The Ministry of Defence was forced to buy scrapyard parts to keep its only carrier in service.
Today The Mail on Sunday can reveal how, in a frantic effort to refit HMS Illustrious after a fire, MoD officials salvaged parts from her sister ship HMS Ark Royal – the aircraft carrier sold two years ago.
To public outcry, the historic vessel was sent to a Turkish scrapyard to be recycled into tin cans.
+3Raiding the lost ark: HMS Ark Royal (pictured) was sent to a Turkish scrapyard to be recycled two years ago
This cost-saving measure left Britain without a single carrier for fixed-wing planes, with HMS Illustrious, which can carry only helicopters, as the Royal Navy’s sole vessel capable of carrying aircraft.
A report obtained by this newspaper reveals that following the fire aboard Illustrious, the ship’s officers found they had no parts to replace those destroyed.
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This led to cash-strapped defence officials making an emergency request to the scrapyard’s owners to search the rusting remains of Ark Royal to find the missing parts.
Last night, the MoD refused to say how much it had cost to salvage and airlift these parts to Britain.
+3The MoD was forced to buy scrapyard parts to keep its only carrier in service, HMS Illustrious
But the former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Lord West, said: ‘We should have held on to the Ark for just this sort of situation.
‘Selling her off for scrap was a huge risk. With her sister ship Illustrious remaining in service, she would have been very useful. The Royal Navy has been cut to the bone, with no aircraft carriers and just 19 destroyers and frigates.’
The parts from Ark Royal were due to be fitted to Illustrious following her return to Portsmouth on January 10 after delivering humanitarian aid supplies to victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
Illustrious had previously been on anti-piracy patrols off the coast of Somalia. It was during this operation that the fire started on August 13 last year.
Afterwards one of the carrier’s officers realised that there were ‘no replacement stores’ for the radio switchboard and its surrounding cabinet.
Civil servants confirmed that the same equipment had been fitted to Ark Royal. Both ships belong to the Invincible class of aircraft carriers. The sale of the Ark to Leyal Recycling for £2.9 million in 2011 led former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to describe the UK as no longer a ‘full partner’ in military operations.
Illustrious is to be retired later this year. New aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is due to enter Royal Navy service in 2020.
An MoD spokesman said: ‘While the part was not one that would routinely need replacing, a small fire meant we had to get hold of another one, which we did, paying £57,000 less than we would have done if buying new.’
+3The MoD refused to say how much it had cost to salvage and airlift these parts to Britain
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545928/Scandal-scrapyard-Navy-We-sold-Ark-Royal-Turkish-scrap-buy-bits-repair-UKs-carrier.html#ixzz2rZ1ZK22j
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Scandal of our scrapyard Navy: We sold Ark Royal to the Turkish for scrap... now we have to buy back bits of her to repair UK"s last carrier Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545928/Scandal-scrapyard-Navy-We-sold-Ark-Royal-Turkish-scrap-buy-bits-repair-UKs-carrier.html#ixzz2rZ1jG6L2 F