Drone footage shows Type 26 Frigates HMS Cardiff and HMS Glasgow on the River Clyde together, well, sort of.
HMS Cardiff left the shipyard at Govan today before passing Scotstoun, where first-in-class HMS Glasgow is being fitted out.
Drone footage shows Type 26 Frigates HMS Cardiff and HMS Glasgow on the River Clyde. HMS Cardiff left the shipyard at Govan today before passing Scotstoun, where first-in-class HMS Glasgow is being fitted out. pic.twitter.com/OGH6hrlvIO
— UK Defence Journal (@UKDefJournal) August 30, 2024
Earlier today, HMS Cardiff now departed BAE Systems’ Govan shipyard on a barge to be towed down river to a deep-water location in the West of Scotland.
Once in position, and over a number of hours, the barge will submerge and the anti-submarine warfare frigate will enter the water. She will then return to BAE Systems’ Scotstoun shipyard where she will undergo the next stages of outfit before test and commissioning. In Scotstoun, the ship’s outfit is completed and the complex systems are installed before test and commissioning takes place.
As the first ship in class, HMS Glasgow is expected to enter service in 2028.
David Shepherd, Type 26 Programme Director, BAE Systems, said:
“Seeing the latest ship in the water for the first time will be a proud and exciting moment for the thousands of people involved in this great national endeavour. The Type 26 has awesome and world-leading capability and we’re looking forward to installing HMS Cardiff’s complex systems and bringing her to life.”
Pat Browning, Type 26 Team Leader, Defence Equipment & Support, said:
“We are delighted to have reached this key milestone in the build programme for HMS Cardiff. This is a significant achievement for the entire Type 26 programme team and is a moment we can all be proud of, as we continue to work towards delivering the new fleet of the Royal Navy’s most cutting-edge anti-submarine warfare frigates.”
The UK Defence Journal successfully completed a fully legal and authorised drone flight over the River Clyde, near Glasgow Airport, on 30th August 2024. The operation, conducted with full approval from Glasgow Air Traffic Control and in compliance with all Civil Aviation Authority regulations, was meticulously planned to ensure the highest standards of safety. Permission was secured in advance, with all necessary pre-flight notifications made to both local police and ATC. The flight was carried out responsibly, adhering to strict guidelines to avoid any disruption to nearby sensitive areas, including a hospital and helipad.
Probably need double the numbers!
Agree; game changing ship. If defence cuts are coming then IMO more T26 should take preference over new hulls for MRSS; convert a sister ship for Argus and/ or buy another Bay. As to the LPDs, use them or lose them.
4?
and in 2050 we might have them
We”ll be lucky to get the ones planned. Only four actually under consruction.🙄
Great to see these pics because it’s a brilliant achievement.
What bothers me is the length of time it’s taking, the impact it is having on the 8 T23’s that are even possible to be out there (4 is probably more accurate) and the likely hood that these T26’s will be no better available in numbers and %’s than T23’s, T45’s and Astute’s given the same numbers and huge gaps in build.
It is alarming how old these hulls will be before they even enter the fleet.
My personal opinion the type 26 is the best looking war ship in history!
Ha, lol, now that’s a comment that can be argued until the end of history !!!! Im going with the Yamato personally as it just looked the part and the sheer size made it all the more impressive.
Yamato would be the most bad arse/ awesome ship ever no argument but not the most beautiful.
A Takeo-class heavy cruiser took some beating in these stakes……..
Hang on you mean the ship that failed miserably on its initial mission. Strange judgement of a ships capabilities. The epitome of ‘white elephant’ surely. As for looks difficult with Battleships very subjective, I loved the looks and shear power projection of Nelson and Rodney, few others would mind. But difficult to see anything more beautiful as a battleship than Bismarck, the Yamato to my eye at least seemed to be more frighten through bloated stats over any real function but the few years difference in those ships really changed the whole perspective of the utility of such ships so… Read more »
+1 for Rodnol
Always preferred the Kongō personally
I saw a colour video of HMS Hood leaving Portsmouth online a few years ago and she looked really graceful as she glided past the camera. Surprised me as I made a model of her as a kid and pretty or graceful were not words that sprung to mind… I would also suggest that HMS Warrior would have looked pretty darned good with that clipper bow and a full set of sails set to the wind. I read a short history on her and apparently she always used her engine and sails together and was the fastest ship in the… Read more »
I’ve always like HMS Warrior, there’s a total war game we’re you can recruit her and she’s a beast absolutely owning the battlefield.
