Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

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Poiuytrewq
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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Poiuytrewq »

Tempest414 wrote:I can't help thinking that if the temp hangar was the flight deck side of the funnels it could make better use of the cranes and working deck
Exactly, add a 3 Merlin deck garage that could be used for storing anything if helos not required and the working deck would be completely cleared. Should be enough space for 2 Merlin capable landing spots if configured properly.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SW1 »

Why not an aircraft deck lift to the vehicle deck were the rubb hanger currently is

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Jake1992 »

SW1 wrote:Why not an aircraft deck lift to the vehicle deck were the rubb hanger currently is
IMO that’d be the worse way to go as it’d still have the problem of being in the way of the work deck yet then take away space from the vehicle deck. It’d also be expensive along with the fact that maintaining aircraft next to other vehicles is a pain ( always reported as so on Ocean )

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by shark bait »

Why would you bother? Why does the UK need more aviation capacity when all the UK's naval aircraft can fit on a single ship?
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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Tempest414 »

Flexibility is word that springs to mind for the HC4's to be fully used the carrier would need to be danger close yes they can lilly pad from the carrier and we do not always need a carrier

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Jake1992 »

shark bait wrote:Why would you bother? Why does the UK need more aviation capacity when all the UK's naval aircraft can fit on a single ship?
I don’t buy this as a reason, yes the QEs have the space but with the likelihood that only 1 will be available means it’d be very limiting in both space and location.
Both commando and strike roles require the flattop to be in different places at the same time, with only 1 active flattop this can’t happen.
Even though the QEs are big they still have limited space when you take in to account 24 F35s, up to 9 ASW, up to 5 AEW and a couple of SAR/COD aircraft it leaves very limited room for commando helos along with apaches.

Then there is also the fact of them operating as individuals and not one large take group.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SW1 »

Jake1992 wrote:
shark bait wrote:Why would you bother? Why does the UK need more aviation capacity when all the UK's naval aircraft can fit on a single ship?
I don’t buy this as a reason, yes the QEs have the space but with the likelihood that only 1 will be available means it’d be very limiting in both space and location.
Both commando and strike roles require the flattop to be in different places at the same time, with only 1 active flattop this can’t happen.
Even though the QEs are big they still have limited space when you take in to account 24 F35s, up to 9 ASW, up to 5 AEW and a couple of SAR/COD aircraft it leaves very limited room for commando helos along with apaches.

Then there is also the fact of them operating as individuals and not one large take group.
When you realise we will operate the carrier more like a US expeditionary strike group than a US carrier strike group the it answers the question

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by shark bait »

The Americans aren't bound by that constraint. They seem quite happy putting their Combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft on the same carrier. Why can't the Brits can't operate similar to their American friends?
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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Jake1992 »

SW1 wrote:
Jake1992 wrote:
shark bait wrote:Why would you bother? Why does the UK need more aviation capacity when all the UK's naval aircraft can fit on a single ship?
I don’t buy this as a reason, yes the QEs have the space but with the likelihood that only 1 will be available means it’d be very limiting in both space and location.
Both commando and strike roles require the flattop to be in different places at the same time, with only 1 active flattop this can’t happen.
Even though the QEs are big they still have limited space when you take in to account 24 F35s, up to 9 ASW, up to 5 AEW and a couple of SAR/COD aircraft it leaves very limited room for commando helos along with apaches.

Then there is also the fact of them operating as individuals and not one large take group.
When you realise we will operate the carrier more like a US expeditionary strike group than a US carrier strike group the it answers the question
shark bait wrote:The Americans aren't bound by that constraint. They seem quite happy putting their Combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft on the same carrier. Why can't the Brits can't operate similar to their American friends?
The answer is the same for both of these and that is they operate under a CVN air wing, the USMC only operate a small number of F35Bs up to 6 when in an amphibious role that normally transfer to land as soon as, this is because they have the above, the UK won’t have that luxury.

Both your comments also ignore individual ops out side of a many group, the bays and Albion’s for most of there time will be doing other stuff as we see with the bays right now. The lack of self deplorable aviation restricts what they can do or the effectiveness of them doing it.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

1: Looking at ThinkDefence twitter, what looks like needed now is lily-pad refueling work for numerous civilian helicopters. In HADR operations, for disasters as bad as this case, even Bay-class LSD is not alone. She is one of the many ships sent there, and enhancing collaboration with those civilian support organizations might be more important.

