HMCS ''Brandon'' is a that has served in the
Canadian Forces
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The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF; french: Forces armées canadiennes, ''FAC'') are the unified military forces of Canada, including sea, land, and air elements referred to as the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian Army, and Royal Canadian Air Force.
...
since 1999. ''Brandon'' is the eleventh ship of her class. She is the second vessel to use the name . The ''Brandon'' is assigned to
Maritime Forces Pacific (MARPAC) and is homeported at
CFB Esquimalt.
Design and description
The ''Kingston'' class was designed to fill the
minesweeper, coastal patrol and reserve training needs of the Canadian Forces, replacing the s, s and
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...
coastal launches in those roles.
[Macpherson and Barrie, p. 299] In order to perform these varied duties the ''Kingston''-class vessels are designed to carry up to three
ISO containers
ISO 668 - Series 1 freight containers — Classification, dimensions and ratings is an ISO international standard which classifies intermodal freight shipping containers ''nominally'', and standardizes their sizes, measurements and weight spec ...
with power hookups on the open deck aft in order to embark mission-specific payloads.
[Saunders (2008), p. 95] The seven module types available for embarkation include four route survey, two mechanical minesweeping and one bottom inspection modules.
[
The ''Kingston'' class displace and are ]long overall
__NOTOC__
Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...
with a beam
Beam may refer to:
Streams of particles or energy
*Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy
**Laser beam
*Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles
**Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...
and a draught of .[ The coastal defence vessels are powered by four ]Jeumont
Jeumont () is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It lies on the Belgian border and on the river Sambre, adjacent to the Belgian town Erquelinnes. It is part of the agglomeration (''unité urbaine'') of Maubeuge.
Population
E ...
ANR-53-50 alternators coupled to four Wärtsilä
Wärtsilä Oyj Abp (), trading internationally as Wärtsilä Corporation, is a Finnish company which manufactures and services power sources and other equipment in the marine and energy markets. The core products of Wärtsilä include technol ...
UD 23V12 diesel engine
The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...
s creating . Two LIPS Z-drive azimuth thrusters are driven by two Jeumont CI 560L motors creating and the Z drives can be rotated 360°. This gives the ships a maximum speed of and a range of at .[Saunders (2004), p. 92]
The ''Kingston'' class is equipped with a Kelvin Hughes navigational radar using the I band and a Kelvin Hughes 6000 surface search radar scanning the E and F bands. The vessels carry an AN/SQS-511 towed side scan sonar for minesweeping and a Remote-control Mine Hunting System (RMHS). The vessels are equipped with one Bofors 40 mm/60 calibre Mk 5C gun and two M2 machine guns.[ The 40 mm gun was declared obsolete and removed from the vessels in 2014. Some of them ended up as museum pieces and on display at naval reserve installations across Canada.][
]
Service history
''Brandon''s keel
The keel is the bottom-most longitudinal structural element on a vessel. On some sailboats, it may have a hydrodynamic and counterbalancing purpose, as well. As the laying down of the keel is the initial step in the construction of a ship, in Br ...
was laid down on 6 December 1997 by Halifax Shipyards Ltd. at Halifax, Nova Scotia
Halifax is the capital and largest municipality of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of the 2021 Census, the municipal population was 439,819, with 348,634 people in its urban area. The ...
and was launched on 10 July 1998. The ship transferred to the west coast, arriving at CFB Esquimalt on 3 May 1999. ''Brandon'' was commissioned into the Canadian Forces on 5 June 1999 at Esquimalt, British Columbia and carries the hull number MM 710.
''Brandon'', accompanied by the frigate
A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat.
The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...
s , and sister ship
A sister ship is a ship of the same class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They often share a ...
, departed in October 2014 to take part in San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...
Fleet Week and the Task Group Exercise with the United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
in American coastal waters.cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
. The two ships returned to Canada in December. On 6 October 2016, ''Brandon'' and left Esquimalt to participate in Operation Caribbe along the Pacific coast. On 5 November, ''Brandon'' was directed to intercept a suspected fishing vessel dumping cargo into the water by a United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mult ...
aircraft. The ship sent two RHIBs to recover the cargo while ''Brandon'' went after the smugglers. The smugglers got away, but of cocaine was recovered. ''Brandon'' and ''Edmonton'' returned to Esquimalt on 16 December.
Beginning in 2017, ''Brandon'' underwent a two-year refit at Esquimalt. The vessel returned to service in July 2019. From February to May 2021, ''Brandon'' and sister ship deployed as part of Operation Caribbe, taking part in the interception of illicit drugs off the coasts of the Pacific coast of Mexico and Central America. In 2022, ''Brandon'' was one of the RCN vessels sent to take part in the multinational naval exercise
A military exercise or war game is the employment of military resources in training for military operations, either exploring the effects of warfare or testing strategies without actual combat. This also serves the purpose of ensuring the comb ...
RIMPAC 2022.
References
Notes
Citations
Sources
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Brandon, HMCS
Fleet of the Royal Canadian Navy
Kingston-class coastal defence vessels
1998 ships
Ships built in Nova Scotia