RFA Mounts Bay is undergoing maintenance and refurbishment in Falmouth.
With a unique view from below the waterline, the ship’s azimuth pods and stern door are on full display.
Currently situated in a dry dock at Falmouth’s shipyard, RFA Mounts Bay is undergoing extensive care to its external hull. The maintenance work highlights the ship’s design, providing observers with a rarely seen glimpse of the vessel from below the waterline. The ship’s powerful azimuth pods and stern door have become the center of attention.
RFA Mounts Bay is a Bay-class auxiliary landing ship dock (LSD(A)), designed to support amphibious operations by providing a platform for the transportation and deployment of troops, vehicles, and equipment.
The ship’s azimuth pods, which are 360-degree rotatable propulsion units, play a crucial role in enhancing the vessel’s maneuverability and speed.
The stern door, on the other hand, enables easy access for loading and unloading cargo, as well as facilitating the launch and recovery of landing craft.
Not your average view… providing a unique perspective from below the waterline.#MountsBay is now high and dry in Falmouth & receiving some much loved TLC to her external hull.
The ships azimuth pods and stern door on show demonstrating her unique capabilities 👍 pic.twitter.com/8HoHTp4kfv
— RFA Mounts Bay (@RFAMountsBay) April 5, 2023
Has to be one of the craziest decisions of SDSR 2010 in selling one of the Bay class.
These ships are incredibly versatile and cheap to operate.
I hope the MRSS program starts soon, the UK’s amphibious capability is too important to NATO and Europe to mess around with.
I am also really hopeful we can role them in to H&W after they finish the FSSS, we really need another big shipyard in the UK and Belfast really needs to the jobs. With three FSSS and 6 MRSS H&W could have an order book full for years.
Was just going to post the same.
All for a paltry few million saving a year.
one of the stupidest cuts ever
2010 installed the worst government in the U.K. in modern times. We are today scrambling to make good the damage inflicted on the U.K.’s military and industrial base since.
Agree 100% with that! Cameron and Clegg – Dumb and dumber.
It’s got worse since then, by any intellectual or moral standard.
I think everyone can agree that. Even the Tory’s and the Libdems can’t be happy about 2010-15 coalition and the damage caused to both party’s and the country as a whole.
The Lib dems in particular went a long way to messing things up with the delay of the successor submarine program and the cancelation of the previous labour governments nuclear power projects.
George Osborne’s decision to move trident replacement cost to core MOD budget even though the cost would come outside of the 2010-2015 timeframe was the absolute killer that still cripples defence today.
Agreed.
The last point is the continuing elephant in the room that is causing the greatest problems. And no journalist ever pulls a minister up over it.
I’m not sure most modern “journalists” would I even understand it 😀
sad to note you have the same lack of competent journalism in the UK as here in NZ.
I would say it is a tie with Tony Blair’s government.
To be fair to Blair, betrayed by Brown. and he collapsed the Government. and emptied the Sweetie tin of everything.
Fair to Blair… Fair to Blair ??!! You gotta be kidding me ?!
He’s the biggest self centred , self serving egotistical narcissistic charlaton of a PM the UK has known in modern times.
no you are right Blair is way out in front… way way out
I would say modern UK politics is a choice between awful or awful, people now vote for the least worse option.
All corrupt and self serving, I can’t abide any of them….
Tony Blair and Cameron both caused massive damage to our defence, they both swung the axe and left our defence capability in tatters…
Criminal damage in my opinion.
Just saying however, it wasn’t Blair who had NEW Nimrod fuselages trashed with JCB’s.
Well that’s another box of frogs Tom, its doubtful that MR4A would have ever got a full release to service, an absolute nightmare (all slightly different from one another, effectively 9 bespoke airframes), there were still many issues with it on cancellation. You can actually squarely put the blame on Tony, MR4A should have been cancelled shortly after it started (same year) when the scope of the rebuild was clearly ‘far’ above the remit of the project and the rather important fact that no two airframes where the same was fully realised! Look at it this way, had the MR4… Read more »
MRA4 was actually initiated by the major government before labour came to office.
MR4A was to heavy to get off the ground, the engines to small and underpowered. BAEs wanted more Money to develop and in a pissing contest between BAEs was Cut up in front of them to prove a point. Cost a few other platforms
They where not new. They where bespoke rebuilds of each individual fuselage.
Read Haddon-Cave. After that it would never have gotten off the ground because nobody would have signed off on the Risk assessment for the platform.
Let’s not forget the deep connections HMG had with Russian & Chinese money too. Or forget Osboure’s heavy responsability.
Does anyone out there know what the latest RE: MRSS is? It seems to have been dead quiet for months and months
As far as I know they aren’t scheduled until the end of the decade, which is why Argus was extended in service beyond 2030. If the National Shipbuilding Strategy is to be believed, there’ll be discussions soon enough (possibly even now for all I know), but don’t expect contract stuff until 2025. The build could start 2026 for service from about 2030.
