Political Correctness run amok

South Africa just received their first Type 209 submarine. Bully for them. At least they're not British.

Here's the bad part:

"The submarine, packed with advanced equipment, is a Type 209, of which 63 are currently in service with various navies around the world. It requires a crew of 30 and South Africa aims to have a racial balance on board reflecting that within its society."

See that? They want to crew a submarine according to a racial balance within society. That's daft. I can understand where they're coming from here, but a submarine is NOT the place to play social engineer. Try the President's honour guard for that. Or maybe his security contingent.

Canadian boats

HMCS Victoria is currently undergoing her certification refit in Victoria.

Canadian submarines have a major refit every five years, which usually lasts just under two years. This refit ensures that they are safe to take to see, and fixes any major or minor safety-related defects. At the conclusion of this refit, she should have her design, building, layup and recomissioning issues fixed. She'll be fully capable of going to sea, and performing as a "clockwork mouse" for training Canadian and allied navies.

That's the good news. There's also bad news.

Despite the recent upgrade of the displays, the combat system will still be based around a UYK-20, which is about as powerful as an original IBM PC. The cutting edge of early 1980's technology. She'll be safe to drive around, but she won't exactly be a high-end combat unit.

I want a Virginia. Now THAT'S a boat with a high-end combat system.

Hot time on the Windsor....

HMCS Windsor experienced a small electrical fire Sunday morning. An electrical transformer for an A/C unit melted and blew smoke through the engine room.

I have to say, this really isn't that big of a deal. Not entirely pleasant, but not exactly unknown on the boats either. Blown way out of proportion. They didn't even come off patrol, which isn't entirely unsurprising either. Windsor's crew has a very solid core of long-service submariners.

The Oberons had this sort of incident fairly often. No biggie.

Chicoutimi's memorial

The crew of the Chicoutimi will have their own memorial for Lt(N) Chris Saunders.

Good on ya guys.

Chicoutimi's repairs continue

From The Sub Report:

HMCS Chicoutimi's repairs are continuing. They've now progressed to the state that they can look at what's damaged, and remove it. This is expected to take until the end of 2005. The actual repairs won't be complete until sometime in 2007.

Gotta love government work.....

Skimmer in port!

HMCS Toronto is in port. I'd like to remind the Greater Toronto Area submarine community that spray-painting her with slogans such as "Insert Mk 48 here ->", "Skimmers suck!" and target signs are in very poor taste, and should not be done.

That is all.

Plus ca change....

Plus ca memechose......

Looks like HMCS Windsor got five days at sea. You know, the new boats don't seem to be a whole lot different from the old boats. We didn't get much better than that from thirty year old Oberons either.