The other thing to mitigate for the overheating the deck is that the RN are planning for rolling landings and not vertical ones so the deck will be fine. I doubt they will ever use vertical take off at sea anyway so that won’t be a factor either.

The critics need to pick something else to attack…..

Foreplay ? :eek::D;):o

Even then even in the Astute you are unlikely to have very many on board. Isn’t it 38 that they can carry of which a large proportion will be Torpedos.

I agree this is a strange decision. What happens if some serious incident kicks off in the Northernmost north sea oilfields or there is a major tanker collision 500 miles offshore. Those sort of things can last days and having a Nimrod coordinating for long periods has certainly been more than helpful before.

The Hospital did know they were coming as Security had the area under control a good 10 minutes before they arrived. As I cycled into the Hospital I thought it was a bit strange that so many Security folks were about, but didn’t think anything more of it until the Puma’s were overhead. They do get air ambulances land there so they have the drill quite organised including putting barriers across the road to prevent cars using the entrance near the helipad.

Any film of the landing yet ? Or will it be staying up there all day ? 😀

One landed at the Princess Alexandra Hospital while the other circled at low altitude. It missed the main Helipad and landed on the grass, probably deliberately due to the Helipad being a bit tight for a big machine like that. It was quite an impressive sight and I was only a few yards away at the time. Sadly I wasn’t able to find out why they arrived as I got called away before anyone got out. It stayed about 40 minutes.