Known as a Landing Helicopter Dock or LHD — the $1.5 billion warship will be commissioned into service with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and handed over to Navy Chief Vice-Admiral Tim Barrett at Garden Island in Sydney on Friday.

The crew of Nuship Canberra (she actually becomes HMAS Canberra at commissioning) have spent the past 18 months training on advanced land based simulators preparing to take control of the most advanced ship to ever serve in the RAN.

AWESOME STATS

At first glance the sheer bulk of the LHD is a shock to even seasoned old salts. Tied up next to the supply ship HMAS Success at her home base in Sydney Harbour the behemoth dwarfs what was previously one of the navy’s biggest vessels. She also towers over nearby apartments including the ritzy pads of Sydney’s rich and famous, such as actor Russell Crowe, on the famed Woolloomooloo finger wharf.

At 230-metres long, the Canberra is as long as Melbourne’s Rialto Tower is high, and it could accommodate four of the navy’s 3600-tonne Anzac Class frigates on her deck.

In addition to the 400 crew the 32-metre-wide vessel can carry and sustain 1100 fully equipped infantry troops and 110 trucks and armoured vehicles up to and including Abrams main battle tanks. She can house 18 helicopters and up to eight medium lift choppers will be able to operate simultaneously from six landing points on the flight deck.

Standing on the bridge — some 36 metres from the water line and 14 metres above the massive curved flight deck — it is clear that this ship will provide the Australian Defence Force with a huge boost in ‘soft or hard’ power projection capability.

Vehicles can be moved between decks via a ramp on the port (left) side or on a light vehicle elevator.

There are also two aircraft elevators, two personnel elevators, an ammunition elevator and a hospital elevator running between decks.

The fourth deck down is the heavy vehicle deck that covers 1400sqm and can accommodate 196 shipping containers and endure a maximum load of 1524 tonnes.

It is located forward of a 70m long by 17m wide well dock that is flooded to allow the four 24m-long landing craft and other boats to operate inside the ship.

The well dock at the stern of the ship holds 2970 cubic metres of water which is the equivalent of 1.2 Olympic swimming pools. Access to the open sea is via a huge stern door.

The well dock, landing craft and helicopters mean that all of the troops, equipment and supplies could be landed ashore without the need for any wharves or docking facilities.

The statistics are impressive and for the ship’s initial commanding officer, Captain Jonathan Sadleir, managing the sheer scale of the platform makes for a huge challenge on several fronts.

For example there are more water tight doors in HMAS Canberra than there are in the navy’s entire fleet of frigates.

“The difference here has been managing the scale,” Captain Sadleir said.

The personable former Canadian spent 18 years in the Canadian Navy before he made the move to the RAN 12 years ago. He is married to an Australian and lives with his family on a farm near Yass in southern NSW. He describes his new role as “humbling but hugely exciting”.

For a former frigate driver the step up to command a ship that is bigger than both of the navy’s two former aircraft carriers — HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Sydney — and some seven times the size of his previous ship, has been daunting.

Driving the nation’s most capable naval asset is a job that Captain Sadleir relishes. He and his crew can’t wait to be called on to respond to everything from low level humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions to high end warfighting tasks.

“We never had that before ….to the scale and flexibility that this unit brings to bear,” Captain Sadleir said.

“That’s a learning journey for everybody. It really tests everything from higher levels of command and control right down to how many and what types of boats we can launch and recover and the various helicopter types we can manage.

“The platform and the infrastructure to support any combination is here within the ship. It really just comes down to drawing down on other government agencies potentially as well as the broader ADF to put on what they need us to do.”

The “ski jump” flight deck of the Spanish (Navantia) built hull was originally designed for fighter jets and it covers an area the size of 24 tennis courts. The ship’s stern mast is 46.8 metres above the water line or just 40cm short of the midpoint of the deck of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.