Members of 892 NAS (2026)

18/01/2017

I just saw a post by Ray Day. Apparently, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the new aircraft carrier, will be docking in Portsmouth sometime this summer. I would imagine that nearer the time, this will make the national news.

As I commented on Ray's post, I think that this ship should be commissioned as soon as safely possible. Furthermore, the second ship of the class should be completed as soon as possible. With Donald Trump about to take over as president of the US, and the deteriorating state of affairs between Russia and the West, I think it is imperative that we have an aircraft carrier and a full complement of aircraft for it, as soon as possible. It's all very well having an aircraft carrier, but if you have no aircraft to operate from its flight decks, it might as well have been a tugboat, in fact,w without aircraft, it would be less use than a tugboat!

I know our Armed Forces come way down the list of priorities when it comes to spending money and allocating resources, but we have let our military capabilities fall to such a dangerous level that we would be hard put to defend the Isle of Wight, never mind somewhere further afield like the Falkland Islands. Those of you who can think back that far will remember that we had a far more capable Navy than we have today, and we had enough troops to commit to retaking those islands, at the same time as we maintained troops on the Rhine, and a whole load more of them trying to keep Northern Ireland from tearing itself apart. We also had a Royal Air Force that had far more capability than it appears to have these days. The world was a more dangerous place, you might think, but realistically, these days, we seem to be heading back towards a new Cold War, but on top of that, we have a whole load of new threats that we never had to consider back in the 70s and 80s.

I'm sure that some people think that I am turning into an old sabre rattling drooling idiot, but for those of us who can remember the Cold War, and all the implicit threat that went with it, will remember that it was only by having a strong defence that we could defend ourselves against any kind of aggression. These days? I don't think so. The sooner this changes the better, and the sooner politicians wake up to the idea that you can't get something for nothing, the safer this country might be.

I realise that massive ships, tanks, and bombers will never protect us against fanatics of one flavour or another, but that is only one of the threats we have to deal with, and when all is said and done, it is the intelligence community that can be the most effective at protecting us from terrorism. When you have people like Putin around, a man who is not afraid to fly in the face of everyone and invade his neighbours with impunity, we cannot afford to sit back and let ourselves run down our military capabilities to a point where we cannot defend ourselves if we tried.

26/11/2016

it seems like somebody down the stick to poke a few admirals with. It has finally occurred to somebody in the upper echelons that we have almost reached the point where we don't have a Navy.

This was a brief comment on BBC's 6 o'clock News, a couple of days ago, and it barely warranted more than a few seconds. ssadly, it rather reflects the attitude of successive governments, whether they wear a red or blue rosette on polling nights. at one time, no matter what your personal political views were, it was always clear that a Tory government would be strong on defence of the realm, and really, that starts with having a strong Royal Navy. Bitter experience through two world wars should surely tell the present generation of politicians that, given that we cannot support ourselves with either food,, raw materials, or finished products, without importing them from across the oceans, that a a Royal Navy worthy of the title should consist of more than a handful of ships, half of which are already a generation behind the times.

I know there are plans to build some more frigates, but given the amount of time it takes to go from promises, to the drawing board, to the shipyard, and finally being delivered to the fleet (if fleet is even an appropriate term these days), takes so long,, that by the time the first of the new classes delivered, it is already out of date, and needing upgrades to just about every important system.

We have two new aircraft carriers, but only enough aeroplanes of been ordered for one of them, and we don't know whether we will even have control of those aircraft, or whether airpower will be in the hands of the air force.

They are busy talking about building new ballistic missile submarines, but no one has yet clarified whether these will carry Trident missiles, or a new generation of ICBMs. The thought occurred to me that we would invest billions of pounds in submarines that will then need to be refitted because someone in their wisdom one of realise that Trident has been around for a long time, and probably needs to be either upgraded or replaced. The costs of refitting even existing submarines to carry a different kind of missile is something I wouldn't even want to think about..