I’ve always liked the Nelson class, due to the limitations of the Washington treaty you got a unquie and funky looking class of ship. I know they had some limitations but looks wise I thought they were cool.
How about the I3 Battlecruiser concepts?
I know they weren’t built, so it’s cheating, but that middle turret just looks amazing.
G3 ? 18 inch guns and nearly 60.000 tns would have been game changers and possibly have stopped any Idea that Germany might of had starting WW2. Another consequence of the Washington Treaty that ended in terrible death tolls.
Didn’t the IJN have plans for a 20inch gun at one point?
Yes, there were plans for an upgunned Yamato with 6x 20in guns.
Would NOT want one of those shells landing anywhere near me, I can’t even be bothered to work out the weight of shell.
Doubt it. The RN was capable of fighting the Kriegsmarine, Regia Marina and Marine Nationale (combined those navies had 19 battleships, the Royal Navy had 20), at the same time. When war broke out the RN had: Centurion, Iron Duke, Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, Malaya, Barham, Valiant, Revenge, Royal Oak, Royal Soverign, Resolution, Ramillies, Repulse, Renown, Nelson, Rodney, Hood, with King George V, Prince of Wales and Duke of York well on the way. On top of that the Marine Nationale had Courbet, Paris, Bretagne, Provence, Lorraine, Dunkique, Strasburg and Richelieu on the way. Then there was also Argus, Corageous, Glorious,… Read more »
Yes I have a chart with every Battleship in service in WW2, along with their in service dates. It’s actually mental the disparity between Allied and Axis naval strength in the War.
Maybe the T83 class when it eventuates will have some of those fine sounding names above.
Absolutely.
The Battlecruiser class.
Hood, Renown, Repulse, Indefatigable, etc.
Wouldn’t that be great. Wonder whether there will ever be another Hood. Just inspired me to read up on the Battle of the Saintes actually and the 3 commanders were Rodney, Hood and what a wonderful coincidence Drake. So what a wonderful class of ships that would be HMS, Rodney, Hood, Drake and why not HMS Saintes after all this was as vital a victory as Trafalgar arguably more so as defeat would have shook the British economy and weakened the Country and the talks in the resulting War of Independence Treaty. Also the flagship of Rodney there was Formidable… Read more »
I think Hood just carries too much baggage as a name now, but you never know. PWLS seemed unlikely.
You actually believe it’s gone to get built Quentin? Remember the T82? Who was in power? Oh yes..Labour.😏
Talking about the new type 83 why don’t we just use the hulls from the type 26 has we have the facilities and machinery in place to knock 2 out at a time…the Sampson radar has been measured and fits with in the hull of the type 26…..prices per hull reduce in costs … The type 26 is a beautiful looking ship… We have to look at this idea due to money issues…..
There are a multitude of reasons why it is unlikely that the T26 will form the basis for the T83,it will be some time before the MOD/RN actually reveal what they want the T83 to be.
Hopefully we hear a bit more on that front come next year in the SDR.
The options are clear:
Specialist CSG arsenal AAW ship, 7000t
T45+ destroyer, 8000t
Larger destroyer, 10,000t
Multirole cruiser, 12,000+t
I’d hope for a larger destroyer or multirole cruisers, as that’s what the Italians are going for, but as ever it’ll depend on the budget.
The Italian concept is a bit odd, isn’t it?
64 VLS on a 10,000 tonne hull and most of them not even strike length. Hopefully we end up with a bit more armament density than that.
I like the Italian gun armament concept, though.
We could do a similar arrangement with a 5″ and a couple of 57s sort of where the 30s are on a T26.
Italian DDX will have more VLS than 64 now that they are stretching their legs to the Pacific and are much more outside the Mediterranean.
