MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Air carrier HMS Ark Royal sold for scrap metal for £ 3 million
The removal takes place five years ahead of schedule; leaves the UK with no fixed wing air carriers Aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is being sold for £3m for scrap metal by the Ministry of Defence to help tackle a multi-billion pound defence deficit. The removal of the Royal Navy's former flagship from service in 2011, five years early, was a “difficult but necessary decision”, the MoD has said.
Its sale follows bids to turn the ship into a London heliport, a dive site off Devon or other facilities overseas. An announcement on its future will be made in Parliament. More details about the deal are expected to be released during that announcement.
The MoD said the “new, much larger” Queen Elizabeth aircraft carriers would start to enter service in 2017.
Sister ship HMS Invincible was also sold for scrap last year to a Turkish scrap metal firm.
The Ark Royal - which was in service for 25 years - was put up for sale on the Ministry of Defence's edisposals.com website, which sells off kit to raise money to equip the armed forces with everything from aircraft to clothing.
The ship, which led the UK's naval forces during the invasion of Iraq, is the fifth vessel to carry the name - the first saw battle in 1588 against the Spanish Armada.
The decision to bring forward its decommissioning was criticised because it leaves the Navy without the capacity to launch fixed-wing aircraft until replacements are brought in.
But the MoD said last year that it had access to “a range of international bases which allow us to project our air power around the world”.
The Ark Royal has been docked at Portsmouth Naval Base since it was decommissioned. One of the unsuccessful proposals had been to strip and sink the carrier for a diving site, put forward by Torbay-based dive group Wreck the World.
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Read all commentsPoor Brits they cannot afford to have a carrier because the huge deficit.
Sep 11th, 2012 - 08:48 am 0Once Britain a world power and now reduced to a third world country.
It is not really sad?
I feel so sorry for all theses poor people that will have to face misery, hunger and all kind of atrocities due to their greedy political elite that submerge them to the bottom of the barrel.
“Poor Brits they cannot afford to have a carrier because the huge deficit.
Sep 11th, 2012 - 09:50 am 0Once Britain a world power and now reduced to a third world country.”
If you are going to make the first post at least make SOME effort to research your point. It really is embarassing when the first post is SO badly miss-informed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Elizabeth_class_aircraft_carrier
PS: MercoPress - your picture is of an OLD, already sold-off & gone Ark Royal, not the one your article is discussing.
@1
Sep 11th, 2012 - 10:21 am 0I'm guessing you haven't heard of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier?
Strike air group of 36 F-35B and 4 Merlin AEW, far superior to anything we've had before (and anything any South American country can put to sea, present or future by the way)
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