PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Kinloss........Whats Going on?
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Old 9th Jun 2007, 19:54
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Pontius Navigator
I don't own this space under my name. I should have leased it while I still could
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Lincolnshire
Age: 81
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Nimman, I can't comment on that. All I can say is that the immediate reaction was to order the use of max - 257 kts - which in turn caused other problems.

I trawlled through all the signals at ISK but we could find nothing to support the possibility that such failure was likely to be a regular occurence. There was, as far as I know, no engineering input for or against. We made a decision solely on the facts and reverted to normal usage.

We did hit another problem which may well have been related to the Singapore incident. The failure rate (it would not burn) began to creep up. As it didn't work crews tended to use it less. As crews used it less so the failure rate continued to creep up.

As I recall the crew allocation was something like 36 rounds per month or about 900 per month and 10000 per year. We started to look at why we had such a high rate so we quizzed the Dutch, German and French crews. First, they had not had a problem with failure to leave the barrel and all used the full range of firing speeds. The Germans and French also did not suffer high failure rates either. OTOH the Dutch had a similar experience to us.

You will recall that the shell is made of wood and we suspected it had got damp thus increasing the failure rate.

We checked the batch numbers of the other nations and found that the German and French batches were current year whereas the Dutch, like us, were using stock 3-4 years old.

We ended up red carded at least 6000 rounds at ISK and no doubt many others in storage. Once we started to use new stock the serviceablity increased and crews started to use more again.

We had similar problems with the 5in flare as well with failure rates exceeding 50% - not good on night SAR - more than 50% failure in a stick of 4 meant sometimes only one or no flare burn at all.
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