MP Gerald Howarth was just on the BBC news and stated that whilst the Hercules would do the best it could, the UK desperately needs an MPA that could do the job properly.

Nuf said.

One presumes that Boeing will have a P8 at Farnborough in a few weeks, together with some rather convincing lobbyists.

I know little about the maritime and/or SAR arena (one trip in a Nimrod in 1985 where the crew found a Russian sub - Tango Class?). But even the most hard nosed individual cannot deny it is somewhat bizarre that the best the UK can do is an enthusiastically crewed C130. :(

Correct 'Vitro, and a Tanker, and ship borne STOVL, and ships, and technicians etc, etc.
Spoke to this person when he was a cog, made no difference apparently.;)
Usual story, bleat after leaving the job. No friend of UKMil in my opinion.

OAP

Lonewolf and Fincastle - thanks for the answers guys :ok:

Fox3 demonstrates that a picture can tell a story.

A clever picture.

The stern holes / hatches / cut outs are much closer to the water.

late-joiner,

I know what the SOLAS rules are, unfortunately IMO keep changing their minds on the practicality of some of these rules. Read about some of the changes here:uhoh:
Fast Rescue Boats

The US Coastguard operate ships, FW and rotary. I suggest that they have got a far better idea of how to operate in this region than any of the armchair experts:E

The search area is expanding far more rapidly than we will be able to effectively cover, note that I said effectively. The hull of the yacht is the best datum and it is sad that the cargo vessel did not stay until a more capable unit arrived. The hardest job of a search coordinator is to decide that it is time to call a halt, under the circumstances, with only the information from the media, who are we to question his decision?

Heads down, look out for the flak

I think you'll find the armchair experts on the thread will dismiss pretty much anything they don't want to hear.

Good post however.

CLC - you are correct, but I suspect not "right". Hope there is a successful conclusion, but sadly with time it become less likely

The UK would have followed the mitigation plan for the removal of Nimrod.

That is, plead with the US, France and Canada to do the job for us, with their respective MPA forces.

We would also expect them to pay for the whole thing from their own funding lines too.

Not strictly true...

I have been involved in at least 5 SAR incidents outside (sometimes by 1000's of miles) of the UK SAR AOR. Three times because we just happened to be flying in the approximate area (one incident after actually hearing the Mayday on Ch16), once because we were in the country and we were asked (in the middle of the night) if we could get airborne and assist, which we did after gaining the appropriate authority) and once (several sorties over several days) when we were asked to redeploy whilst operating in the Indian Ocean because those coordinating the search again knew of the strengths of the Nimrod and requested our assistance.

An interesting and relevant story here about the dangers of calling off a search early.
2 guys in small boat with no radio, no beacons, no survival equipment and drifting for three days. Aircraft and ships searching in a very small area with no joy. Saved by a stroke of luck.

Missing fishermen found safe at sea two days after disappearing in fog off Aberdeenshire coast - Daily Record

One quote jumps out.

"It proves the point about never giving up hope"

Lucky guys and a brilliant result

Missing Fishermen Found
 

An interesting and relevant story here about the dangers of calling off a search early.
2 guys in small boat with no radio, no beacons, no survival equipment and drifting for three days. Aircraft and ships searching in a very small area with no joy. Saved by a stroke of luck.

Missing fishermen found safe at sea two days after disappearing in fog off Aberdeenshire coast - Daily Record

One quote jumps out.

"It proves the point about never giving up hope"


It also illustrates, yet again, our sad lack of MPA. MRA4 would have tied down this datum within a couple of hours on day 1 of the search.

And this is perhaps, the least important role of MPA.

8 x P8s and soon, please.

However lucky they may have been, for people who I am led to believe are 'professional' fisherman, the above (assuming it is true) is irresponsible and foolhardy. Darwins Law seems to have been foiled this time.....

As a former ARCC Controller (Duty Manager in today's PC times:rolleyes:) I used to ask the relevant MCA MRCC for a SARIS plot so I could brief the Nimrod and/or SAR hel crews when dealing with a protracted maritme search. SARIS, or probably SARIS 3 or 4 by now, uses various parameters: LKP, course, surface wind, tide data, sea state, type of vessel etc to determine a Search Datum and Search Area. It can also suggest search height and speed to fly for the crews. Clearly, the search area expands with time so it would be very interesting to learn how large the search area has grown by now. MRCC Falmouth has responsibility for long-range SAR within the UKSRR and often provides assistance to vessels on a global basis, particularly when a UK registered distress beacon is detected. Their professional staffs will no doubt have been liaising fairly closely with their US counterparts in this incident. I believe that the USCG has a similar system and they would have used the search data as evidence when considering their initial decision to call a halt to their efforts, never an easy decision but someone has to make it.