2: I am not strongly against adding hangars to Bay or Albion. But, I think a Wildcat hangar is good enough. It is perfect for daily patrol (anti-smuggler) and low-level HADR operations. Against big disaster, Bay or Albion will not be alone, so large open deck/flight deck would be more important than a large hangar.

If minimum money is available, I want a single Wildcat hangar on Albion, replacing the port-side aft. LCVP davit. Bay with plastic hangar is not optimum, but good enough, I think.

3: For commando operations, I think distributing Merlins to many ships is inefficient. It shall be at least 6 or 8 Merlin at minimum at a single location. Having "3 Merlin capable hangars in 2 independent vessels" will not provide aviation support as good as a single 6 Merlin capable vessel. In other words, RFA Argus is what is needed. If FLSS can cover this role, good. If not, some other approach is needed.

Anyway, for 1/3 of the time, 2nd carrier will be available, which is more than perfect for LPH role. A 3rd asset with 9 (or at least 6) Merlin capability will solve the issue. Considering the 2 CVF RN has, locating many "3-Merlin capable hangar" in many asset will not be a high priority issue. Nice to have, but not critically important such as to modify Bay right now. (But worth considering in its replacements).

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SW1 »

Jake1992 wrote:The answer is the same for both of these and that is they operate under a CVN air wing, the USMC only operate a small number of F35Bs up to 6 when in an amphibious role that normally transfer to land as soon as, this is because they have the above, the UK won’t have that luxury.
Yes but the uk does not, can not and will not operate at such a scale.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

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Jake1992 wrote:The answer is the same for both of these and that is they operate under a CVN air wing
This is not always true. A US Marine Expeditionary Unit is equipped for independent expeditionary operations. If the operation demands it they will operate with a Carrier Group, but it is not a requirement.

Regardless of weather there is a CVN present or not the US still operate combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft from the same carrier. It is a proven method and the Brits with their much larger carrier will have an even greater ability to do so. It should be quite clear by now the QE class will operate like a hybrid sitting between the Wasp and Nimitz class, at least for the first decade of service.

There is simply no benefit spending a small fortune to fix this. The RN have aviation capacity sorted for now.

In an amphibious manoeuvre the Bay Class will be needed for what its designed to do; getting lots of stuff across the beach.
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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Tempest414 »

shark bait wrote:Regardless of weather there is a CVN present or not the US still operate combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft from the same carrier. It is a proven method and the Brits with their much larger carrier will have an even greater ability to do so. It should be quite clear by now the QE class will operate like a hybrid sitting between the Wasp and Nimitz class, at least for the first decade of service.
I think what should also be noted is that US navy have 8 Wasp class , 2 America class in service and USS Bougainvlle under construction and they have been playing with the light carrier idea. Now given that they have 10 of these ships it is possible to send 3 with 1 in light carrier from giving them some 32 strike jets

As for the Bays I think they are great as they are but there replacements should have a full width garage capable of holding helicopters

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

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shark bait wrote:The Americans aren't bound by that constraint. They seem quite happy putting their Combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft on the same carrier. Why can't the Brits can't operate similar to their American friends?
Because USN has 20+ CVN/LPH ships, while the RN just 2. They can afford to lose some of them, the RN can't. Even the loss of one CV is catastrophic for the RN.
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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SW1 »

abc123 wrote:
shark bait wrote:The Americans aren't bound by that constraint. They seem quite happy putting their Combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft on the same carrier. Why can't the Brits can't operate similar to their American friends?
Because USN has 20+ CVN/LPH ships, while the RN just 2. They can afford to lose some of them, the RN can't. Even the loss of one CV is catastrophic for the RN.
The trade off between 2 very large platforms that can only be in one place at a time or multiple smaller platforms that can be distributed to multiple locations or come together to concentrate in 1 location. We choice the former.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Jake1992 »

shark bait wrote:
Jake1992 wrote:The answer is the same for both of these and that is they operate under a CVN air wing
This is not always true. A US Marine Expeditionary Unit is equipped for independent expeditionary operations. If the operation demands it they will operate with a Carrier Group, but it is not a requirement.

Regardless of weather there is a CVN present or not the US still operate combat Air Support and Troop Transport aircraft from the same carrier. It is a proven method and the Brits with their much larger carrier will have an even greater ability to do so. It should be quite clear by now the QE class will operate like a hybrid sitting between the Wasp and Nimitz class, at least for the first decade of service.

