage caused by hitting sonething?
And heres one the BBC made earlier:
There are reports that HMS Eagle suffered similar damage in the same sport following a tight turn. It may not be a mechanical fault but damage sustained by an underwater object.
Considering how big PoW is it would have to be a pretty solid object.
Hopefully it’s only minor damage as I can imagine anything to do with the propellor is going to be a rather expensive and time consuming fix.
The blade of the propeller if damaged. can be swopped out by divers not requiring a docking. The problem is if there is a bracket or shaft damage or rudder damage. Remember the lobster pot wrapping round the propeller. It could be as simple as maritime foreign object damage/
If it is the shaft that could be a whole lot more serious than the propeller itself.
Maybe it’s Rosyth and dry docking?
Hmmme
You mean an out of limits, for the location, manoeuvre?
Basically prop strike on some rocks: if I’m reading you right,
Was the nav sonar switched on and could anyone interpret it? I mean my Tesla would have been binging and bonging if I got too close to the car in front……
Yes this is what they were implying on sky news. It’s a very tight turn in the channel and Eagle clipped a propeller in the same spot many years ago.
Well must not be in same spot, PoW have a much bigger draft.
Interestingly they are both the same according to the wiki.
Drafts are similar but they also spent a lot of time dredging before either carrier went down. However I am guessing the deepest course will always be the same location.
It may simply be a case of him using the wrong word, but I took note of the line” We’ve reacted quickly to the emergent defect.”
Would this not suggest some form of component failure rather than sustained damage?
😂😂 spot on. He also says “Rest assured the Royal Navy continues to meet its commitments to deliver operations.”
HMSPWLS is the NATO High Readiness flagship – so how will that work if she ends up dry docked? Let’s hope not for Steve’s sake now he’s a very important Rear Admiral.
That’s a lot of verbiage to say “er’s broke me ansome”
If the damage is external to the hull and can’t be repaired by divers then POW will have to go to Rosyth for dry docking repairs. That will mean no Westlant 22.
Not updated on QE situation but I believe she isn’t in a refit or deep maintenance; any chance of her replacing PoW?
preparing for a different tasking IIRC.
So she could replace PWLS (PoW apparently is not a favoured Acronym for obvious connotations), but that would mean whatever she’s getting ready for would have to slip.
Definitely not in deep maintenance or refit. QE is the high readiness carrier and is at less than a weeks notice to sail. She is due to go on a training deployment probably to the Med in the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see which of the carriers deployments is seen as more important and which gets dropped.
Rosyth has a 10 year contract for both carriers for docking and maintenance
Moorhouse is clearly preparing the ground for bad news, i.e. PoW heading to Rosyth for repairs in dry dock. Meaning Westlant 22 and her hosting of the Atlantic Future Forum will have to be cancelled. Very embarrassing – bad PR for RN and its expensive new carriers.
It’s not embarrassing. Nations/Navy’s don’t think like that, it’s unfortunate, not embarrassing. These are highly complex warships, and sometimes things go wrong. It’s not the first time, and certainly won’t be the last.
A grown up just entered the room.
👍Bravo.
Quite.
In the big wide world: things break.
The adultness is then down to how well and promptly they are fixed for the tasking(s) to hand.
HMS Bristol cruised around for a long time sans one of its GT’s. I can think of plenty of two screw ships that went on quite long cruises with one screw/shaft disabled for a wide variety of reasons.
It is all down to risk/reward. In this case it is peace time so palatable risks are smaller. The bigger risk is the PR risk if she did need to be towed. Imagine what Mad Vlad would make of that?
If it was war time she would likely carry on with the immediate tasking with help at hand if needed until she could be swapped for her sister. That is what we have two almost identical carriers.
This type of incident just shows the world we live in today. The Internet age. 20 years ago, nobody would have known this would have happened, and pretty much zero fuss would have been made about it. I was on Illustrious in 2007 in the Baltic sea. We lost a gearbox I think, but continued the exercise on one engine and one prop. No big deal. This stuff happens, you fix it, you crack on. Handling the PR is now as big a task as working out how to fix the vessel. And you are correct in saying its a balance of risk. The F35s will still be ready to go for trials if the exercise has to be delayed a few weeks, and it would be even worse if this happened in the middle of the Atlantic. The crew might get a nice run ashore in Amsterdam, or get home to see loved one’s. It won’t worry the 700 odd on-board to much. And as much as I enjoy using this site, and totally understand it’s a defence news site. I don’t particularly agree with make this headline news and sharing it around the world. It only gives ammunition to our enemy’s.
I tend to agree with you on that.
Years ago this wouldn’t have been heard of.
Joys of drone based journalism and ship tracking. Mind you hard to hide a QEC close to shore……
Yea the Bismark did and look what happened to her.
Degree of potential embarrassment may be dependent upon cause(s) of issue. USAF convened accident investigation boards to exhaustively determine causes of major accidents; presume RN has some corresponding procedure, an Admiralty Board of Inquiry perhaps? Equipment failure could prove painful for those associated w/ incident, but generally recoverable from a career perspective. If an operational failure, regardless of specific cause, generally a career ending event. Presume RN functions in similar manner?
Compared to every other nation with carriers its not that bad. Latest US carrier cost an eye water amount and still barley functional + another one written off by fire recently, Russia carrier is laughable and Chinese carriers not much better. CDG for France is a very very long list of failures.
Other than a couple of burst pipes and a few defects with propellors QE class is doing very well considering we had not built a proper carrier since the 1950’s.
