12 NAVY NEWS, DECEMBER 2010 651 Ave, Dauntless


IN WHAT’S been a fairly dark year for the Naval Service, the success of the Type 45 destroyer programme has been a shining beacon.


PO Andy Duchene, Wtr Dave Logan and AB Sam Waller – completed this year’s Great North Run.


While most of the media attention has focused on T45 No.1, HMS Daring (first BOST, first deployment) her younger sister Dauntless has been quietly getting things done. Well, mostly quietly. You can’t launch a Sea Viper missile without a big whoosh. That successful firing (the first time a


Type 45 has fired its main armament, as we reported last month) has crowned a year crammed with milestones for D33:


■ first manoeuvres by two Type 45s together at sea; ■ first encounter between a Type 45 and an Astute-class submarine; ■ formal commissioning ceremony in Portsmouth; ■ first appearance at Navy Days; ■ first appearance at Southampton Boat Show; ■ first visit to her affiliates.


After all that excitement, the dying weeks of 2010 were rather less dramatic: trials off the South Coast and a spell alongside in Pompey.


But things hot up in the New Year. With Sea Viper now fired, Dauntless is just one hurdle away from joining the front-line Fleet and heading off on deployment: Basic Operational Sea Training.


In addition to things warlike, Dauntless has found time to begin bonding with her affiliates in earnest.


With the passing of HMS Newcastle, D33


was eagerly snapped up by Tynesiders as ‘their’ ship – and the new destroyer inherited some of the Geordie Gunboat’s ties. Among them is the Percy Hedley


Picture: LA(Phot) Keith Morgan, RN Photographer of the Year


Foundation which helps people with disabilities in the Newcastle area. To add to its coffers, six Dauntless crew – Lt Ellie Berry, WO1 Geoff Howells, CPO Jamie Vaughan,


Sadly they didn’t do so in Roman Army costume – but the 190 crew take advantage of most opportunities to don breastplates, tunics and helmets for worthy causes (most recently at Southampton Boat Show). They take their lead from the ship’s badge which features Horatius Cocles (Horatius, the One-Eyed) who, legend has it, single-handedly halted the Etruscan Army by standing firm on the Pons Sublicius bridge near Rome in 509BC.


As with the rest of the Type 45 fleet, Dauntless is bound with two localities; the second in D33’s case is Great Yarmouth which received its inaugural visit from the destroyer in October. As in Newcastle, the crew took part in


charity sporting events and opened the ship up to tours. East Anglians responded by brewing 70 casks of special Dauntless ale (for each pint inside there was half a tot of rum...). The Type 45 is the fifth British warship to bear the name (we’re discounting the fictional RN flagship from Pirates of the Caribbean...). The Dauntless lineage begins in 1804 with


an 18-gun sloop which was captured by the French three years later. Dauntless No.2 was another sloop, which lasted from 1808 to 1825, then came a 24-gun frigate which served for four decades and saw action in the war with Russia. The fourth Dauntless, a light cruiser, entered service just days after the Great War ended. She sailed with HMS Hood on the battleship’s legendary ‘Empire Cruise’. Dauntless No.4 served briefly in the Atlantic during WW2 before being sent to the Far East. She spent the final two years of the war as a training vessel and was broken up within 12 months of peace being declared. The most famous HMS Dauntless never left these shores. For nearly 35 years it was the training establishment for Wrens at Burghfield near Reading. Fittingly, the Association of Wrens is one of the new Dauntless’ affiliates.


Baltic ..........................1854 Crimea .................. 1854-55 Atlantic .......................1939


Class: Type 45 destroyer Pennant number: D33 Motto: Nil desperandum (never despair) Builder: BAE Systems, Govan/ Scotstoun/Portsmouth Laid down: August 28 2004 Launched: January 23 2007 Commissioned: June 3 2010 Displacement: 8,000 tons Length: 500ft (152m) Beam: 70ft (21.2m) Draught: 24ft (7.4m) Speed: in excess of 30 knots Complement: 190 (can accommodate up to 235) Propulsion: 2 x Rolls Royce WR21 gas


turbine-driven alternators; 2 x Wartsila diesel generators;


2 x Alstom electric propulsion motors


Armament: Sea Viper anti- air missile system featuring Aster15 and Aster30 missiles held in SYLVER launcher; 1 x 4.5in Mk8 main gun; 2 x 30mm guns; Surface Ship Torpedo Defence system


Helicopter: 1 x Lynx or 1 x Merlin


HEROES OF THE ROYAL NAVY No.80 – Capt Eric Brown DSC AFC


TRAILING an arrester hook a De Havilland Sea Vampire prepares to touch down on the deck of HMS Vengeance in the English Channel. Our dip into the photo archives of the Imperial


War Museum this month takes us back to 1951. The pilot making the landing here follows a trail blazed six years before by the greatest aviator Britain has ever produced.


Dambuster Guy Gibson and Douglas Bader (of artificial legs fame) remain household names, but for breadth of experience, no British flier comes close to Capt Eric ‘Winkle’ Brown. His accomplishments are one long list of superlatives: the Fleet Air Arm’s most decorated pilot; most aircraft types flown by one pilot (487, as recorded by Guinness – although discounted are variants of particular models, such as 14 versions of Spitfires); most carrier deck landings (2,407); first landing on a carrier by a jet. He interrogated the man behind the Third


a blur as Brown (pictured below in the cockpit of an 802 NAS Grumman Wildcat in 1941) flitted between airfields, test flying all manner of aircraft, questioning former foe, fending off tempting offers from civilian aircraft firms. “No aircraft firm could ever give me anything like the wonderful variety of flying experience I was getting in the Service,” he later wrote. He stayed in uniform. Brown was driven by a passion that Britain


Indeed the months after the war’s end were


should lead the world in carrier aviation, that the Royal Navy would forge ahead into the jet age. On December 3 1945, the impatient test pilot


took off from RNAS Ford in Sussex. Brown’s steed was a De Havilland Vampire – the second jet fighter to enter service with the


British Armed Forces. As a prototype, the aircraft possessed no compass. Brown relied on a personal (and not entirely reliable) wrist compass. It guided him safely to HMS Ocean.


There were no second passes, no signals from the batsman on the deck to ‘go around’. The Vampire made “a very gentle landing”. There was little fanfare. The aircraft was


refuelled and Brown took off, roaring past the goofers on the island. Three more times that day he brought his


aircraft down on to Ocean’s deck (the Vampire was damaged on the final landing, curtailing the trial).


Reich’s rocket programme, Werner von Braun, and the former head of the Luftwaffe (and Hitler’s second man) Hermann Göring – a rogue with “likeable charisma”.


Service for another 25 years, always at the cutting edge of flight – and always adding to that impressive tally of aircraft types. Indeed, such is the respect in which he is held to this day, Capt Brown was consulted on the design of the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. ■ THESE images – and 9,999,999 others from a century of war and peace – can be viewed or purchased at www.iwmcollections.org.uk, by emailing photos@IWM.org.uk, or by phoning 0207 416 5333.


But if not a false dawn, then December 3 1945 was a faltering dawn. The Royal Navy didn’t move into the jet age with the Vampire (the Supermarine Attacker would be the Fleet Air Arm’s first jet fighter); the Vampire’s engine was sluggish and, worse, its fuel tank was tiny. The Vampire’s place in naval aviation history was assured, however; the model Eric Brown landed on Ocean, LZ551/G, is now on display at the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Yeovilton. As for its pilot, he remained in the


The first jet landing was almost anti-climactic.


Facts and figures


Battle Honours


e Honours


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