Free Republic

Fri Apr 9, 3:50 PM ET LONDON (AFP) - A brand-new British naval ship saw action rather sooner than expected as it shot across a river after being launched and crunched into the opposite bank. The 16,000-tonne amphibious landing vessel was left with a sizeable dent in its stern after grazing a quayside on the north bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scotland, just seconds after it was launched. The incident came two days after it was revealed that eight of the Royal Air Force's Chinook helicopters had been grounded because they were not equipped to fly in cloudy...