HMS Queen Elizabeth

[normalbloke]

Sloane’s A109 G-MAOL is parked on deck of the POW. What gives? FR shows it coming out of Buck Palace gardens straight to the carrier deck.

Edited by normalbloke on Wednesday 7th October 14:43

[ecsrobin]

It’s been spotted previously flying under an RAF callsign for the royal flight so possibly on lease.

[Ayahuasca]

Steve vRS said:

Video of the jets taking off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CHxB7fPiadg

How fast are they going when they leave the ski jump? On camera, they look slow but obviously that is an optical illusion.

Probably slow because they are taking off with a massive airbrake deployed.

[Boom78]

Cold said:

The Strike Group has assembled.

The video is mighty impressive in a dark and foreboding type of way, nice to see us (and one or two nation ships) putting out that carrier group, most advanced ever put to sea!

Edit to say there’s going to be other stuff lurking under the depths, ours (U.K./USA) and possibly the odd Russian

Edited by Boom78 on Wednesday 7th October 18:27

[Captain Obvious]

Ayahuasca said:

Steve vRS said:

Video of the jets taking off.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CHxB7fPiadg

How fast are they going when they leave the ski jump? On camera, they look slow but obviously that is an optical illusion.

Probably slow because they are taking off with a massive airbrake deployed.

Are they able to take off with a full tank of fuel and full set of weapons?

[Condi]

Captain Obvious said:

Are they able to take off with a full tank of fuel and full set of weapons?

One would hope so...

They have a smaller fuel load than the other variants as the fan takes up the space of 1 tank.

[normalbloke]

normalbloke said:

Sloane’s A109 G-MAOL is parked on deck of the POW. What gives? FR shows it coming out of Buck Palace gardens straight to the carrier deck.

Edited by normalbloke on Wednesday 7th October 14:43

It was the Ukrainian president and his wife apparently.

[Cold]

normalbloke said:

normalbloke said:

Sloane’s A109 G-MAOL is parked on deck of the POW. What gives? FR shows it coming out of Buck Palace gardens straight to the carrier deck.

Edited by normalbloke on Wednesday 7th October 14:43

It was the Ukrainian president and his wife apparently.

They spent some time with Wills and Kate before whizzing over to HMS PWLS to sign a Memorandum of Intent. But they flew in a Puma.



(Zelensky, is the short bloke, front/left)

[normalbloke]

Who got to ‘slum’ it in the 109 then?

[Cold]

Dunno.
Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was there and so was Ukrainian Defence Minister Andriy Taran, so maybe one/either of them? Perhaps Mrs Zelensky grabbed the posh flight while the blokes went all Top Gun?

Mind you, a Chinook also visited the ship a bit later so who knows?

[RizzoTheRat]

In semi related news, the Russians have released the first official footage of a Zircon launch

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36945/russia...

Mach 8 sounds like it might give the fleet air defenders a headache, although I assume it's a bit slower as it descends to the target.

[Cold]

Back home tomorrow. Due in 11:15.

[Talksteer]

Dr Jekyll said:

Teddy Lop said:

the real brainbreaker is that we bought the hovver jet - the thing we invented and suffered the compromises over conventional jets so we could have cheaper, smaller carriers - then built full-size carriers to put it on!

But its been done to death...

They are pretty small carriers, and they don't have catapults, hence the hover jets.

Barring the US supercarriers HMS Queen Elizabeth is larger than any other jet age aircraft carrier. It is larger than the Midway class which served to 1992 and had a final air group with 4 squadrons of F18 and 2 A6 Intruders (68 fast jets), plus KCA6, E3, helicopters and COD aircraft.

If it had been designed with cats and traps it would have been much more effective, the hull is plenty big enough.

[98elise]

Talksteer said:

Dr Jekyll said:

Teddy Lop said:

the real brainbreaker is that we bought the hovver jet - the thing we invented and suffered the compromises over conventional jets so we could have cheaper, smaller carriers - then built full-size carriers to put it on!

But its been done to death...

They are pretty small carriers, and they don't have catapults, hence the hover jets.

Barring the US supercarriers HMS Queen Elizabeth is larger than any other jet age aircraft carrier. It is larger than the Midway class which served to 1992 and had a final air group with 4 squadrons of F18 and 2 A6 Intruders (68 fast jets), plus KCA6, E3, helicopters and COD aircraft.

If it had been designed with cats and traps it would have been much more effective, the hull is plenty big enough.

Agreed, they are in no way small. QE along side Illustrious...

Edited by 98elise on Wednesday 14th October 17:11

[MartG]

Talksteer said:

If it had been designed with cats and traps it would have been much more effective, the hull is plenty big enough.

Could have had a proper mix of aircraft - F-35C without the penalties of VTOL, E2 AWACS, etc.

[Seight_Returns]

MartG said:

Talksteer said:

If it had been designed with cats and traps it would have been much more effective, the hull is plenty big enough.

Could have had a proper mix of aircraft - F-35C without the penalties of VTOL, E2 AWACS, etc.

A year ago I would have agreed unreservedly.

But the noises coming out of the US about how much more cost effective an America Class platform with an F-35B/Osprey/Rotary based airgroup would be compared to a Nimitz/Ford - increasingly suggest we may have backed the right horse.

[Cold]

Guess who's back?

[normalbloke]

I saw the guy sat at the front with a mini gun this time, as a first. The disposal tube for the brass was fairly long!

[Cold]

normalbloke said:

I saw the guy sat at the front with a mini gun this time, as a first. The disposal tube for the brass was fairly long!

Good for fending off jet skiers.

[normalbloke]

I notice the deck is almost completely ‘tented’ again, and the blast gear is on deck. Will it require re-coating or some sort of extensive reworking every time it comes back from flight ops? It certainly seems to be the case so far.