ON January 14, the minehunter HMS Chiddingfold reversed into HMS Bangor in the dock at Bahrain. Repairs are expected to cost £25million.
In a typical outpouring of gibberish Defence Secretary Grant Shapps (aka Michael Green) said: ‘We don’t say it’s incompetence when we see an aircraft come down. A very rare occasion just as this would be a rare occasion. It’s right to leave the investigators some time to work out exactly what’s gone wrong.’
TCW finds the explanation that it was a ‘wiring problem’ to be implausible and offers these possible explanations to those seeking to examine the cause of the collision:
As a result of inadequate funding, Royal Navy ships have limited supplies of ammunition. Consequently, they have to engage in the ancient art of naval ramming. This technique was widely used in the Mediterranean by Etruscans, Carthaginians, Athenians and others. It is possible that the captain of HMS Chiddingfold, having consumed a large amount of rum, was over-zealous in his desire to practise his ramming technique.
It is common knowledge that our Navy has an inadequate number of vessels in the fleet. Every ship is vital. In the event of a threat, the Admiralty has given strict instructions to avoid being sunk. Because of this the first inclination of ships’ captains is rapidly to implement the retraite française. Perhaps the incident in Bahrain was caused by the approach of a sinister looking dhow which caused the captain to order the reverse.
Another explanation is related to staffing issues. When the captain gave the instruction to move forward he found that the officer responsible was a pregnant female working from home who had popped into the kitchen to make a coffee and find a ginger nut. When she returned she panicked and pressed the wrong key on her iPad.
It is possible that as part of its aim to create one of the world’s greenest fleets, the Royal Navy has secretly replaced HMS Chiddingfold’s diesel engines with batteries. When an inadequately trained rating forgot to plug in the batteries at the cheaper overnight rates the ship suddenly lost power and was taken by the current into the side of HMS Bangor.
The most likely cause of the collision is that HMS Chiddingfold is crewed by recent arrivals from Somalia who have heeded Shapps’s call to join the armed forces. The Admiralty clearly thought that, with their expertise in piracy and navigating the Channel, they needed minimal training to become Royal Navy personnel. When spoken quickly by an inadequately trained interpreter the Somali word for ‘forward’ hore u soco can easily be mistaken for their word for ‘reverse’ rogasho.
The Royal Navy takes great pride in its diversity policies:
‘We champion equality of opportunity for all, and provide an inclusive working environment for everyone, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation (we’re listed in The Times Top 50 Employers of Women and achieved a Top 10 position in the Stonewall Workplace Equality Index 2016).’
With Shapps at the helm and diversity on the prow our enemies must be trembling in their boots, or rather laughing their socks off.