"Royal Navy’s largest ever warship opens its doors" Topic

"In 50 days' time the Queen will arrive in Rosyth to christen her namesake, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's largest ever warship.

The naming ceremony, coming during 
the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh's 
traditional week of engagements north of the border, will mark a significant 
milestone in the programme to deliver the biggest warships ever built in the UK.

Shortly after the Queen formally names the ship, in front of some of the thousands of workers who have come together to 
construct and assemble the vessel, HMS Queen Elizabeth will float for the first 
time…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

It's not her namesake.

The RN doesn't name ships after living monarchs. The Queen Elizabeth ships were named after Queen Elizabeth 1st. This latest vessel is taking is inheriting it's name from the previous line of ships.

Indeed. Both her AND the carrier are the namesakes of the Virgin Queen herself. But it is very fitting that the Queen is seeing this particular ship off though.

Besides the QE2 is a passenger liner to me!

Now if we could squeeze out say two more of these ships so then RN has four of these craft plus say 12-20 more destroyers and frigates and maybe a quartet of AEGIS cruisers…

British Forces News, recently produced this footage of HMS Queen Elizabeth YouTube link

Huzzah for GB getting back into the Carrier Club! Good stuff for our best friends. :)

Would love to see the Brits with 4 carriers but 2 is most likely the limit. 3 would be ideal with 2 active and 1 in refit if needed.

Based on the US's operational model (that we swiped from the Brits pre-WW2, so it's really the RN's operational model), you need a minimum of 3 hulls in the class to always have ONE available. One hull is in the shipyards and the other just came out of refit and is training the crew up on short deployments. It's roughly 9 months in each phase of the cycle. Deployment, shipyard, work-ups, so one deployment every ~27 months or so.

A ship in work-ups *can* be deployed in an emergency, but the crew will be significantly less proficient than the ship that completed it's workups.

Dark Knights,

"The RN doesn't name ships after living monarchs"

What about King George V? She was laid down in 1911 and commissioned in 1912; she served until 1924. The king himself reigned from 1910 to 1936. The two huge carriers proposed but cancelled in the 1960s would, probably, have been Queen Elizabeth and Duke of Edinburgh – who was living at the time although not, admittedly, the monarch.

The present Queen Elizabeth's crest would tend to support the notion that this ship is named for Elizabeth I but there does not seem to be a blanket prohibition on naming ships after living people – Princess Royal and Queen Mary would be two others – there may be more.
Cheers,