My gut feeling is that teams of trained professionals have been cajoled into re-starting the search by the US and/or UK Government(s) following the groundswell of uninformed public opinion. I have been involved in many searches for swimmers and people in life-rafts in much smaller search areas over the years and, sadly, they rarely have a good outcome. Whilst it is admirable that the friends and families of the missing sailors are keeping their spirits up with their kitchen table efforts, I do hope someone has had the sense to paint them a more credible picture so that they can prepare themselves for the inevitable bad news.

I do hope I'm proved wrong but I truly believe I won't be; my thoughts are with the families at this tragic time. :(

Nail hit squarely on the head !

The watchword for the families however is "closure"

El G.

I'm surprised they haven't sent a Sentinel...

Comedy of error.
 

The two missing Scottish fishers story is reading like a comedy of errors. Although they may have made mistakes, once the fishermen realised they were in the schum, they seemed to do ok - that they are alive is testimony to that. One of them had 62 years experience on the sea, hardly a novice. Boat looked ok for what it was for - inshore work.
The UKs search efforts seem pretty poor on the face of it here. Flight Deck Helmet on, but I mean at the end of the day they were off the coast of East Scotland, in an area within range of land based helicopters, offshore support vessels, blooming uncle tom cobley....still couldn't find them. I find that hard to fathom.
After all that, reads as though the Montrose lifeboat actually sank the fishing boat when it had in tow going back in.


BBC News - Missing fishermen 'survived on two biscuits'




http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...2WP5ybD0aAH_x6




http://www.army-technology.com/proje...2-defender.jpg




http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/image...9_zrsqg0e6.jpg
http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...oAS4fgX9X7mWAd

http://www.pprune.org/data:image/jpe...d5HBCFrnNK/9k=
If there is a way back to ever getting a UK MPA, I don't think the RAF will get it now anyway. Will be given over to another agency, watch and see, it may happen after all of this. Face saver. Some sort of enquiry and something will be lashed up again for use. Incidentally the photos...I just wanted to google and see what we still have to improvise in a search role other than the yellow seakings...and I'm talking about looking for people 50 miles off our own coast. Hardly gives me confidence.

I presume, WW, that your tongue is firmly in your cheek??

Oh really :rolleyes: Just what other agency would want an armed MMA/MPA? What would be the point of buying a single role LRSAR acft? What other agency could afford to buy and operate it??

People will ask why not?
 

Maybe he is being serious about the Sentinel? If a newspaper printed pictures for the general public, about what sort of aircraft the UK currently has, bet they'd include it. They'd include all those ones I've just posted above.
If the gap is there, then someone will be tasked to fill it with what we have.
I'm surprised more ex RAF Senior Officers haven't been up making some sort of capital about the recent events, in the Atlantic and the North Sea.
This is all small stuff in the great picture, callous though that is. What would happen these days if......we have a mid North Sea Ferry "Incident" or a Mid Atlantic but more our side of the pond Airliner ditching? This would be a major, major embarrassment, a potential election loser for a sitting UK Govt.
Only that sort of thing would focus a UK politicians mind, of the current generation.

Roland no Im being not clear.
 

I mean one not dedicated for maritime warfighting. I mean a one for search of missing sailors, searching for contraband, smugglers, y know?
Seriously I think UK MCA, Coastguard, HM customs and excise- dual role sort of thing.

Why, when there is a known capability gap within the military sphere, would any other department go and buy a single role SAR/coastguard aircraft. Dept for Transport have long had responsibility for LR SAR - it is not a Military Task. However, DfT are unlikely to be able to afford their own fleet of LR SAR aircraft - even if that was to be half a dozen second hand marinised C130Js. Although...... when do the RAF start scrapping their Js?? Seriously though, the UK (Defence) has a known requirement for a MMA/MPA which could fill a large number of roles, including LR SAR from irreducible spare capacity.

That is an understatement !

T'was ever thus.

Just seems as though when anything 'kicks off' we send a Sentinel. Nothing to do with its intended scrapping, oh no sir, but one imagines meetings 'on high' with its senior officer 'sponsors' all present, arm aloft, bouncing up and down in their seats, pleading "me sir, me sir, choose me sir".

