It's a good job that the Royal Navy's biggest warship, HMS Prince of Wales, was not going into action as it broke down off the Isle of Wight on its way to North America on a mission described by the Royal Navy to "shape the future of stealth jet and drone operations off the coast of North America and in the Caribbean".

It's not clear what operations are actually needed for stealth jet and drone operations off the coast of North America but perhaps the military are preparing for Project Mayhem aka Trump's run for president in 2024 and practicing for drone strikes on Trump strongholds such as Wyoming with the latest drone variant - the Cheney II.

Gone are the days when British fleets sailed off to counter foreign aggression in far-off lands like the Falklands. With all the gloating in the media over the failure of Russian equipment in the Ukraine it's rather ironic that we can't get a ship out of our territorial waters.

Advice to the Navy: please do not send the ship to the South China Sea where its namesake, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sunk by the Japanese in 1941, ironically mainly by air power. We don't want the past to shape the future.

Former Burma veteran and Changi inmate Bill 'Battler' Heslop told FNN:

The Navy is done for. They never recovered from having the guns facing the wrong way at Singapore and losing the sea war to Admiral Yamamamamoto. There must be a load of hulks turning in their graves up at Scapa Flow. Hey Muriel! Fetch me a tinny. I'm parched.