Flooding the Airwaves - Thoughts on the HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH leak

The Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH has returned to her home port in Portsmouth ahead of schedule, following reports of a leak onboard. The MOD has confirmed that a minor leak occurred, while the media is reporting that 200 tonnes of water escaped onto the ship, flooding compartments and causing bulkheads and decks to buckle. How serious is this issue, and is there cause for concern?

Modern warships are built to go to sea in order to fight in extremely stretching and challenging conditions. Royal Navy warships are built in order to operate across the full spectrum of operations and in a vast variety of conditions. In other words, they are intended to be highly survivable and able to absorb and contain significant damage and flooding.

There is a multitude of systems and pipes on a warship – you only have to look around to see all manner of pipework for different purposes from firefighting mains through to cable runs or air conditioning pipework. It is an austere, busy and complex environment, where the main focus is on easy access to essential systems to ensure they can be easily fixed or bypassed in a crisis.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

Warships are high maintenance assets, requiring extensive round the clock care and support to keep them safe and functioning properly. In many ways a warship is a like a newborn baby – it keeps people awake at all times to look after it, it is prone to unexpected leaks and if the sewage system fails rather spectacular poonamis, and if things go particularly wrong in bad weather there can be outbreaks of projectile vomit.

The reality is that sometimes things go wrong onboard – sometimes through human error, other times through a bizarre combination of events combining to form a freak accident. When this happens fires, floods and other events happen which can test the ships company and put them under significant pressure to respond.

There is not a single navy in the world that hasn’t operated a ship that has had a flood on board. It is an inevitable part of being a naval power – you need to expect that things can, and will happen – usually at the most inconvenient moment possible.

In this case it appears that, for reasons yet to be determined or publicly announced, a small leak occurred onboard the QE, (reportedly due to a high pressure salt water pipe bursting) which in turn led to flooding in a stairwell, reportedly allowing 200 tonnes of water to go where it wasn’t supposed to be.

Firstly, how much water is 200 tonnes? It certainly sounds a lot, but is it? In fact, in terms of flooding 200 tonnes is not very much water at all – it is roughly 0.3% of the total displacement of the vessel. In terms of scale, it is the equivalent of about 10% of an Olympic swimming pool – or something that is easily within the scope of a modern warships damage control capability to pump out and absorb.

In wider context, HMS ENDURANCE took on about 2000 tonnes of water when she had her incident in the South Atlantic in 2008 (for a great account of this event this Wavell Room article is good reading), and yet she remained afloat and was saved (but never sailed again). So, in terms of the vessel at hand, the total amount of flooding onboard was tiny and although doubtless unsettling to experience if you were involved in it, never placed the ship at any risk of sinking.

The Royal Navy takes damage control very seriously indeed, and trains regularly for handling this sort of incident. All personnel are trained in how to repair a flood in what is known as the ‘DRIU’ (essentially a fairground ride that swings from side to side and fills with water while you try to stop the flooding).

These skills are regularly tested and exercised onboard all RN vessels along with other emergency drills such as how to put fires out. The RN learned lessons the hard way in the Falklands about needing timber to shore up bulkheads and stop leaks, and many ships now look like they have their own timber merchants business on the side, full of all manner of equipment to stop the leak, plug the gap and drain the compartment out.

This is topped off by the experience of going through Flag Officer Sea Trainings (FOST) organisation in Devonport, where the RN trains hard to remember and practise the skills of damage control. The event onboard was well within the ability of the crews skills and training to handle.

So, if it was minor, why come alongside early? From a practical perspective it seems likely that if the ship was near her home port and approaching the end of the work up period, then there was sufficient flexibility to return home and affect the minor repairs necessary to ensure she is ready for her next deployment. Despite the best efforts at dramatization in the media, she did not ‘limp into port’ and it is very much a case of business as usual.

There will be some who may ask whether the RN has somehow failed in this case – having to put a ship alongside early to fix this issue. In reality were the ship deployed, or on operations then it is highly unlikely that they would have gone into harbour. She is a ship intended to fight and survive taking damage, so in an operational environment the ship would have continued to operate. But, when you are near to home and not operationally deployed, why not return home, address the issue and carry on as planned in due course?

There will be others who think that the RN has somehow failed here in having this experience and that this sort of thing doesn’t happen to other navies. The internet is full of tactical geniuses and armchair admirals who assume that this could only happen to the UK. In reality, leaks and accidents onboard ships are remarkably common.

