Submarine Tidbits From Other English-Speaking Countries

Two pieces of news floating around the 'net about submarines from our neighbors to the north and east, one good and one bad. First the good -- a Canadian submarine, HMCS Corner Brook (SSK 878), recently participated in Operation Nanook 07, which was described as a "Canada Command sovereignty operation taking place in Iqaluit and the Baffin Island Coastal and the Hudson Strait areas". Here's a picture of the former HMS Ursula operating in the Arctic during the exercise:

It's good to see one of the old Upholder-class boats Canada got from the Brits actually going out to sea -- even if it is for a misguided attempt to assert sovereignty over an international strait.

For the bad news, it looks like HMS Astute (S 119) had some problems during their pre-commissioning engine room testing:

BARROW’S new £1.2bn submarine Astute has been damaged after a test went badly wrong.
Two turbo generators ran metal on metal for more than a minute when an oil pump failed.
BAE might now have to cut a hole in the 7,400 tonne sub to fix the problem with the difficult to access turbo generators, which supply all power for on board systems, at the back.
Bearings which encase wide shafts were damaged and an investigation is still taking place to see if the shafts were affected as well...
...A BAE statement on the incident said: “During turbo generator trials on the first-of-class Astute submarine on August 7 a lubrication pump failed to operate during testing.
“Once this failure had been identified (less than one minute) testing was immediately stopped, although both turbo generators sustained damage because oil had ceased to circulate.

For all the nukes out there who ever thought certain pre-underway checks were a waste of time, this provides a reminder on why it's so important that we verified the coastdown pump actually works before we started up the TGLO system.