Considering the noises we made about their carrier, bet the Russians are laughing their heads off…
Well, at least we can dry dock our carriers without a crane falling on them and the entire thing catching fire.
Isn’t that too early?
At least we have a couple of functional dry docks to put her in? Isn’t that quite a positive start if needs be?
Rosyth – under contract.
Belfast – if for some odd reason Rosyth can’t step up to the plate.
exactly, we built infrastructure to deal with this instance likes this in the 1920’s and the great Soviet Union bough a floating free dock from Sweden that sank and thats it. Ships get dinged all the time thats why we have dockyards.
Congratulations George on your scoop.
The blades can be replaced without need to dry dock. However I doubt these are an inventory item.
Most deep sea merchant ships carry spare blades or prop. May be a Lloyds requirement. QM2 etc.
Not any more, it is up to the owner to decide the level of spare parts carried, it is in the interests of the owner to carry a minimum that keeps the ship going commercially, LR no longer specify what they are. Nearly every ship I was on carried a spare tail shaft, what a waste of space, unless your navigators are rubbish?
Any chance there are hostile nation frogmen around Portsmouth?
With her history so far, PWLS should be instead referred to as PMSL.
Only its not funny…..
i’m sick of keyboard warriors all over social media calling it a disgrace etc etc, so what it,s developed a problem, let’s get if sorted and get her back out, and better it broke here at home than miles away where we have to send equipment out to fix whatever has gone wrong…
Oh the hard-left on social media are actually celebrating the incident, but then they back Putin too so 🤦🏻♂️
It’s not Friday yet, but if I can please ask, have any tacky UK tabloid headlines been something like “POW Carrier Shafted!” lol…
Indeed, as per this one in the Washington Times.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/29/fail-britannia-royal-navys-flagship-breaks-down-sh/
Rather wound me up on first read. Anything for a headline, who is there headline writer anyway someone Ex Sun? I wonder if they have been taking the same line on the failed launch of Artemis. Its not like anything mechanical/electrical can ever have faults. If only we were all as perfect as the WT.
Perhaps someone should mention the EMALS on Gerald R Ford and how long its taken to get it to work properly?
Brilliant, lets see if it is a headline in the next week. Do we take bets on which “Red-Top”
Just to let you I’m an “Aussified Pom” so like John N said earlier, we like to “take the piss” a bit from down here in 🇦🇺 . Lol…but in all seriousness, let’s hope she gets fixed sharpish! Love the Brits! 🇦🇺 🇳🇿
Forgot the ol’ 🇬🇧!
Absolute embarrasment given that she was sailing to the US to “show OFF”
THe US navy must be sniggering at our ability to build a working ship
I seem to remember the Queen Liz had a similiar problem
Why would the cousins be sniggering at all? Have we sniggered at the problems they have had with their latest carrier? As with all things shit happens she will get fixed and hopefully nothing else will go wrong in the rest of her service. Incidentally it’s looking more like human error than anything actually wrong with the ship!
I don’t remember sniggering when the Bonhomme Richard burned down or when the Zumwalt had a complete power outage. Not sure why they would be sniggering at us.
Queen Liz the one that managed a global deployment without an issue to that vessel you mean?
If you think QE had no issues your misinformed.. also it wasn’t a global! Guam twice remember… when the original plan was……. oh yeah defect.
I seem to remember the liner QM2 having problems early on. We havent built a warship of this size ever before.
A friend has part of HMS Hood’s plumber block when she had trouble in the 30’s.
One would hope the shaft/prop/blade was damaged post sailing, rather that than a defect that should have been detected during a pre sailing basin trial??
I think the RAF could take a leaf out of the Navies PR handbook.
At least Moorehouse has made a public statement about the issue instead of burying the problem like the Air Force have done just lately.
One hopes its a prop issue as you would have to really try hard to stuff a shaft.
Mechanical problems are easier to talk about than personnel issues. This is particularly true if there is a possibility of legal/disciplinary actions in the future.
It’s not personal issues concerning the state of flying training. The reds have always been sacrosanct, when in all honesty they are human like the rest of us BUT the team all of them pilots, ground crew alike represent what’s best about this Country and the rumours, gossip and leaks have been embarrassing. A statement should and could have been issued a while ago.
The news was saying this vessel will have to be dry docked, do we have big dry docks suitable for it?
Several, both at home and overseas
Thanks.
My betting is that the prop shaft was faulty to start with, not unheard of, there is a cruise ship in service that has this issue, limiting it’s cruising speed(it was deemed it would be too expensive to replacecthe shaft).
Canberra had trouble with propellor shaft etc on first cruise. New configuration of engines etc. had to be sorted out. Did all right in the end.
Submarine damage too ?
Terrible things can happen if you forget to grease your shaft.
I may be in a minority here but I do believe it would be prudent to bring KGV dock Southampton back into action as an alternative back up solution. We are facing difficult times and it may not always be practical or operationally sensible to haul a QEC all the way up to Rosyth. Paid for out of public funds back in the day. If your belt breaks try braces.
WE dont need all this guff from the Admiral he sounds as though hes been on a
PR course jst give us the facts man and the missing info as to how this happened
I despait
When the problem first occurred it was said damage to shaft and rudder , I cannot see the rudder being impacted by shaft or propellor problems unless it fell off ? the damage suggests hitting a underwater object ?
Potus, f22 raptor, @real f16 fighting falcon, Washington DC, Long live the King charles lll no, united states of America, Washington DC, f35B lightning II, queen, president
Potus f22 raptor, @real , united states of America, president, queen Elizabeth Il, f35B lightning II, HMS queen Elizabeth Il,