The United Kingdom’s main aircraft carrier the HMS Queen Elizabeth caught fire as it was about to undergo repair.
RT:
Britain’s HMS Queen Elizabeth has caught fire while docked in Scotland to unload ammunition prior to having its propeller shaft repaired. The propeller issue had caused the £3 billion ($3.85 billion) warship to miss NATO’s largest exercise in decades last month.
The blaze broke out while the carrier was docked at Glenmallan on Friday night, a Royal Navy spokesperson said on Saturday. “A minor, isolated fire on HMS Queen Elizabeth was quickly brought under control and extinguished,” the spokesman told the UK Defence Journal.
The HMS Queen Elizabeth was unloading ammunition at the time of the incident. From there, it is due to head to the port of Rosyth to undergo repairs to its starboard propeller shaft coupling.
Damage to this critical component was discovered last month, preventing the carrier from leading NATO’s ‘Steadfast Defender’ drills. Running from late January until June, the exercises are the bloc’s largest since the end of the Cold War. The HMS Prince of Wales, the Queen Elizabeth’s sister ship, was dispatched to lead the drills in its place, although its departure from port was then delayed due to an apparent fuel leak.
It sounds like this ship is having all sorts of problems and this is supposed to be the primary aircraft carrier for the British navy.
We are just seeing all sorts of general dysfunction within the militaries of NATO countries. Russian leadership has to be looking at all this and laughing. There’s no reason for them to invade the West when the West is doing a good enough job self-destructing on their own.
