THE NAVAL ENGINEER

3
Preparations for Ocean’s
Op Olympic deployment were
methodical and broad thinking.
Exercising high tempo aviation
operations from Greenwich
for an exercise week in May
2012 provided opportunities for
lessons to be identified, solutions
generation in slow time and areas
that may develop issues during
sustained operations to be probed
and understood. The engineering
challenges of running a system
to its design threshold are well
known and broadly understood.
Often however, in the envelopes
of military tasking these thresholds
are stretched to use assets in new
ways, maximising the efficiency of
the Armed Forces personnel and
equipment. Mooring in the shallow
waters of the River Thames at
Greenwich, with no ability to
produce our own fresh water, a
salt water cooling system and
firemain system that was highly
effective at dredging most of our
mooring for us coupled with the
task of accommodating up to 1100
personnel in total and maintaining
their hotel services with
embarked forces on continuous
watchkeeping cycles was no
textbook amphibious operation –
effectively we delivered exactly
what Ocean was designed to do,
moving a company’s worth of
personnel ashore on a daily basis.
The majority of the embarked force
had also never lived on a ship
before so education was the key to
maintaining safety and to support
their security of the Greenwich
Olympic Venue. This was ably
provided by a forward thinking
and a prepared engineering team
all set up to rectify all manner
of issues possible on a selfcontained,
command and control,
aviation, transport, accommodation
and public engagement platform.
With a Chippy’s party of only 11
(two senior rates, one leading
hand and eight ETMEs) to cover
a full 22,000 tonnes of operational
real estate, the team stepped up
to the challenge. Heads defect
rectification over the 10 week
period in London alone got through
over 300 bobbins (ordered ahead
of deploying to tackle emergent
defects) and 1120 man hours
alongside 210 HPSW strainer
cleans without starting on the DG
plate coolers that acted like sieves
for the silt drawn through our LPSW
cooling system; another 72 manhours
cleaning to maintain the
material condition of ship’s systems.
The most critical deployment
defect, loss of two of three sewage
transfer pumps, leading to a B2
OPDEF on our ability to sustain
heads facilities to over 200 of our
embarked forces personnel, was
dealt with professionally and timely
with the fragility of the remaining
pump unknown growing the risk
against Ocean’s Op Olympic
accommodation tasking. Support
availability for one-off systems and
non-patternised stores with the
strains on personnel supporting
equipment ashore were felt but
the RN organisation held firm and
achieved risk reduction against the
defect to sustain Ocean and all
services for her embarked service
personnel. Ocean operates at the
high end of UK maritime influence
activity (approx 20,000 visitors
onboard in the Op Olympic effort)
and her personnel, modestly “just
doing their job”, remained the key
to success of her activities and
deployment through Op Olympic
and back to Devonport where she
is now deep into preparations for
her third major refit, that were on
going long before Op Olympic
preparations.
HMS Ocean moored on Greenwich Reach in preparation for Operation Olympic