In the last few years the US Navy has sadly experienced several incidents involving collisions where damage has occurred and sailors have been lost. Only last week the Russian Navy  experienced a major accident onboard one of its submarines (and over the years has a long history of accidents and losses at sea), while last year the Norwegian Navy lost a frigate due to a grounding.

Operating at sea is inherently difficult and occasionally dangerous and sometimes things go wrong. What is essential is that people recognise that this does not mean that the ship, or the Royal Navy, are failures. There will doubtless be a robust investigation into the incident, which will ensure lessons are identified and, if necessary changes made to prevent it happening again. A good example of such an investigation is available online – the report of the Board of Inquiry into the HMS NOTTINGHAM grounding.

It is a shame that this has happened now as it perhaps distracts attention away from the significant success that the ship has had recently. For several weeks she has been working up off the South Coast, embarking a variety of helicopter types to continue trials and ensure that the ships is able to embark a wide range of UK military helicopters.

For instance the British Army has embarked Apache, successfully completing trials to see this lethal attack helicopter embark onboard as part of the air group. Likewise the RAF have once again embarked Chinook helicopters, which look like ants on the enormous flight deck. Finally the RN has been flying Merlin helos too off the ship.

This matters for two reasons – firstly, it’s a really good reminder that the UK excels at doing joint helicopter and aviation operations. Many nations would really struggle to embark, let alone operate aircraft from another service on one of their warships. Here, the UK is happily embarking RN, RAF and Army helicopters and happily operating all of them as part of a single airgroup off one carrier. This is a level of jointery that makes a massive operational difference, and which few other nations (if any) can effectively emulate.

Additionally this is a good chance to test the concept of the tailored air group. While the internet is still full of extremely boring people whinging about ‘carriers with no planes’, the reality is QE will deploy with a mixed airwing of aircraft and helicopters to deliver a wide range of effects.

It may upset some, but she is highly unlikely to deploy as a classic ‘strike’ carrier with just jets embarked. Rather her career will be spent with some jets, some attack helicopters, some ASW and some transport helicopters embarked on one platform as a fabulous operating asset. Helping build familiarity with the ship, ensure the plans and routines to operate and support all these aircraft type makes sense and is safe and also get the crew able to cope with this is a vital part of generating the carrier for operations.

The next step, which will happen over the summer is the trip to the West Atlantic to embark additional F35s to help expand on the trials and ensure the ship is able to handle embarked fixed and rotary wing aircraft ahead of her maiden deployment.

This may seem a slow pace to some, but it’s a complicated business, and not one that you can skimp or cut corners on. Getting it right and ensuring that the ship is able to do this, or identifying how you need to change things to do this, is central to ensuring 50 years of carrier capability with these vessels. Take it slow, and get it right – don’t rush it and screw up.

The final observation to make is that this incident perhaps shows how much the world is changing, and the ability to have time to comment on events has reduced. As noted, the RN has a long history of ships having floods and fires onboard and dealing with the situation. For example in the 1980s HMS ILLUSTRIOUS experienced a very serious gearbox fire that nearly caused the cancellation of a global deployment.

The difference now is the speed and ability of people to report and note what is going on. An event at sea 30 years ago would take time to filter ashore, and even if the crew went ashore too, then it would be days before scuttlebutt started to filter out. Today it is possible to instantly know what is going on and begin speculating about the problem.

In the case of the QE, there is such significant interest in her and her movements that any return to harbour is noted, and she is constantly having photos of her uploaded online. This can cause a very strong sense of demand for news, and for rumours to take hold quickly.

In this febrile atmosphere, it is worth noting that Royal Navy media team did its usual excellent job of communicating quickly what had happened and putting to bed speculation and rumours. This helped calm speculation, which was rife in some quarters about the situation. To those who want news on the ship, the best thing to do is follow the MOD and RN webpages and news sites, as they provide the best possible official news sources and updates.

More widely, if you want timely updates on the vessel and her movements, with authoritative comment, then the Facebook page run by David Simpson (called ‘Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier Class & Airpower) is an exceptional source of trusted objective news and updates and well worth following to keep informed. Also well worth a follow for trusted updates would be the ‘Save the Royal Navy’ website and the UK Defence Journal – all of which provide good updates by volunteers on the carrier and her situation.

There will always be interest in the QE and her activity, and it is right to be open and honest when something happens. Not all nations are as willing to be open about their naval challenges, which can perhaps create a misleading perception at times. But it is important to keep these things in context and remember that the ship is remarkably capable, has an outstanding future ahead of her and helps herald the bright future that lies ahead for the modern Royal Navy over the next few years.