I have always believed in a nuclear deterrent.. The only time nuclear weapons have ever been used was to Hasten the end of the Second World War,, by totally destroying two cities in Japan. I think most people would understand that,, if the Japanese had been able to retaliate with a nuclear weapon on somewhere like Seattle or San Francisco, the Americans would never have even thought about using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Negasaki. tthat said, I can't help but think that if we want a strong conventional Navy, maybe it's time to have second thoughts about Trident. At the end of the day, if the world ever reached a point where nuclear weapons were likely to be winging their way through the heavens, our contribution would be rather small in comparison to those of the Americans and the Russians; and I can't think of any other scenario where we might even be tempted to lob an ICBM at anyone.

Perhaps it's time for a different approach. What about a submarine launched stealthy version of a cruise missile,, which can Carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead? Stealth technology already exists, we have all seen how effective cruise missiles really are, and acombination of stealth and a comparatively small and cheap weapon would be both more useful and more practical than a weapon that can only ever be used for the total annihilation of the entire world's population. We would still have a nuclear deterrent, but it would also be much more useful for the kind of wars we seem to get involved in these days. Another big plus is that, if it were designed well, the submarines themselves would not need to be specially designed in the same way as our ballistic missile boats are today.

We have the technology to do this, we have the skills, we have the industry that can do this, and who knows, it might just make the planet a little bit safer? Hopefully would allow us to spend more of the money allocated to the Navy on things that are of great practical use for everything short of an all-out mutually assured destruction..

05/10/2016

Hello everyone, thanks to all of you who passed on birthday greetings to me. As I said in my home page, there were so many greetings, they would take me hours to respond to all of them individually. It was very much appreciated, and it's quite heartwarming to be remembered by so many of my old friends.

I was reading up about the new aircraft carriers the other day, and I have to say, little annoyed and dismayed that the first F 30 5B Squadron for the Fleet Air Arm will be 809, and not 892. Is 892 was the Navy's only frontline supersonic fighter Squadron, I would have thought to our old outfit would have got first dibs. I think those cabs would look pretty good with a red tail, but what do I know? Obviously some sub sonic type stock is oriented first!

Another thing that really annoys me is this: why do the crabs get to run the show? Apart from one or two that made the grade, they have no experience of operating off a flight deck, and just because these things can land like helicopters, crabs aren't used to an airfield that moves along, and bobs around when the sea is anything but a millpond. It seems to me like we have the senior service in name only these days. Everyone else seems to be able to tell us what we can and can't have, and tell us how to run the show. I know the crabs will be getting a 35 is to replace their tornadoes eventually, so they will probably finish up with more of the Manor house, it still goes against the grain as far as I'm concerned.

It's still questionable as far as I'm concerned, whether we actually should have gone for these aircraft in the first place. It's a fact of life, whether we like it or not, that we have two integrate with US carrier battle groups. What this really means is that we should have catapult launch systems, and arrester wires for recovery. We can't do cross deck operations without these two essentials, yet someone in their "wisdom" doesn't seem to have considered this. Would it not have made sense to have equipped airships with catapults and arrester wires, even if the cabs we choose to operate don't require them with catapults and arrester wires, we would have been able to operate a much wider variety of aircraft, including aircraft capable of genuinely long-distance airborne early warning. I know we operate seeking is with a giant dustbin underneath them, or maybe there's a different helicopter doing it these days, but the restrictions of their service ceiling means that there over the horizon capability is much reduced. Anyone who remembers the Falklands can tell you that we were severely hampered by not having genuinely long-range airborne early warning capabilities. Having to station pickets hundreds of miles forward of the rest of the task force leftovers ships vulnerable, and a couple of extra sets proved the point.

