After an upgrade to her force protection weapons, the crew of HMS Hurworth practised their gunnery.
HMS Hurworth is a Hunt Class Mine Countermeasures Vessel – a minehunter. She plays a vital role in keeping the seas safe around the world, the crew tweeted the following.
What else would you do on a glorious day at sea on the South Coast?☀️
Our Force Protection weapons have been upgraded to Heavy Machine Gun, so it's time for Gunnery.
💥 Prove the Weapons
💪 Practice drills and skills#SmallShipsBigImpact #HurworthHunts pic.twitter.com/h5TStDvCo0— HMS Hurworth (@HMSHurworth) March 3, 2024
HMS Hurworth is operated by a compliment of six officers and 39 Ratings and the ship’s Company maintains a high state of readiness thanks to a rigorous training and maintenance programme.
She’s ready to undertake operations at very short notice in locations from the Middle East to the North Atlantic.
Minehunters like HMS Hurworth detect and destroy dangers under the water. Her highly trained crew use specialist skills and equipment to keep shipping lanes safe and neutralise threats left from conflicts past.
…replacing either mini gun or gpmg I suppose. They have a 30mm otherwise.?
AA
I think the RN is generally replacing miniguns with .5″ Brownings.
Did the South Coast notice?
I’ve never quite trusted those South coast sorts, I thoroughly applaud putting a few rounds over their heads to keep them in line…..
The south Coast is a pretty long one, not sure she had the range….. She was off the Isle of Wight at the time I believe….. £5000 worth of improvements were made……
Mini Gun has now gone fleet wide ( 😭Sniff…Sniff…) 50 Cal has replaced it, but the ubiquitous GPMG remains! 30 mm manually directed remains standard at the front. I would not be surprised if some additions to the smaller calibres (40mm and below) starts to gain traction on RN vessels. Better mounts for 50 cal and GPMG have been tested. The decision to remove 20mm from the fleet should be reviewed. Its a simple and effective gun and pretty much Jack/Jenny proof in operation. It was also for a time fitted to MCMVs because the mount is lightweight and mostly… Read more »
Thanks GB. Often wondered what the difference in accuracy is between these weapons. The mini gun I can understand, spraying millions if rounds at something, but the others? Obviously there is a range difference, and just one hit by a .50 or 20mm does way more damage than a 7.62.
With larger ships with the space, and to the uninitiated civvy, it almost doesn’t make sense to remove the 20mm. We have them, surely best to keep them fitted rather than languish in a warehouse?
Perhaps they could be bolted to a truck and sent to Ukraine!. AA
FP weapons on RN vessels are now squarely aimed (See what I did there!) at anti surface such as FIAC. Now that Drones are coming to the fore there will be an adjustment in what the guns need to be able to do. Targets coming in down the throat are pretty straight forward for manually aimed close range weapons. You look at the target and adjust your aim using the sight reticules. The use of reflex sights or modern computer predictive sights such as SMASH help with this…as does old school walking tracer onto the target. NVG, laser pointers are… Read more »
That is a high officer to ratings ratio. Can anyone explain to a land-lubber?