If the Tories think they might lose a 2024 General Election, I suppose they could sign something earlier.
You can ask Australia to sell it back to the UK! It’s still in good knick down here in Sydney harbour! Might be a different shade of grey though… Lol 😁
“one of the craziest decisions of SDSR 2010”- I agree, but there was so many crazy decisions to choose from. We reduce our amphibious capabilities at our peril. Wether we realise it or not, cutting our forces gives green lights to agressors across the world. The idiots responsable get honours but bear deep shame in reality.
This from Navy Lookout concerning the replenshment fleet :- “RFA Wave Knight joined her sister RFA Wave Ruler (laid up in Birkenhead since 2018) in long-term lay-up in March 2022, primarily as a cost and manpower-saving measure. At least these relatively modern ships have not yet been listed for sale or scrap and could theoretically be reactivated in an emergency. The four new Tide-class tankers are just about adequate to support the RN’s peacetime operational tempo so mothballing the Wave class is a justifiable option when there are other priorities. The RFA has just added two new merchant ship conversions… Read more »
They’ll be scrapped. Why we can’t hold vessels in reserve I really don’t know. Hold them in reserve. Any major conflict especially Vs China we will need as many replenishment ships as possible to operate at such distances.
RFA’s are easier to hold in reserve.
It is the weapons systems that make escorts harder.
The reality is that you either use a ship frequently or it needs a refurb before use. Or you are in the middle ground of constantly refurbing with a skeleton civi crew to run the systems each week.
Agree, juts look at commercial merchant vessels, they are constantly mothballed or laid up with minimum crewing.
In an emergency massive amounts can be done as well leaning on the civilian base.The UK may not build a lot of ships but it does massive amounts of refurbishment and refits of existing ships and their are more than a dozen yards doing this in the UK.
It’s something we can leverage.
👍
In an emergency can the UK still do a Falklands style STUFT?
It’s because our service chiefs just look at America to have everything required for a major war while they just wither down the force level to maintain fewer and fewer high end high readiness units.
We can fight anyone in the world and win for about two weeks then then the cupboards bare.
The mindset needs to change, old ships in reserve are useful not least for deterrent value.
yeah good ol’ Uncle Sam we can always rely on them..Hows Joe O Bidens extended visit to his Homeland going- following his whistle stop visit to NI?
Like it or not, we have disarmed and we’re ‘totally’ dependent on Uncle Sam for our defence….
A handful of troops, tanks and fighter squadrons, alongside a tiny RN, it’s pathetic really.
Who do we need to be defended against? Mad Vlad and his gang of rapists can’t swim and China is awfully far away. I was near Glasgow last week and noticed we have four really big boats packed with rocket launched sunshine as well.
That’s about it Jim, nuclear weapons and strongly worded letters, not a lot in-between unfortunately…
We are a Island yet still have the most powerful Navy outside of USA/Russia/China. may not be the biggest. but its better than the rest of the west
It’s still been gutted to the core Jon, no getting away from it unfortunately…. A vague promise of 24 escorts ‘at some point’, even that low figure is looking shaky.
It should never have dropped below 30…
Look, his great great grandparent escaped the potato famine 170 years ago, he’s as Irish as Terry Wogan!
Indeed winning a war for two weeks and then surrendering while congratulating ourselves for putting up a good show ‘old boy’ isn’t really going to be worth the effort in the end. If recent events have taught us anything it’s surely even having the tools is just for show in peacetime if you can’t actually maintain them in extended use in a conflict.
I don’t think it’s just a rely on America mindset. It’s more here’s the budget and that budget isn’t enough to fund everything that was funded last year. So something has to go to balance that years budget. This has been going on for decades so it’s constant cuts. Occasionally there is a bit of cash thrown in that mainly fills funding gaps. Silly decisions like pause this program for a year to save a few million to balance that budget but it costs 10s of millions next year
True but they always look at the current assets and cut anything even slightly old and make up nonsense about how difficult reactivating old equipment is and how little value it has.
Our army has become in its own view a colonial police force, it’s time to start looking at it as a major mechanised fighting force and the fact is that old equipment in storage has great potential value now more than ever.
I think as if we didn’t know that recent events have shown that the armed forces have been primarily supported as two options. 1) for small special forces led support and interventions. The new Rangers are pretty indicative of this being the only role we can seriously support. 2) to act as a ceremonial, civilian support service, and most importantly a visual marker for public perception that we are still a powerful military operator. Beginning to think indeed increasingly this is a metaphor for the whole Country in terms of being a serious operator any more. A superficial image of… Read more »
Absolutely nailed it!
Can’t the two Waves be converted to littoral strike ships, a bit like Argus? They’re surely oo young and good still to get rid of.