There is simply no benefit spending a small fortune to fix this. The RN have aviation capacity sorted for now.

In an amphibious manoeuvre the Bay Class will be needed for what its designed to do; getting lots of stuff across the beach.
Yes a wasp/America class can operate good numbers of F35s but when in amphibious mode they will only be operating 6 odd F35s ( which is not enough to cover anything more than low scale ops ) anything extra requires CVN cover which we won’t have the benefit of.
The above class can operate around 40 odd aircraft plus then 6 odd on the San Antonio class and their LSDs so around 50 odd aircraft in total ( plus CVN cover when needed )

The QEs when only 1 is available would struggle to put anything more than a low level air wing out while also operation the commando force, this is very limiting. This set up also means we only have organic aviation when a QE is near by over all limiting the fleet.

To get back to the original discussion about hanger space on the Bays, I agree right now there are higher priorities first, but when it comes to there’s and the Albion’s replacements it’d idiotic not to have a full width hangers. The lack of hangers can be seen in the limiting factors for individual ops right now so to carry that on in to the next gen would be unthinkable.

If a hanger on the Bays is seen as a high priority then I’d go for a full width between the work deck and flight deck, reduce the flight deck to a twin merlin single chinook deck IMO would be the best route.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SKB »

RFA Lyme Bay (L3007) is in London for London International Ship Week 2019 (LISW2019).
It is the first time that a Bay class ship has visited London. She's berthed near the Cutty Sark in Greenwich.


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(Photos: @AJBC_1 Andrew Christy)

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Lord Jim »

Following the discussion above regarding aviation assets, the two FLSS, with that programme being accelerated and orders expected in the first half of 2020, will provide the facilities to operate around 8 Merlin HC4s between them. They will therefore give the ARG an integral aviation capability and be able to provide helicopters for HADR operation if available. As for the number of helicopters, 8 Merlins is probably the maximum that would be deployed to support amphibious operations, especially with the new operating doctrine being developed for the Royal Marines. Of course I hope the replacements for both the Bays and Albions, possibly a single modular class, to have a far greater aviation capability and capacity.

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

from ""

I think this is very precious photo (at least for me) showing of the width of the Bay-class's dock.
This mexefloat is apparently the "Standard" version in its width (*1), which is 7.42m wide. Maxi-version of mexefloat is 12.2m wide (or x1.6 wider), and Bay's dock looks like just at the width to fit the latter, say ~13 m wide.

- On paper, it can accommodate 2 LCM-8 (6.4m wide), but may be too tight.
- It can surely accommodate 2x2 = 4 LCM62 (19.6m x 5.1m) carried on Italian LPD, San Giorgio-class.
- As the dock is slightly narrower than the door, the dock may not be able to accommodate Netherlands' LCU of 36.3m x 6.85m.
- The dock can easily accommodate one MSV(L) of US Army, an enlarged version of Caimen90 of BMT design, which is 35.6m x 8.6m.
- For reference, British LCU Mk.10 is 29.8m x 7.7m in its size, which means 1 can be accommodated in this Dock.
- US Navy's LCU 1627 is 41.1m x 9.1m in size.

*1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexeflote

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by Bring Deeps »

Have loaded up some photos of RFA Lyme Bay when she was moored on the Thames in September last year.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/186610628 ... 2957029702

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SW1 »

https://www.forces.net/news/rfa-mounts- ... -caribbean

A bay class again demonstrating how effective it is a fwd deployed mothership cable of martime security, HDAR, MCM command, fwd presence, fwd engagement ect ect ect

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by SKB »

RFA Mounts Bay (L3008)
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(@RFAMountsBay) 6th May 2020
RFA Mounts Bay in dry dock during refit at A&P Falmouth. 8% through, with much work ahead!

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by donald_of_tokyo »

Nice movie. Although not so many "new-info.", for me the close-up of CIWS mounts (both forward and backward), and the lift detail was interesting.


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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

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Re: Bay Class Landing Ship Dock (LSD (A)) (RFA)

Post by ETH »

As per the ‘Defence in a Competitive Age’ paper - one Bay class will be upgraded for a littoral strike role (presumably forming the centre piece of a littoral response group). Any ideas what this could entail?

My guess is expanded aviation and C2 facilities at a minimum.

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