insideHMS
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Dardanelles ................1915 Crete ...........................1941 Sabang .......................1944 Burma ................... 1944-45 East Indies .................1945
LIGHTNING
after lifting from the ‘ski
touch down on a flight deck four acres in size, observed by the crew of a Merlin helicopter and by the controllers in the purpose- built flying control ‘tower’ on the carrier’s aft superstructure. In the very near future, Her Majesty’s Ship Queen Elizabeth and her sibling Prince of Wales will be the cornerstone of the Royal Navy’s carrier strike force, the most capable and potent surface ships ever built in Britain, able to rise to the widest range of challenges around the globe. The two carriers will be the
largest vessels to raise the White Ensign. At 65,000 tons they dwarf
either post-war battleship HMS Vanguard (51,000 tons) or the
ramp’. Aft another F35 prepares to
prepares to retract its undercarriage
II
l e g e n d a r y ‘mighty Hood’ (47,000 tons). The super-
latives do not end there. From keel
to polemast is 183ft – 20ft taller than Nelson’s column. The ships will be the length of 28 London double- decker buses. Upon completion there will be
more than 16 million square feet of paintwork – that’s bigger than Hyde Park. The flight deck is the size of
60 tennis courts (or almost three football pitches), while there’s space for 18 tennis courts in the hangar. It can accommodate up to 20 F35s, or six Chinooks. The combat systems on board
are served by 197 miles of cable – which would stretch from London to Liverpool. All that hi-tech kit needs to be
than 1,300 miles of electrical cabling (enough to stretch from London to the northern Norwegian city of Tromsø).
These cables carry enough
power from the ship’s gas turbines and diesel generators to run a town the size of Swindon (or 9,100 homes) or seven million energy-saving light bulbs (as it is, there are ‘only’ 28,000 light bulbs aboard). Of course, all these statistics,
all these Top Trumps facts mean nothing without the most important assets to HM Ships Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales: the people.
ducting aboard both ships. In the passageways are more
27 miles of ventilation there are more than kept cool;
fewer than the present flagship, HMS Ark Royal – in a ship three times Ark’s size). Indeed, the Queen Elizabeth
company of 682 (that’s some 40
class has been designed to be the most lean-manned warships built. While a US Nimitz-class carrier displaces 30 tonnes for every member of the ship’s company, on the Queen Elizabeth, that figure is 115. With a tailored air group
aboard, the number of souls aboard can rise to in excess of 1,600 (there are 1,630 bunks on the ships). To cater for their needs, the
ship’s plants will produce 319,000 litres of fresh water daily – that’s enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. When it comes to operations,
the striking potency of each of the two ships is at least double that of their predecessors. Up to 40 aircraft – twice as
There will be a ship’s
Facts an
Class: Queen Elizabeth-class Pennant number: R08 (Queen E Motto: semper eadem – always t dien – I serve (Prince of Wales) Builder: Aircraft Carrier Alliance Laid down: July 7 2009 Expected in-service dates: 201 (Prince of Wales) Displacement: 65,000 tons Length: 920ft (280m) Beam: 230ft (70m) Draught: 36ft (11m) Speed: 25+ knots Complement: 682 (up to 1,600 w Propulsion: 2 x Rolls-Royce MT generator sets producing a to
Range: 8,000-10,000 nautical m Armament: Phalanx automated 30mm guns and mini-guns to
Aircraft: Tailored air group of up GR9, later F35B Lightning II, p helicopters
Battle Honours
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