Cut the central tanks out. Build a deck on stilts above it and you would have the inbred sister of the ugliest ships in the world, ESB’s such as USN Lewis Puller…Its a thought…A bad one but its a thought
GB, I think you’ve just killed it off… and I’m okay with that. Lol 😁 🇦🇺 🇬🇧
one of the Waves has has been in reserve for a couple of years now while the other one was in service
Hope to God they’re held in strategic reserve at least. Very handy to have these still relatively new extra tankers that can’t be built new overnight.
6 tankers would be a lot for such a small fleet outside of wartime use. As long as they can be reactivated I don’t see any issue with that. Could have done much the same for 1 Bay class.
I know it’s only up the river but it’s in Seaforth Docks next to the container terminal. But your point still stands.
Just started an alongside maint period on her sister ship.
‘centre’
Cardigan Bay completed a mid-life refit last year as I recall, impressive looking ships.
LINK
Well she went into dock…and had some time in Falmouth…to say it was a mid life refit ( As the RN do them on a FF/DD) would be some heavy lifting…
So have they given up with adding a hanger on one these ships with the life extension of Argus?
Must admit with a hanger they would be near perfect for their job within our limitations anyway. Odd that they couldn’t incorporate one in the original design, preferring it seems more external work space and the cranes, combined with a larger flight deck. Can see the logic but the latter only makes sense surely if you have appropriate helicopter carriers (in whatever form) to supply the actual airlift capacity to take advantage of it. Is PofW really going to be devalued to try to offer such a role. Not sure that is really practical anyway being such a prized asset… Read more »
According to Wikipedia the bays are based on the enforcer class that is used by the Dutch and the Spanish, the enforcers come with hangers. So when designing and procuring the bays someone actively removed the hangers from the design. As I’m working so I can’t really do that much research it would be interesting to see if they actually gained much space from removing the hanger. Yes the flight deck will be bigger but it seems pointless if you can’t store the helicopters away safely, especially if you are operating around Scandinavia which the marines seem to be focusing… Read more »
You are assuming some semblence of forethought & strategic planning…
May I suggest you consuder one thing only – the cost- Therein will most probably lie your answer.
The hanger was sacrificed to allow more containers to be carried on deck. Although the Bays have a large flightdeck, they have operated Ospreys, they are still only single spot.
I see thanks, I suppose at thee time they were designed and built they thought they would just be used as auxiliary vessel as part of a bigger fleet. Probably didn’t think they would be doing even half the stuff they do today. We also still had ocean and a larger escort fleet all with hangers that helicopters could have been kept in.
Pretty sure they are 2 spot chinook capable…I will be on CB later this morning so I will check the deck markings!
They have also operated the CH53s from the USN and they are massive.
Nope one spot chinook… Looking at the deck markings now… And before anyone asks about fun in the sun it’s raining….
Was going to post a picture of a CH53 landing on CB but it appears you can’t!
In an assault they were supposed to work as
2 x Bay
1 x Albion
1 x Ocean – second was never ordered
1 x Invincible
+ escorts
So all the flat toppery was supposed to be done by a flat top.
Never knew they had planned for another ocean. Shame it never happened as there would have probably been a higher chance of keeping one instead of selling both. Can’t change the past though, just jeep pushing forward and luckily the RN seems to be heading in the right direction.
They have a TAS fitted. A Temp Aircraft Hangar…Yes its a tent of sorts but its very robust , Ally framed and plastic material covered.
The container deck adds flexibility as demonstrated by operating the MCM 11m Workboat recently. Container workshops and control room on the deck and the boat deployed from the deck via the cranes. No need to use the dock which introduces speed and operating limits on the vessel.
“The Defence Command Paper published in the wake of the March 2021 Integrated Review promised: “more than £50m will be spent converting a Bay class support ship to deliver a more agile and lethal littoral strike capability”. Here we take a speculative look at the options for the conversion.”
LINK
Wasn’t one of the Bays going to be converted into a littoral strike ship gif about £40-50m of has that been cancelled? I’ve commented before that if this is the price then why not do all three Bays and you’ve got yourself a pretty good force multiplier for not much and that could be completed quite quickly. And you could add in Argus.
*gif.. at
*of…or
It was decided to convert Argus instead.
Isn’t she basically already “converted” to what she is now? What more can they realistically even radically do? Doing all three Bays would be good value and practicable. You could then have three smaller littoral groups if need be with Argus and Albions for North, Med, South of Suez. If you bought fourth Bay back you could cover the Falklands with that and support Ops in Antarctica. Just my few pence worth.
That is the point I assume, very little will be needed to be done to convert her meaning it’ll be cheaper. However she can carry more helicopters than a converted bay could carry so will probably be of more use. There are 16 Merlins and 6 Wildcats in the frontline squadrons but very little carrying capacity on our amphibs.