The number is still not defined.
Medium guns are essential in the drone era, and were already essential in Falklands era…
To me it is a choice of what is desirable, what is achievable and most importantly what is affordable – your last two suggestions might not conform to the latter 🤔.
Nice bit of research there.
Thanks for the correction re N3, I was just doing it from hazy recollection rather than consulting Wiki.
Oh I see you looked at your chart. There are so many great books in my spare room that I should really consult before posting.
I think that’s all part of the enjoyment here, I really can’t be bothered with going back over all the research I have done, the readings on the subject carried out or head off to wiki or similar before every reply, it just dulls what’s interesting about this forum to do so, I just accept my memory now will fail at times. Yes means some mistakes are made (occasionally schoolboy ones) but just consider that as part and parcel of the discussion and others will generally correct them, just adds to the fascination of the interactions and expands our general… Read more »
Oh I love it here, especially the education that some provide, I knew about the plans for 18 inch guns but wasn’t sure so that’s why I put “G3 ?” it was one of either the G3 or N3 that was to have the 18 inch guns with the G3 having 16 inch, and we ended up with the brilliant Nelson and Rodney. My comment regarding Germany was more of a speculation but If Hitler had known we were building these 18 inch gunned ships, his plans for Bismark and Tirpitz might just have left them a bit lacking.
I do love ‘what might have beens’ and I had no knowledge of those proposed ships, they sure look impressive. Would love to learn more about the thinking behind that form of main armament biased towards the bow, one can imagine the internal arguments over it. But superficially I can see the logic in combining the potential weight of fire power when precision was still an arguable measure of effectiveness. Worked on a proposal for Battersea Power Station back in the 90s but till recently was unaware of some of the truly wacky ones that passed through the long meandering… Read more »
The reason the G3s and that design series had the arrangement was to shorten the length of the main citadel of armour. With “fore and aft” turrets, the thickest armour over the magazines between them had to cover most of the length of the ship and so weighed a lot and cut down on machinery space amidships. With the G3s the boilers were moved behind the turbines to the very stern of the ship (hence the rounded stern) and all of the space forwards was allocated to the bridge with fire control equipment and the main armament. The reason the… Read more »
As Sailor Boy said, it was mostly to concentrate armour, but I’ll add some nuance to what he said: The issue wasn’t so much that there would be too much armour for the weight, it was more about trying to keep the ships shorter, because at 260m they where in danger of being too long to fit into any UK drydock (if you look at the Lions and Vanguard there is a suspicious similarity in size with the G3’s). When Nelson and Rodney came along to replace the G3’s and N3’s the forward battery got even more condenced to save… Read more »
Having a chart makes it really easy to visualise just how one sided the balance of power was.
I think as Dern says the 18in battleship is N3, St Andrews class.
The G3s are good fun, battleship armament on cruiser speed. I play them in World of Warships, good fun because the Devs gave them cruiser concealment as well (due to the relatively long and low superstructure), so you are only spotted well inside gun range.
G3 N3 were much shuffled and we ended up with Nelson and Rodney. 18 inch guns were already a thing in the RN but failed to find a suitable platform.
I see a lot of you play games, I personally don’t.
Back to school next week ?
Games are good, a fun way of wasting an afternoon.
I mostly play vehicle-combat type games with a little bit of engineering/sandbox as well. A hobby at the moment is trying to recreate military stuff in-game. (I made a pretty nice Boxer RCH in one game and a Meteor missile in another)
I don’t know your tastes and interests, so not going to try to recommend a genre.
Yes, back to school, but on holiday at the moment so it’s not all bad.
I missed out on the Gameboy and subsequent stuff as a lad as there wasn’t anything back then, I was more an outside sort of person, racetracks, Hikes, climbing, exploring and making model ships and aircraft were a few hobbies way back then.
I do a lot of those things (sailing in Greece at the moment), but for nice days at home games are a convenient way of stretching the imagination without needing any prior planning
What sort of racetracks?
