Shipbucket

When the Irish economic boom known as the Celtic tiger was in full flow the Irish Government decided to increase Irelands EEZ. As canny as ever they got the EU to pay 55% of the costs of the naval building program. The LE Deidre and LE Emer classes. Not having a shipbuilding capability the ships were ordered from Ferguson Shipbuilders of Port Glasgow on the Clyde as they were based on the Scottish Fisheries Protection Agencey Jura class. They were updated to Naval Damage control standard and armed. The weapons were recycled from the decomissioning vessels. Though unable to base a Helecopter they were capable of landing on AW139's especially with the withdrawal of the Dauphin helecopters and their sale to Chile.
The ships were equipped with 40mm Bofors x 1, .50 M2 x2 and 7.62mm FN Mags.
The 4 ships were named

P61 Cliona
P62 Bronach
P63 Caoimhe
P64 Dearbhail

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"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian

Looks interesting. Looking forward to see more.

Nice boat, but I doubt it would be worth it to reuse the old Bofors. I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be cheaper to buy new Bushmasters or a similar weapon.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

her in Norway we started to modified 40mm with a new electronic system and housing. But in the end, they started to by in totally new type of guns since the advantage of new technology.

The Irish defence forces have Bofors spares and Ammo in store. But yes I would see at later stage them being replaced.
Also as part of the expansion program The Roisin Class is 4 vessels
P51Roisin
P52 Niamh
P53 Saoirse
P54 Bebhinn

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"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian

She looks nice, I wish we had 4 50's, but I think there would be a few issues.

The navy picked up ex German Rh202 Rheinmetall's and fitted them to all ships instead of the .50 cals

The Navy didn't want the Bofors going forward, it was the Army (who signs off on the purchases that wanted that, from memory there was a very large argument about it with the Roisin's). The navy wanted and is standardising on the 76mm (the new p60's are getting the first new build guns the Navy has ever gotten.)

And the air corps and navy wouldn't go with the helicopter pad, they both walked away from that with the Eithne experience

Sparky was watching the RTE Documentry "The Navy" and they showed the Browning but not sure how long ago tha was filimed.
20mm is suficient for fisheries protection the RN's River class have 20m's.
I know the Irish army has lots of Bofors spares and ammo in the system which is why I stuck with the Bofors.
It was a shame the Air Corps walked away from shipboard ops but with only 1 deck on eithne it was probably quite difficult to maintain currency.

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"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian

The 20mm's were gotten from the Germans after that was filmed, I think it was in the around the Roisin's being ordered (I think they were fitted with them straight but all the hulls are fitted with them now(I was just looking at Eithne's as she's in the graving dock))
I know the argument about smaller gun's but the Navy has been forcefully about the 76mm (remember even in the tough times we have the Navy convinced the Army to fund 2 new 76mm's), if the Roisins were fitted with current hardware then the 76mm would make up the majority of the mounts in the fleet.
The Bofors depend on a lot of things (are you counting the ones that we bought from the Danes after 9/11 for air defence (yes you can laugh at that)), but all of the mounts are old crew served ones and given weather conditions/sea state off the west coast the navy doesn't rate them much.
Both sides walked away from it (the Navy couldn't get them to station a helicopter permanently on board) and with only 6 AW139 helicopters in total and two needed for the Rangers I'm not certain if the Navy would agree to the need. (if you have the navy getting a growth and in AU you could have Bertie not deciding that Blackhawks were "too military" for the Air Corps of course.

Nice names by the way very fitting , but why if you reused Cliona didn't you use Macha and Maev as well to bring back all the flowers.

Is there any word of Eithne getting a 76 as it was always silly having her with the 57mm Bofors.
When I last had dealings with the Irish army the gunners were telling us they had stopped live firing Bofors after an FCA gunner was found to be laying on the tug aircraft.
Had forgoten one of the Flowers had been called Cliona.
Watch this space for Enhanced navy.
BTW I quite like the AW139 always thought the Lynx would have been a better option than the Dauphin

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"There was nothing wrong with Titanic when she left the Shipyard" Tim McGarry Belfast Comedian

No Eithne won't be getting a 76, looking at the clip of Roisin being built the mounting area of the 57mm is too small for it and would most likely add top weight to the hull. (besides hopefully she'll be retiring if/when the EPV comes into the harbour) By the way the Eithne has the 57 because of a number of factors, if the dockyard hadn't cocked about during her building there would have been 3 of them and maybe a Irish research vessel based on the design. At the same time Ireland was trying to get interest from the South American navies about licensing the design for their OPV's which is why they went for a 57mm. The two Peacocks were bought to make up for the two cancelled P30's, so maybe without them getting cancelled the Navy might have standardised on the 57 rather then the 76.

Are you talking about the naval use of the Bofors or the Army's use of them? The Army does shoots at Gormanstown range every year I think, for the navy I think during the fleet training they still use the Bofors as well.

The Lynx wouldn't have been acceptable I think during that period due to the situation in the North, (also the Minister's may not have liked it for their "transport") it might have been better in usage but the Navies needs were secondary to the Air Corps wishes. If you mean for replacing the Dauphins then they would have been an option given the improved relationship, but it would depend on pricing ( I think I remember some of the Air Corps on the boards suggesting that the US made a good offer at the time.)

Given the placing of the weapon mount and front design of the 50's I don't think they lend themselves to a crew mounted weapon either, so if you want different weapon fits that might be the place to start.

By the way I'd love to see an Irish AU navy, don't have the skills for it myself by a wide margin but would love to see it.

Edit: You might also think about fitting an aft Crane of some sort as the Navy gets tasked for transporting equipment for the Army for UN deployments using TEU containers (or strapping armoured cars to the bow from memory)