Just a video (set to music) of the new HMS Queen Elizabeth launching and recovering F-35’s. I thought it was pretty cool and had been waiting for the UK to get it’s shipment and get them starting to do operations on the new carrier. It’s been a long time coming for them to get the carrier fully spun up. Looks great!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLMFILDEBA
One weird thing is that the F-35’s still have the marine corp markings on them for some reason.
That’s because they ARE USMC F-35s. The UK only owns like 4 of the new jets so far, and I don’t believe they’re involved in this testing.
ETA: I saw pictures of some of the operations. They looked really cool.
Ah…I thought I recalled seeing that they had taken order of the first batch so assumed they were using their own. Makes sense though if they aren’t operational yet that they would borrow some marine F-35’s to start getting operational experience with the carrier.
I believe it is USMC pilots on USMC planes.
They expect to use the Queen Elizabeth in wartime. Like they did with the Harriers and the Invincbles.
What? Did the USMC deploy USMC Harriers on the Invincibles?
There are what appear to me to be British markings on the tail sections of the F-35’s.
We currently have 9 F-35Bs at RAF Marham, and several more in the US, but none of ours are instrumented for testing. So we are borrowing USMC ones.
Pilots are a mix of RN/RAF/USMC.
No, we used our own RN Sea Harrier F/A2s and RAF Harrier GR3s.
Not deploy as such. Operate from. Beginning in 2007.
It’s purpose was to increase interoperability amongst NATO forces and also allow for flexibility in usage of alliance assets.
I assumed from the “in wartime” reference that we were talking about the Falklands Conflict. I may have assumed wrongly.
Thanks for the correction. Speaking from the western side of the pond, I’m delighted to see the UK getting back into fixed-wing naval aviation, and working closely with the US military. You guys rock.
My thoughts exactly. It’s been way too long. 
It’s planes from the joint testing group. The work-up at this point is carrier ops - the RN is after all testing the systems on a first-in-class prototype, and they’ve been out of the fixed wing business for a while.
There is a decent three-part documentary that the BBC did called “Britain’s Biggest Warship” that’s available on some video upload sites. It’s about the later stages of construction and first sea trials of HMS Queen Elizabeth. There’s some salty old sea dogs aboard, but it’s really striking that most of the sailors are on their first ever ship. Worth a watch if you can navigate your way to Vimeo…
The plane operating from that deck is one thing. A much more important thing is whether all of the systems integration and networking juju works with UK systems. That’s the most revolutionary aspect of this aircraft: not the stealth, or the VTOL. The ability to share what it sees, from a variety of passive and active sensors, and both send that to other nodes in the network, as well as synthesize the take from other nodes, makes it the revolutionary airplane that it’s supposed to be.
In brief, AIUI, it’s supposed to be a flying AEGIS system.
Beautiful aircraft, Canada needs to get off the pot and buy them.
I got a pretty close look at the HMS Queen Elizabeth down in Portsmouth recently, very impressive piece of kit.
I wonder how much extra take off weight the ski ramp allows as opposed to a pure vertical take off?
I felt sorry for one of those pilots, his nickname is (presumably) just a shortening of his actual name to Nath, and no cool moniker like Maverick or Iceman. 
Canada, being a national security risk to the USA, should not purchase any military equipment from the USA.
I know “supercarrier” has no true military definition, but the Queen Elizabeth is a 100’ shorter than the USS Ranger, one of the earliest supercarriers. The Queen Elizabeth is significantly longer and heavier than the Ark Royal. Is that the basis for calling it a supercarrier?
It seems to be about the size of the USS Midway which was not considered “supercarrier”.
I believe the USS Forrestal (CV-59) is considered the first “supercarrier”, the lead ship in the class by Ranger belonged to.
Yeah, thought of that too – it’s a large Fleet Carrier but I question the “super” bit. It does end up with some 20,000 tons over the other European Fleet Carrier, the DeGaulle, which is a catapult/arrester design while the Brit ship is STOVL-only as commissioned. (The current model Russian, Chinese and Indian carriers, derived from late Soviet ships, use jump-ramp launch AND arrested recovery so a design like the QE could probably be modified in that direction.)
Sorry but that’s not going to happen. As long as its for sale to Canada, the military should be able to source what ever they need to carry out the wishes of parliament. By the above reasoning, we should not buy anything Chinese, as the Canadian gov decried the sale of Aceon on the basis of national security.
Is Canada going to start buying Russian, or just give up on having a military altogether?