Must admit knew nothing of these ships but noticed upon checking them out that there were similarities to Nelson/Rodney. Understand that the King George 5th class had 4 barrel turrets to ‘cheat’ the treaty restrictions too which proved very problematical. Does anyone know the details of that.
Yes Rodney and Nelson were built to get around the treaty restrictions otherwise we would have probably had the scariest Battleships built at the time. The Japs just carried on and ended up with a couple similar in spec and size to the N3 but as history now records, these two massive ships didn’t really figure.
I believe there was a nieve belief that battleship weapons could be held to a max of 14 inches as a continuation of the Washington treaty but obv never happened. However they started designing the ship so that’s what they got. Despite the lack of inches it was apparently a fully effective gun and did serious damage to the Bismark. Did you know all the secondary gun turrets were sealed on the Yamato due to the enormous pressure of the blast generated from the 18 inch guns? Will check.my Brown’s book to see why the 4 gun turret…probably a device… Read more »
It wasn’t really a naive belief. It was more that the Royal Navy wanted a limitation to 14 inch guns. But they where designing the KGV’s at the same time as the treaty negotiations and it was kind of realised that you can’t argue for a 14 inch restriction while at the same time designing a 16inch gun ship.
My comments are all being deleted.
Agreed kind of reminded me of the old dreadnaughts when they had side mounted and middle mounted main guns.
Oh so I’m not the only one then, not classic good looks true but to me they promoted the idea that they were aggressive hell to leather attacking ships that due to their overloaded front end would never retreat. Shows how design creates subjective instincts in us that then mould our ideas of beauty, style and function with imagination and reality fused not always objectively. Thought the Nelsons had by far the most impressive bridge structure of any major ship (later classes tended to copy it) that reminds me again subjectively of the modern US stealth Zumwalt destroyers. Clearly ahead… Read more »
HMS Warrior was built as a response to the French building an ironclad wooden battleship, Gloire, in 1859/60. She was so radical that when she first went to sea she was anchored in Spithead and was described as looking like a black stoat among a group of frightened rabbits. ( I’m not sure I have the quote exactly right but I have no doubt someone here will be able to put me right!!) As regards looks I still think that Vanguard was the best looking battleship we ever built. I can remember sailing past her as a kid when she… Read more »
I’d go with that, Vanguard was gorgeous.
Gloire was a frigate, one of three frigates that completely changed the balance of power in the seas of Northern Europe..essentially those three frigates were capable of sending the entire RN battleship fleet to the bottom..even the modern Agamemnon ( 90 gun wooden steamship)..they were the classic example of what was essentially the first documented generational change( instead a very slow steady improvement) …Agamemnon built in 1852 ( and the Napoléon class it combatted) was still essentially not much more powerful than any other second or first rate wooden line of battle ship..Gloire and her sisters..although only single deck 50… Read more »
Nice description of events the Gloire sent shivers throughout the British hierarchy. Warrior set Thames Ironworks on an incredible 50 year trail of highly respected warship building especially amongst the Japanese who projected their own navy from ships they acquired from them. Even Austro-Hungary bought their ships. Indeed many existing structures were built from their ironwork and engineering expertise, sadly mostly long forgotten now. It was also where Barnes Wallis served his apprenticship.
Not a fan of Vanguard, her proportions were a bit odd and 16 inch guns would have at least matched the Iowa’s.
I heard her described as a bit of a ‘parts bin’ ship recently which doesn’t exactly inspire faith in the validity of the name that inspires anything but.
Yes I think from memory, she was built using spare guns left over from other ships or programmes, I think she was going to be 16 inch armed but the War took care of that. I do know she was a better ship in rough conditions than her KGV predecessor and I’ve read that she was better than the Iowas in those conditions.
My replies are all now being held and deleted.
Used spare 15″ guns from the conversions of Courageous and Glorious into aircraft carriers and the KGV superstructure design, albeit slightly refined.
We couldn’t spare resources for 16″ in the middle of WW2.
I’m Banned
What for?
How have you replied?