History, for those of us who care to learn it, teaches us things about the mistakes we made in the past. I remember the crabs promising us that they could bomb Stanley airfield from thousands of miles away. There was a resounding failure, and they also promised us airborne early warning, and that didn't get us anywhere either. I know they have early warning aircraft these days, but if you have a carrier deployed on the other side of the world, how long is it going to take before you can get a century on station? And how many of them do you need to be ferrying backwards and forwards, in order to give you 24-hour seven day coverage? A modern version of our old Gannett's, God knows what it would be, would be organic to a carrier task group, and we would be independent of any requirements from outside sources. As things stand, we are still being told that the air force can do this, the air force can do that, the air force can do everything. Now it looks like the air force wants to be the Fleet Air Arm as well!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, the crabs are okay, they're good at their job, but they should stick to their job, not try to muscle in on hours. They're not good at it, they don't have the stomach for it, and they don't have the expertise of operating at sea. I remember a couple of time crabs coming on board the Ark once, and they couldn't wait to get off! Life in a blue suit was a little bit tough, the air force should wind its neck in, and stop poking its nose in where it isn't wanted.

What else's getting my goat? Oh yes: why is one of these aircraft carriers not being called HMS Ark Royal? Ark Royal has always been the flagship for the Royal Navy (well, ever since the demise of battleships anyway), so it seems to me like naming the two carriers after the Queen and the Prince of Wales is nothing more than sucking up. I should have been HMS Ark Royal, and HMS Eagle!!! I'm not antimonarchist, far from it, but traditions should not be overridden like this. I don't suppose her Majesty was even asked what she thought.

One more thought: now that we are exiting the European Union, what implications does this have for European security? I'm sure Vlad the paler is sitting there rubbing his hands together with delight. Is busy lobbing bombs and missiles around in Syria and the Ukraine, while straightfaced lying that he's a good guy. The Russians have always been untrustworthy, her smile to your face while they're busy doing everything I can to undermine you. I'm sure he is sitting there watching the EU struggling, just waiting for his opportunities. As it is, he can see that there is no stomach for a fight over the Ukraine, and equally, we can make all the noises we like about Syria, but all we're doing is sitting there wringing our hands together in dismay, while his air force is busy murdering innocent women and children in the guise of killing his mechanic fundamentalists. He is propping up a regime that is just as evil as his own, and the United Nations, toothless as it always is, is just sitting there letting him do it. Having said that, none of us in the West has any appetite forgetting involved in yet another Middle Eastern conflict. Most of the present troubles we have out there are thanks to Tony Blair and George Dubya Bush, with their fabricated WND.Even then, it could be argued that getting rid of Saddam made sense, but only If they had had a coherent plan for stabilising Iraq after getting rid of Saddam. If they had done that, maybe the whole of the Middle East wouldn't be in the mess that it's now in. We got rid of Saddam, but then there was no stomach for what needed to be done next. All Bush really wanted was the opportunity for his family business to make untold billions from cornering the market in the oilfields, and all Blair wanted was to be famous. Willie got that wish anyway.

The sad fact is, all the meddling that we have done, or should I say all the meddling their political leaders got us involved in has done nothing but make a bad situation 1 million times worse. It seems like half of the Middle East is trying to get into Europe, and this has been the main inspiration behind the vote to leave the EU. It's easy to accuse everybody that voted ###X it of being a xenophobe, and that is too simplistic by half. I voted to stay in, but the more I look at the whole situation, the more I can say that the reason we are leaving is because of the EU's own intransigence. David Cameron went to them with perfectly reasonable demands, and everything meaningful that he put forward was refused. Even now, they are behaving like children who have had their toys taken from them, making threats based around the single market and so on. They know as well as we do that, if we stop taking in migrants from the poorer parts of the EU, it will be then there has to bear the brunt of them instead, and they don't like the idea. Particularly the poorer countries of the EU who could not afford the extra burden from their Social Security budgets, their health budgets, their housing budgets, their growing unemployment figures, and so on and so forth. The EU is fast becoming a two track organisation, with the Germans holding the purse strings, and controlling everything. They tried European domination by starting two wars, that didn't work, now they are trying to control things by financial might. The hard right in Germany is starting to make noises, and it wouldn't take that much in a destabilised Europe for them to start rising towards power again. Such a thing would play into Putin's hands, and might give him just the excuse he needs to make more territorial gains in his own backyard.

