According to the British newspaper The Sun on December 7, the British navy’s new aircraft carrier, the Prince of Wales, which cost £3 billion, will remain in the port until May next year after a water leakage accident in October this year.
According to the report, the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales suffered a serious water leakage accident in mid-October this year, which is also the second time that the aircraft carrier has suffered a similar water leakage accident.
According to the picture exposed in mid-October, the leaking position is located in the engine cabin. The picture shows that water gushing down from above the stairs, causing water to accumulate about 3 feet (about 0.9 meters) deep in the cabin.
In the earlier water leakage accident in May this year, water flowed from the ceiling of the aircraft carrier into the crew dormitory. After the water leakage accident, the crew immediately blocked the pipeline and then cleaned up the water in the cabin.
According to the Daily Mail on December 7, the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales was originally planned to carry out boarding tests of F-35 fighters this year, but for safety reasons, the aircraft carrier has been banned from sailing until May next year.
The Prince of Wales is the second ship of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier, and the water leakage accident seems to be the “combatable problem” of this aircraft carrier.
Last July, a sealing device of the aircraft carrier’s “Queen Elizabeth”, the first ship of the aircraft carrier, broke and a large amount of seawater poured in.
After the accident, Steve Moorhow, the captain of the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth, said that the aircraft carrier was safe and that in his experience, water leakage was a problem “every week”.
In December 2017, the sealing of the propeller transmission shaft of the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth was problematic during the sea test. The rubber seal ring of the transmission shaft of one of the two propellers was not tightly sealed, causing seawater to flow into the ship, with an hourly leakage of 200 litres.
At that time, the aircraft carrier had just completed a grand entry ceremony.
Despite frequent water spills, the Royal Navy said it was only a “small problem” and insisted that the aircraft carrier Prince of Wales would be put into operation as scheduled in 2023.
But regarding the aircraft carrier’s plan to go to the United States for F-35 fighter onboard testing, a source said: “This is too embarrassing. It took many years to plan a trip to the United States, and now we have to say that we can’t come.”
