Slashdot Mirror
British Aircraft Carrier For Sale On Auction Site
Hugh Pickens writes "Time Magazine reports that just in time for the holidays, the British Navy has put the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible up for sale on an eBay-like website. The proud 690-foot warship sailed Her Majesty's seas from 1980 to 2005, and took part in the Falklands, Balkans and Iraq campaigns. The ship underwent a major refit in 2004 but was decommissioned in 2005 with the proviso that she could be 'reactivated' at 18 months notice if a crisis beckoned but over the years her engines, pumps and gear boxes were cannibalized for use in other ships. If interested go to the auction site and put her to your 'wish list,' or add her to your 'cart.' Interestingly enough, the Australian government had originally planned to purchase the ship in 1982 but the Falklands war intervened and in July 1982 the British Ministry of Defence announced that it had withdrawn its offer to sell Invincible and that it would maintain a three-carrier force."
she's too small for the PRC. They're going for carriers easily twice this size. I would have expected india to consider purchasing the ship (as they have in the past) but frankly, the invincible class is small, old and not the sort of thing of interest to the future naval powers. Spain has modernish carriers about the size of invincible, and those would be much easier to buy designs for. Though PRC doesn't need to learn to build carrier systems on this size when they have much bigger russian carriers already, and india is in basically the same situation.
The other thing is this isn't exactly a sale to the highest bidder. Basically the MOD is looking for the best value for the money they can get, and will assess from there. She might be broken up for scrap, if someone can throw together a good deal she'll end up a museum ship (though that would be presumably hard), or any number of other schemes.