In the meantime, we keep paring away at our Armed Forces, trying to make them lean and efficient, so the government says, but in reality, we're really doing is reducing their capabilities, bit by bit. The way things are going, if the French decided to invade the Isle of Wight, I'd be surprised if we had a military power to dislodge them, never mind prevent them getting there in the first place. We certainly couldn't fight a war like the Falklands, we haven't got the manpower, the airpower, or most importantly the seapower. Even with two new aircraft carriers, neither of which have been commissioned yet, we wouldn't have the aircraft to operate from them, even if we fill them full of crab air. As things stand, the only fixed wing aircraft that could even operate from the flight decks of the new carriers would be whatever harriers we could beg borrow or steal from the Americans, or whatever we have locked away in a dusty hanger somewhere. And how many old Harrier pilots would want to come out of retirement to fly them???

13/02/2016

And another thing……………. What the hell is this idiot Jeremy Corbyn going on about now? And his stupid shadow defence secretary? No clear missile boats, but without any missiles in them? That would be like turning up at a gunfight armed with a pen knife, when everyone else is carrying MP fives!!! Somebody ought to point out to Corbyn and his motley crew that the only country ever had the horrors of nuclear war visited upon them was a country that couldn't retaliate in the same manner. Awful though nuclear weapons may be, they have prevented us from annihilating each other the best part of 70 years. With ruthless bullies like Putin around, and that mad dog in North Korea, we would be totally insane to give up our own nuclear weapons. Of course we need new submarines, just as we need aircraft carriers with aircraft fit for purpose. We need forces worthy of the name, equipped and trained to deal with everything from humanitarian crisis warfare, and everything in between.

13/02/2016

Politically, I've always been a Conservative, with a small 'c'. The older I get, the less differences seems to make as to whether the party in power wears a blue rosette or read one; the ordinary man never seems to do that well all that badly. However, there's a few things going on right now which really make me sit up and take a bit more notice.

Our current policy seems to be that we just pay lip service to putting up a united front against aggressors. Sending half a dozen tornadoes and typhoons to lob a few token bombsat ISIL

What does it say about us as a nation, if we turn our backs on people that are desperately seeking safety? I know everybody argues that this country's overcrowded, but can we really turn our backs with a clear conscience?

When it comes to matters of defence, what on earth is Jeremy Corbyn coming up with now? The man is a complete idiot!!! While I don't believe that nuclear war is the thread they used to be when I was in the Navy, there is still a very real possibility that some idiot somewhere might press a button. Someone should remind Corbyn that the only country that ever suffered as a result of a nuclear strike was a country that couldn't retaliate in the same manner. I certainly wouldn't want to be walking into a gunfight if I'm only armed with a knife and fork!!! We cannot carry on running down our own forces, and we most definitely need to make sure that we still have the ultimate option available to us. With bullyboys like Putin around, and lunatics like that mad do***ng North Korea Kim Jong Il, who has made it quite clear that he would love to be able to nuke somebody, we cannot afford to leave ourselves effectively defenceless. Corbyn seems to be surrounding himself with like-minded sycophants who all spout CND badges with as much pride as military men might wear the Victoria Cross. All I can say is God help us if that idiot ever becomes prime minister!!! doesn't really constitute much of a foreign policy as far as I'm concerned. Still I suppose it's better than what the spineless Germans have to offer. I can imagine the ghosts of Wehrmacht generals spinning like gyros in their graves at Germany's current Craven attitude.

We are more or less sidelined, while Putin sending the heavies to prop up a dictator that is so rotten to his own people that they wanted to rebel against him. I suppose the biggest problem is that there are no guys wearing white hats in this conflict. Even those who are fighting both the Syrian government and I still don't appeal very much, and I suspect that any government that they could put together wouldn't be any better than the one they're seeking to replace. But we can't ignore the humanitarian crisis that this war has caused.

