HMCS Bonaventure with four of her Vampire jet fighters - nothing says "Excuse Me!" like sending in the fleet.
HMCS MAGNIFICENT the" Maggie" Send in two carriers and...trust me they will take note and take off eh!
Yes we even had Cruisers at one time like the HMCS Ontario. It is amazing how much respect you get when your cruisers and a couple of aircraft carriers with a squadron of destroyers come out of the mist with a bone in their teeth and their guns trained on you. Oh and you know a couple of the neighborhood kids on the crew and those boys can get the job done. And your daughter is the Weapons Officer and she has a mean streak in here and you know she will get the job done. As a tourist you know that the Canadian fleet is available to come to your aid if things get ugly. Not a consular pencil necked geeky weasel in a striped suit and a briefcase with an earring in his ear. No sir you look out your jailhouse window and there is the Canadian fleet with the maple leaf flowing in the breeze and troops from the PPCLI and a couple of Bosun Boarding Parties being unloaded by landing craft as fighter aircraft take off to do a straffing run at the local military base. In half an hour you are safe and sound and are happy you paid a few extra bucks every year on your taxes so that Canada could have a real navy again.
At the end of WW2 Canada with one of the largest coast lines in the world had a powerful navy the third largest in the world a great accomplishment for a small population of just over 11 million. We had over 300 warships and we were a force to be reckoned with. We had the best sailors in the world. Do yourself a favor and research HMCS HAIDA. At that time our Navy was called the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and we had a navy to be proud of. "Sending out the Fleet" meant something back then as we could send out an aircraft carrier, supply ships a squadron of destroyers and we specialized in anti submarine warfare keeping the rooskie subs on their toes for decades and participating in major peacekeeping missions such as suez and combat missions such as Korea.
HMCS YUKON
But over the decades -since WW2, the Navy was a sitting target for budget cuts and anti military special interest groups. Ships are capital projects and are expensive to build. An average Navy ship will last about three or four decades and so fleets need a steady source of new ships or their numbers will run down. First, we cut the number of hulls in the navy -then we cut out the carrier in our case just after an expensive refit which would have allowed it to serve for another 20 years or so. Then we cut the number of hulls again down to just 12 general purpose frigates. Each time we cut we attempted to make the remaining ships do more things. We now fly huge antique helicopters off our frigates and they are older than everyone on the ship requiring many hours of maintenance for each flight hour.
When you send your Navy to sea you need to supply then with food and fuel. You need something called a supply ship which is essentially a tanker and floating warehouse. Our tankers are over 35 years old and were scheduled for replacement. And now I see that a that our Conservative govt cancelled the project claiming it was too expensive. This is crap. This is unacceptable. They also cancelled 12 coast guard patrol ships. But it gets worse. There are at least four ships of our tiny fleet with NO CREWS because of the war effort in Afghanistan and the fact that our Navy is not being maintained.
So not being the type of person to let the water flow under the bridge without comment - I decided to fight back. We are just starting this page up. I welcome your ideas and participation. We now have fewer sailor's sea going billets in Canada than on just ONE USN carrier. Enough is enough. We need to do something to save our navy. We have garage sale submarines bought for a dollar that nobody wanted and that can't go to sea, ships that can't afford fuel and don't have full crews, sailors being diverted to Afghanistan, maintenance and procurement budgets being spent on Afghanistan and a government that has decided to sacrifice the Navy in order to hide the cost of the Afghanistan war.
Our objective is - Four new supply ships for the navy, three new carriers, 24 new frigates and ten new destroyers, two cruisers and 10 new nuclear powered subs. This will take a few years to build but we can start today if we wish. Go big or go home. We have stayed home too long.
We have a population of over 33 million unlike the 11 million of WW2. We can do it and we can end up with a powerful navy and a healthy ship building industry with world class jobs in engineering and fabrication too. And we can start today. And we can all help. Write your MP today! Right now we have over a million unemployed in Canada who want to work. They are sitting on their bums right now worrying about paying this month's rent. They want to work. They do great work. We have idle steel foundries and idle auto workers. Is there a better time to fire up our shipyards again? All we need is the political will and and some leadership and we can solve this problem. Starting immediately. We can put the job openings in tomorrows paper. We can start clearing land for ship construction by the end of the week. And none of this foolishness about having one French speaking yard and one English speaking yard and one west coast yard. Lets stop being politically correct and start building ships. Workers from all over the country can come to the building yards instead of bringing the building yards to them. Aduhhhhh. Check it out with other shipbuilding nations -that is how it is done not the Canadian way where you try and keep every special interest group happy and no ships come out the other end or the ones that are produced are five times the cost of an efficient building yard.
These are my opinions now lets hear yours. The following survey offers several options for resizing our navy. Which one do you think is best?
Free Website Poll
Cheers! Your webmaster ron.
MARCOM Canadian Navy Wikipedia entry
Canadian Navy of Yesterday and Today
Chronicle Herald article on Navy staffing shortage East Coast
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