UK Defence Forum

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RFA Mounts Bay returned to Gibraltar early this morning:

RFA Mounts Bay arrived today. She is here on a 5-day visit to run a hurricane-season HADR exercise, Apparently contingents from other Caribbean nations will also be attending for training

https://www.caymancompass.com/2017/07/0 ... nd-cayman/

I'm pretty sure that a temporary hanger can and has been erected forward of the crane.

marktigger wrote:be nice if they had proper helicopter support facilities like an integral hanger

Caribbean wrote:She is here on a 5-day visit to run a hurricane-season HADR exercise...

Think it will be more than an exercise with Irma about to visit!

Edit: Ah didn't spot the date on the previous post! Is Mounts Bay still on station somewhere?

Gd luck to mounts bay over the coming days sadly it would appear she is going to be extremely busy. The strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic basin is heading for the crown dependencies hopefully it will weaken or head back out to sea.

It's not just Irma, Hurricane Jose is currently a Cat 2 and is following along approximately the same path 2 to 3 days behind. There is also a tropical storm building up off the east coast of Mexico, which has the potential to develop into another hurricane over the next few days. We are currently well out of the anticipated path, but we have some interesting weather around (a small tornado earlier today ). It looks as if Anguilla, BVI, USVI, TCI and the Bahamas will all get a real pasting, poor sods

Rather OT I know, but for anyone interested in the details of Irma's progress, this is an excellent website:

http://www.tropicaltidbits.com

It's unofficial but extremely well-informed and well-presented, usually with daily video updates. (NB Don't be out off by the name - it's not an update of the 60's girlie mag relocated to the tropics, but a serious met site.)

I checked on a couple of the ship tracker sites yesterday and two of the Bays are in UK waters and one in the Gulf. I thought Mounts Bay was supposed to be on WIGS duties? The Waves are in Scotland as well.

On Radio 4 PM programme they spoke to the Captain of Mounts Bay, (I think that's the one), anyway the Captain said they were currently 200 miles behind Irma, they have a Wildcat aboard, and are preparing to offer assistance as required.

whitelancer wrote:On Radio 4 PM programme they spoke to the Captain of Mounts Bay, (I think that's the one), anyway the Captain said they were currently 200 miles behind Irma, they have a Wildcat aboard, and are preparing to offer assistance as required.

If the damage is as bad as feared I'd expect more than one RFA to be heading there asap. Part of our commitment to the area & obviously good publicity for the RN/RFA.

People who still keep building houses from wood in a hurricane zone really ought to read "The Three Little Pigs" again and learn something.

Thanks, they must have A IS switched off. Glad to hear that they are close by.

SKB wrote:OT:
People who build houses from wood in a hurricane zone really ought to read "The Three Little Pigs" again and learn something.
/OT

Perhaps they read "The reed and the Oak" instead.

RFA Mounts Bay is reported to have:

- 1 x Wildcat HMA2 from 815 Squadron

- Det. 24 Cdo, Royal Engineers (19x troops)

- Det. 17 Port and Maritime Regiment, RLC

- A variety of tractors, diggers, trucks, quad bikes, command and all-terrain vehicles

Looks like the RN were ready for this one!

Pymes75 wrote: command and all-terrain vehicles

A good "force multiplier" for the Gvmnt and other civilian agencies; comms being re-established for coordination as soon as the "first wave" goes onshore.

SIPRI and the UN OCHA have together been looking into the planning and cost sharing of HADR, for the UK it came out like this:
"The response to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was a watershed for the UK
in terms of how it budgets for deployment of militar y assets in disaster relief.
During the relief operation following floods and cyclones in Mozambique in
2000, the UK made substantial contributions of militar y assets. There had
been minimal discussion of who would pay for the deployments, and the
Ministr y of Defence subsequently requested reimbursement from DfID for
the bulk of the costs incurred ($14.37 million).
To avoid a similar situation, before deploying militar y assets to tsunami
relief operations, DfID and the Ministr y of Defence drew up an MOU setting
out cost-sharing arrangements. DfID paid only 30 per cent of the $7.42
million total cost of deploying militar y assets for tsunami relief. In the relief
operation in Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake, DfID covered
49 per cent of the $6.7 million total militar y deployment costs. In both cases,
the Ministr y of Defence covered the remainder. "
Source:
Response to questionnaires and authors
interview with DfiD representatives

Just breaking on Sky. HMS Ocean and a naval taskforce is deploying to the West Indies..

Seeing a lot of private video of the aftermath from friends and relatives of my work colleagues, on the other islands. We definitely need a bigger boat for this one. Barbuda is barely habitable, Sint Maarten/ Saint Martin is little better, just watched some footage from Tortola (BVI) and it looks like it has just been liberated from daesh. This one has had a bigger impact than Ivan in 2004

Looks like Mounts Bay has already been at work. Bravo Zulu to her crew.

I didn't know but, now Bays have added with 2 funnels?
At least, RFA Lyme Bay on 2009 did not had it, but on 2015, she has it. (see Wiki's wikimedia photos)

2009: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 150928.jpg

2015: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... 159805.jpg

Cardigan Bay has it, and Mounts Bay, as well, as seen in the photo above.

They were all given the new exhaust route during refits.

do wonder why a hanger wasn't added during refit?

All Bays have a "soft" hangar. Maybe they are satisfied with it?

not much use in a hurricane or major tropical storm I would suspect

Something I picked up in a report over the last few days is that Mounts Bay is currently operating two helicopters over TCI (one Wildcat and one "light" helicopter). I think that the second one could be the Cayman Islands Police helicopter (an E135), which flew in a few days after Irma went through. One of the pilots is ex-AAC with Gazelle and Lynx experience. As of the middle of last week it had flown 35 missions - mainly supply, but two medevac.