We'll just blame the French

Deep questions
 

it is interesting how we become more philosophical as the years advance. This whole sorry saga makes me wonder just what values underpin our civilisation and have we lost said values ? There is ample evidence of survival for many days in similar situations. I appreciate the difficulties of the merchant vessel being able to render any further assistance beyond their locating the upturned hull, Whilst this event has been unfolding I have clambered up and down the sides of similar vessels by rope ladder. I would not wish to do that at sea in a 20ft swell. The first (inescapable) duty of the master of the vessel is to his crew and their safety. Was a USCG vessel not immediately assigned to make best speed to the upturned hull? Its position could at least be monitored by a series of airborne SAR sorties? These threads always seem to end up with a discussion of MOD tasks versus DFT responsibilities... As a humble taxpayer I suggest that it is not unreasionable to expect a public asset to be used if there is a possibility, however remote, of a result. The achievements of the Nimrod crews over many years are respected and a source of justifiable pride to those of us who know or care about such things. This brings me to the previously mentioned letter to LAA members, one sailor is a fellow aviator. I received that email as I was working on a vessel in Europort and was annoyed at the apparent ignorance of the appellant (LAA) asking that the search be aided by an RAF patrol aircraft as good training value. I replied hastily as follows:

Royal Air Force plane to practice search techniques ?

I'm afraid not, neither did we send one to help search for the Malaysian Boeing. This is because the Royal Air Force retired its Nimrods early,before introduction of the ill fated Nimrod Mk4 ( a rebuild of earlier examples) and the government abandoned (scrapped|) the Mk4 in their 2010 defence review.

So, a planned 'capability gap' has become a 'capability chasm' with no indication of when we will recover this vital capability.

The United Kingdom, a maritime nation that depends highly on merchant shipping trade, has NO maritime patrol capability!

This is why we are reduced to begging others to help.

It looks bad for those men, but we should continue where there is hope and in particular, investigate the hull in the shortest possible timescale. Otherwise, I fear we have reached a point where we fail to be worthy of the description 'civilised'.

There has been no mention in the context of the resumed search of the upturned hull. Presumably that has now sunk. Was there any triangulation of the brief EPIRB signals received last weekend?

The photo from the Maersk container ship suggested she had either hit or passed extremely close to the inverted yacht hull ion her path - sufficient, I am afraid, that the disturbance or imapct would likely have broken up any air cavity survivors in the hull were relying on...

Strangely in the Robert Redford film "All is Lost", it is a Maersk line ship, Emma Maersk, that passes the sinking yacht without seeing it. Spooky or what.

BBC Radio 4 tonight.
 

UK Sec of State for Defence Hammond was on, primarily about recent elections, but he stayed on to asked a few things about the search. Strangely, Eddie Mair asked him one of my questions above about airliners ditching on "our" side of the Atlantic. Maybe Eddie s a pruner? Answers:
(a) In that event it'll be a multinational response. RN Ships will probably be dominant. (Like recently looking for the Malaysian plane). That no one found....
(b) Eddie sort of let him off about the binoculars + RAF Herc. lash up being used to look for the missing yacht, but he did raise the point of its relevence.
(c) The USCG search will cease tomorrow, the RAF will carry a little further on the remainder of the day with its "sorties". But cease tomorrow evening (think that was right). Why so?
(d) Hammond is as slippery as any and played his cards right, and I think won this limited discussion.


And so it ends.

Sadly, and with a heavy heart as the parent of youngster who qualified Ocean Yachtmaster Commercial only a year or two before this skipper, I think they have now done as much and maybe more then was reasonable. Who knows what the outcome might have been if the two days had not been lost, and the container ship had acted, or been able to act, differently.


RiP to the crew lost, and let the yachting and SAR worlds see what lessons, if any can be learned.

My heart and thoughts are with the families and friends.

As a transatlantic sailor myself, I find myself in agreement. At very least, the restart of the search gave the families comfort in the knowledge that the crew were not bobbing around the high seas in a hopless state.

RIP guys. El G.

BBC now reporting the hull has been found.

BBC report USCG - upturned hull found.

I just hope it gives closure one way or the other for the families, if no one is onboard then I hope they find the raft and equipment missing that may extend the search, if they find bodies then that will give the families closure.

I like this

"The hull of the missing UK yacht Cheeki Rafiki has been found in North Atlantic ocean, the US Coast Guard has told the BBC

A spokesman said a surface swimmer had identified the name on the back of the boat, but was unable to go inside."




That would be cold !!!

Good the hull found again - maybe something good will come.. fingers, toes crossed

Guys, there is a lot of talk about things being different if we had an MPA and what if a liner sank mid atlantic.
What exactly do you think an MPA would bring to such an event?

If a liner is sinking then the lifeboats all have beacons. The MPA can only act as a search asset. If they are in lifeboats then they will be ok till the ships home to the beacon. If not then they will drown/die of hypothermia whether there is an MPA overhead anyway.

If it is an airliner crashing then what exactly does anyone think an MPA can do for the passengers? If they come down in one piece, then there are beacon applenty. If not, then recent events have shown just how useless state of the art MPAs can be.

Let's not get carried away about haw useful an MPA is in these circumstances.
As locator beacon tech has got better and more ubiquitous, the role of an MPA has become ever more tenuous.