Vanguard wasn’t really a parts bin ship. What happened was that the Lion’s where going to take too long to build. Specifically the 16 inch guns and turrets (which would have been 9 16′ guns in 3 turrets like the Iowa’s) where going to take ages to build. So the Admiralty, realising they’d need more fast battleships and not wanting to wait for the Lions to be finished, ordered an extra battleship. They realised they had the 15 inch guns from when Glorious and Courageous where converted from Battlecruisers to Carriers,so they got the Lion designs out, and altered them,… Read more »
Shouldn’t start me on Warrior as my family is directly linked back to Thames Ironworks for which I have done considerable historical research. Must have been an incredible sight in her day which was a Dreadnaught moment in direct response to the French launching their own ‘world beating’ ironclad. But Warrior was the first true Iron warship and rather like Dreadnaught redefined a warship to the extent that the progress it promoted made it obsolete within a decade, so about the time it takes to build a T-26 then 😈. Hood was, certainly among Brits at the time deemed the… Read more »
Oft forgotten were the armoured batteries constructed in 1855. Wooden hulls, steam powered and with 14x 68 per guns and four inches of armour plate (iron). In December 1855, three more ships were ordered (HMS Erebus, Terror and Meteor I believe) with iron hulls. They were not classed as liners so are not included in most books. Warrior wasn’t a massive advance, technically speaking, but bought together all those other advances together in one well designed ship, which was the REAL advance. AA
It will probably have problems with prop.-Will spend a lot of time in dry dock.But good to see two ships near completion haven’t seen that in along time.
I actually love this picture as just for once it shows Scotstoun rather than Govan and the Big Shed. It also gives a pretty good indication of where HMS Glasgow is in the fitting out process and I’d judge it’s tabbing along nicely. Everyone goes on about how long it is taking to build the T26 Frigates, well the steel work, assembly and heavy machinery installs are done at Govan pre launch. Then they go down to Scotstoun for all the rest and as these ships are a massive technical uplift over their predecessors it will take a lot more… Read more »
You can already imagine now what 8 of 8 of these is going to look like along with the 5 T31s.
If the main gun installation is going ahead when it should be, no reason to believe that it isn’t, then fitout is pretty advanced.
Also the last Surface Warship was outfitted 14 years ago I think you have forgotten the carriers and rivers. Naval ship building has so much to learn from commercial ship building. Look at modern cruise ships, how complex their onboard systems and these days are ready for work just a few weeks after trials. The build time for Oasis class cruise ships is two years from keel laying to service entry. Everything about BAE’s approach looks inefficient, especially when compared to the Meyer Werft yard where you have two dry docks covered in a shed with everything being done inside… Read more »
Did I read that right , glasgow wont be commisioned until 2028 , thats another 4 years away . Why is it taking so long to get ships into service these days . Its ridiculous the amount of time it has taken to build her and then fit her out . The chinese must be laughing their socks off . Korean shipyards can get these things built and i. The water in around 3 years , I understand they are probably not as complex but come on .
Read even the Italians haven’t started building their new Destroyers as yet but the first was planned to be in service about 2030. One has to be careful reading these things so may all be bs or nebulous figures but the dates compared to our build did shock me as even a potential proposed date.
I believe that she is now in the water – anyone got photos? But you have to wonder at the convoluted construction process – no wonder UK warships cost so much and take so long too build. Just a brief look at satellite photos of the two giant Chinese naval shipyards in Shanghai – Jiangnan Shipyard and Hudong-Zhonghua Shipyard – shows how far the UK has fallen behind. The new hall at BAE Govan is a step forward, but a trivial investment by Chinese standards. At a stretch the UK has 3 naval shipyards (Babcock Rosyth, BAE’s Govan/Scotstoun complex, and… Read more »
As most informed people on here will tell you there are valid reasons why the T26 Build process takes so long.The Govt/MOD awarded the contract (s) to BAE Systems precisely to build within a certain timeframe.Warship building is a niche business here in the UK,the plan was to enable continuous work for the Yards thus avoiding the Feast and Famine approach that has dogged Shipbuilding since the end of the Cold War.
Presumably Cardiff will enter one the two empty dry docks for fitting out. Glasgow is in No.3, I think that oddly No 2 is on the right and No.1 in the middle. Corrections welcomed!