HMAS Advance

HMAS Advance was an of the Royal Australian Navy . Constructed during 1967 and commissioned into the RAN in 1968, Advance operated from Darwin and patrolled northern Australian waters.During her career, the patrol boat shadowed a Soviet trawler, survived Cyclone Tracy, was used for filming of the television series Patrol Boat, and participated in the RAN's first anti-terrorism patrol of the North West Shelf. Advance was replaced in 1980, but continued to operate as a training ship until she was decommissioned in 1988.Advance was donated to the Australian National Maritime Museum, which have maintained her in an operational condition. The vessel remains part of the museum's collection as of 2014.Design and constructionThe Attack class was ordered in 1964 to operate in Australian waters as patrol boats based on lessons learned through using the Ton class minesweepers on patrols of Borneo during the Indonesia-Malaysia Confrontation, and to replace a variety of old patrol, search-and-rescue, and general-purpose craft. Initially, nine were ordered for the RAN, with another five for Papua New Guinea's Australian-run coastal security force, although another six ships were ordered to bring the class to twenty vessels. The patrol boats had a displacement of 100 tons at standard load and 146 tons at full load, were in length overall, had a beam of 20ft, and draughts of at standard load, and 7.3ft at full load. Propulsion machinery consisted of two 16-cylinder Paxman YJCM diesel engines, which supplied to the two propellers. The vessels could achieve a top speed of, and had a range of at. The ship's company consisted of three officers and sixteen sailors. Main armament was a bow-mounted Bofors 40 mm gun, supplemented by two.50 calibre M2 Browning machine guns and various small arms. The ships were designed with as many commercial components as possible: the Attacks were to operate in remote regions of Australia and New Guinea, and a town's hardware store would be more accessible than home base in a mechanical emergency.