Page 40 - Air Forces Monthly - September 2017

HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH

any minor repairs that might be required. Above: An artist’s rendering of the HMS ‘Queen Elizabeth’ alongside HMS ‘Prince of Wales’, which is
The past seven years have been turbulent currently in final assembly. Aircraft Carrier Alliance Below: The F-35B is the cornerstone of carrier strike for
times for the Royal Navy as technical delays the UK, with trials aboard HMS ‘Queen Elizabeth’ planned for 2018. Jamie Hunter
and cost overruns dogged the carrier
programme. A bid to install ‘cat and trap’ take-
off and landing systems floundered in 2013
after it emerged that the projected costs of the
revolutionary electro-magnetic catapults for
the ships spiralled from £900m to more than
£2bn to equip each of the two carriers. There
were also serious doubts that the pioneering
Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System
(EMALS) catapults would be ready to meet
the Royal Navy’s delivery schedule. So, in an
abrupt U-turn, the MOD decided to drop the
‘cat and trap’ plan based around the US Navy’s
F-35C carrier variant and revert to the short
take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) F-35B.
After the first steel on the ships was cut
in 2009, work accelerated and HMS Queen
Elizabeth was formally launched in 2014. In
the same year it was finally confirmed that
HMS Prince of Wales would be brought into
service on a full-time basis to allow the
Royal Navy to maintain a ‘continuous at sea’
carrier presence. The second carrier should
be handed over to the navy in 2019. In the
2015 defence review, the purchase of the
full complement of 48 F-35Bs was confirmed
to allow both carriers to simultaneously
embark at least one squadron of jets.
Not surprisingly HMS Queen Elizabeth’s
commanding officer, Commodore Jerry Kyd,
believes the cost and hard work involved will
be worth the effort. “The premier nations
of the world are investing billions of dollars
in aircraft carriers,” he told AFM. “The ship
will provide the British government with
an incredibly flexible tool. HMS Queen
Elizabeth and her sister ship, HMS Prince of
Wales, are to give Britain a global presence.
Anywhere she goes in the world it will
[provide] Britain [with] a serious punch.”
Sea trials HMS ‘Queen Elizabeth’ is
Eleven tugs were required to manoeuvre carefully moved out from the
the 65,000-ton HMS Queen Elizabeth out dockyard’s basin on June 26.

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