07/02/2016

I was watching the news the other day and a couple of things really made me feel quite pi**ed off. There was an embarrassing report about our latest destroyers, the type 45. Apparently, the ships in this class are subject to total electronic breakdowns, due to the fact that the generation system on board is marginal when the full suite of electronics is all in operation at the same time. So, as long as they leave some of the gear switched off, everything is okay, but in war conditions, when you would want all of your electronic warfare and weapons to be fully operational, the ship is likely to experience total electrical failure. Very handy that, particularly if your destroyers are acting as escorts to one of the new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers (whenever they eventually enter service with aircraft that are powerful enough to operate from them), sometime in the distant future……… It's enough to make you weep into your grog (orWoods, as that's the closest you can get the proper pussers issue)!!! Then we were told there if a generator burns out and needs to be replaced, the only way this can be done is by cutting a massive hole in the side of the ship in order to remove it and replace. And if they want to remedy the deficit in power, it would require installing a third generator, and somehow shoehorning it into the available space, Or replacing the existing generators with new, redesigned more powerful models. Now, I don't know anything about designing warships, these strikes me that nobody actually gave any thought to replacing major parts. This totally unrealistic to think that these things would never need to be replaced in the lifetime of a warship, so why did they make it so difficult to do? If you think of engine changes on either Phantoms or Sea Harriers, over major operations, but you didn't have to chop the aircraft up in order to replace the engines. Mind you, when I think about it, the Sea Harrier had to be put in a special jig and then have The main plane lifted off in order to swap out the engine. But replacing the engine on an aircraft is only a day or two's work, if things need to be done quickly, and there's a big difference between taking one aircraft out of service, and doing the same with an entire warship. a warship would need to be out of commission for weeks, even if the work was done at the very highest priority. When we only have 19 frigates and destroyers in our entire surface fleet, losing even one of them from operational strength would be a drastic reduction in our naval capabilities, which aren't that much to write home about these days anyway. I mean, let's be honest, is just as well the Argentinians have declared that they would never again resort to military force to back up their claims to the Falkland Islands, because we would never be able to put together a task force to retake again if there was a second Falklands war.I don't think we even have the capability from a mercantile marine point of view, given that most of our shipping companies are foreign-owned these days. I don't really mourn the passing of Empire, but the majority of merchant vessels visiting UK ports fly foreign flags.

Can you imagine being the skipper of, For arguments sake, HMS dauntless, when she is tasked with being the forward defence of a new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier (assuming the carrier can put to sea with an effective combat aircraft that has enough power to launch with a decent weapons load and fuel load to carry out combat sorties), And your ship is action stations because you are in a war zone. All of a sudden you experience total electronics failure………….Need I say more???

I have to say that it makes me feel sad to think how, not only our navy, but all of our Armed Forces have suffered at the hands of successive governments, since the end of the Thatcher era. Maggie may have got a number of things wrong, but she did try to keep the side up when it came to our military capabilities. And of course, now we are haunted by the possible prospect of a man who, it seems to me, would swap out White Ensign with a hammer and sickle if he got his way. I'm talking about Putin's pal Jeremy Corbyn!!! If he comes to power, we will finish up with a Soviet Socialist Republic of England!!! White Ensign? More likely white feathers!!!

30/12/2015

By the way, because my eyesight is so poor, I now have voice recognition software that does all my typing for me stop it's pretty good, but it does make a few mistakes. It doesn't handle foreign names very well, and if I come out with somepusserized expressions, it often screws them up completely. So, whenever you read things that I have written, if you come across something unintelligible, or some hideous spelling mistakes, or just plain gobbledygook, blame my software. Well, that's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it

30/12/2015

Hello shipmates, Arrrrrrrgh!!!!! I've come over all nautical haven't I !!! I guess it's because, while I was looking through my page, I came across a couple of other Navy webpages, including one for Sea Harriers, one about Jack speak, and another for anyone who's ever in the mob. So it's made me feel quite nostalgic.

