Was driving home yesterday and saw this giant behemoth of a ship docked at White Bay. Now it’s not unnormal for cruise ships to park up here, after all White Bay is now a cruise terminal.
This was a cruise ship of a slightly more bigger nature. HMAS Canberra, one of our helicopter/aircraft carriers.
I’ve seen them docked at Garden Island whilst passing on a ferry, and yeah they’re big (tiny compared to an actual aircraft carrier) but when you’re right up close to it it’s fucking huge. Completely blocks out the ANZAC Bridge in the background. It must have barely scraped under the Harbour Bridge.
Any of our navy guys on here have any idea why it’s docked in Balmain for? I’m not complaining, I think it’s great that one of our best harbour wharves is being utalised. I can only assume the dry dock or the berths at Garden Island are already occupied.
Edit: I just did a bit of Googling, and found out the Seppos are in town and have parked their aircraft carrier at Garden Island.
I was thinking this while at the AGNSW, looking at the Canberra at Garden Island last year and on looking it up, the thing is they’re surprisingly much closer than you would think. The Canberra is 231 m long. The Gerald R Ford is 331m. So less than 50% longer. Which is still a lot, but not as much as certainly I would have expected.
That ship made me $100. We saw it when it was first commissioned and the Navy was running training sessions in Jervis bay. My brother refused to accept that it was used for aircraft. In fairness they were doing amphibious landings during the sessions.
In any case, it’s not exactly designed for fighter jets is it? I thought it was only set up for helicopters. Surely, even with modern day jets, it’s still way too short for a jet?
I think it can be used as a “traditional” aircraft carrier. I mean it’s got a decent sized ski ramp up the front.
If my memory serves me right, we ordered them so they wouldn’t be fighter jet capable, but we have the ability to change that down the track should the need occur.
At the very least it could operate Harrier fighters and F35s. But I think we’d need to repurpose them for that as in current build/configuration they’re helicopter carriers.
Also at 32m its sadly far too narrow for a full sized football pitch, for those er, harbouring thoughts of using this as our SFS replacement. Although in terms of length you could easily fir two professional pitches.
