Royal Navy’s largest ever warship in final stages of construction

26 Mar 2014

The UK's largest-ever warship, towering above the river at Rosyth dockyard in Scotland, is in the final stages of construction. The £3-billion aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, packing four acres of floating military might, is capable of cruising 500 miles a day to any war zone or disaster area.

Royal Navy's largest ever warship in final stages of constructionAccording to the Daily Mirror correspondent who was invited on board, the vessel is so large that builders and engineers need a special phone app to find their way around.

On 4 July, the Queen would give her own name to the Royal Navy's new flagship, and an identical carrier would follow 20 months later called HMS Prince of Wales.

The Elizabeth would be afloat by 2016 but it would likely be 2020 before she became fully operational with 36 F35 Lightning II fighter-bombers on board.

The US-made Lockheed-Martin jet, a STOVL aircraft (Short Take-Off Vertical Landing), replaces the UK's fleet of much-missed fleet of Harrier jump-jets.

Military helicopters would also land and take off from  a deck the size of two football pitches.

Thanks to the phone app invented by Steven Brown, mission systems integration manager, people working on the ship no longer get lost between the vessels 3,013 separate compartments, which saves valuable man hours.

According to Brown, from their calculations, the app had already saved £1,250,000 in non-wasted man hours through people getting lost.

The naming of the warship would come following five years of the first metal being cut on the vessel.

According to Ian Booth, Queen Elizabeth Class programme director at the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA), the excitement around the naming of HMS Queen Elizabeth continued to grow and the daily countdown would undoubtedly add further momentum to this Mailonline reported.

Each aircraft carrier would be a four-acre military operating base for worldwide deployment on operations, such as supporting dropping bombs on enemies or providing air cover for army operations.

Mailonline quoted senior naval officer captain Simon Petitt , as saying, the UK would get the most amazing piece of military capability that really would be flexible and be able to provide UK politicians and military planners with choice, depending on what came in the future.

Six shipyards around the UK had been involved in building various parts of HMS Queen Elizabeth, while the work involved 10,000 people during various stages.