Another year older, but am I any wiser? I don't know, to be honest. I'm in the 2nd year of my university degree course now, and I must admit the workload is a bit heavier than it was. Those of you who are interested, I'm doing a BA honours degree in classical studies, which is all about ancient Greece and ancient Rome, with a bit of philosophy and politics thrown into the mix. and archaeology too, but with my crap eyesight, I don't suppose I'd find the mask of Tutankhamen if it was staring me in the face!!! I guess, both historically, and geographically, I'd be a good few hundred miles off course if I was looking at an Egyptian burial mask!!!, At least, unless one of those piratical Greeks had stolen it. I'm enjoying the course though, even though it isn't the easiest subject in the world. The only thing is, I'm going to have to learn Latin, and some people could argue I barely manage to speak English properly!!!

I was watching the news last night, they were talking about that couple that were planning to set off a bomb to mark the anniversary of the 7/7 bombings in London. While it's a deadly serious and very disturbing subject, I had to laugh at the stupidity of the guy when he tested his initiator in his back garden, blew his bicycle up!!! How stupid do you have to be, when your house is full to the brim with explosives, to set off a miniature explosion in your back garden that gives everybody around you a damn good idea of what you're up to!!! Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. It's just as well for everybody else that the guy was such a di****ad!!!

Taking things seriously though, it goes to show that there are plenty of people out there who won't rest until they have done their bit to murder as many innocent people as they can. I know we all hated the IRA, back in the day, but at least their fight was mostly against our Armed Forces, and loyalist terrorists. I could kind of accept that, as long as they didn't pick on civilian targets. After all, when we signed up, the difficult and unpalatable truth was that we accepted that at some point, s**t might be flying at us that an acceptable rate of knots. As we always used to say, "if you can't take a joke you shouldn't join up, that's life in a blue suit." But I think the whole randomness of a bomb on an underground train, or in a crowded shopping centre, set off by someone who is so brainwashed that they don't care about dying themselves, there's just something so completely unfathomable about the mentality of people that would do this stuff…… Is there really any way that this kind of mindset could be changed?

I don't have much time for politicians in the main, but I'm glad I'm not in the Prime Minister's shoes, every time I think about dealing with terrorism. The other thing that I have to wonder about is immigration and refugees. It seems to me that we should be doing more to help refugees who are genuinely fleeing from the most tyrannical regimes. Even if this does risk our security with terrorists using refugee status to infiltrate the country. Surely our own humanity should want to reach out and help people who have lost everything, and are fleeing from their own country in terror. But then we have to look at the other side of the equation, just how many people can we cram into our island? Is not just a space that we have to worry about, it's all the services that refugees need, health education housing…… And so on. The country's success at pulling away from recession has meant that a lot of people from Eastern Europe have flocked to this country to get their hands on some of our money. This is Cameron's big problem, because our wonderful Tony blur signed us up for a charter that meant we had no control over our own borders, as far as EU citizenship was concerned. So we are a victim of our own success. It all stretches resources to breaking point.

The latest catastrophe is all the flooding, and the ruining of people's lives and all they have worked so hard for. There's little doubt that this is down to global warming, and that this problem will not go away, and may get even worse. I don't think any of us can think back to violent weather conditions in our childhood. The 1st major storm I can ever remember was in 1987. All of us went through the occasional hurricane and severe storm at sea, and I'm sure we can all remember the torrential downpours and spectacular lightning shows we used to get in Florida; but who would have imagined we would see whether of that magnitude in the UK? If it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing, it would be horrible, but we would learn to live with it. The trouble is, these things are happening with increasing frequency, and whatever efforts we make that flood prevention, we are kidding ourselves if we think we can defeat nature. Going back to when I was talking about in the previous paragraph, increasing pressure of an enlarging population will result in even more land being built upon, probably in areas where flooding is likely to occur. So the problem is going to get worse, both because the weather will become more extreme, and the land itself will be more densely populated in just those areas that are more liable to flooding.

F**k me!!! And I was gonna wish everyone a happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!This

Oh well, in spite of everything I've said above, I do wish everyone a happy New Year, and let's hope we all make it to the next one :) :)

Cheers,

Robin "Big Shirl" Pierce

Members of 892 NAS

18/01/2017

26/11/2016

05/10/2016

13/02/2016

13/02/2016

07/02/2016

30/12/2015

30/12/2015

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share