HMS Queen Elizabeth: Islay Whisky, Robot Magazines and a Twin-Island Deck

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HMS Queen Elizabeth, pennant number R08, is the largest warship ever built for the Royal Navy, christened on July 4, 2014 by Queen Elizabeth II with a bottle of Islay single malt from Bowmore rather than champagne. Defence Secretary Des Browne ordered her and sister ship Prince of Wales in July 2007 for about £4.085 billion. After the 2008 financial crisis the build was slowed, and costs rose to £6.2 billion by 2013. The hull was built in nine blocks at six yards, including Glasgow, Appledore, Rosyth, Hebburn, Portsmouth and Birkenhead, and in 2011 an 8,000-ton lower block was towed 600 miles around northern Scotland to Rosyth. Spreading the work kept shipyards alive during the recession. Her name and the motto Semper Eadem come from the World War I super-dreadnought HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Leaving the Firth of Forth for 2017 sea trials meant surveying a riverbed charted 60 years earlier and clearing three bridges. She reached 32 knots against a 25-knot design speed, and a propeller shaft seal leak appeared that December. In autumn 2018 the Westlant 18 deployment brought the first F-35B ski-jump launch at sea, a backward landing and the first shipborne rolling vertical landing, and she anchored near the Statue of Liberty, a port closed to nuclear-powered US carriers. Carrier Strike Group 21 in 2021 brought her first combat strikes against ISIS, a COVID-19 outbreak among a vaccinated crew and an F-35B crash in the Mediterranean. A Merlin Mk4 ditched in the English Channel in September 2024, killing one crew member, and after a refit at Rosyth from July 2025 she returned to sea in April 2026.

• The ship is 284 meters long with a range of 10,000 nautical miles.
• Twin islands split navigation and flight control, and either can take over the other's role.
• She is three times larger than the Invincible class but needs only 679 crew to operate.
• The automated weapon handling system moves munitions with 50 people instead of about 160, and can run with 12.
• A ski jump with no moving parts replaced catapults to save cost and crew, limiting the deck to jets like the F-35B.