Pride of the Fleet

      I suppose my family has always had a certain interest in the exploits of the Royal Navy and paticularly aircraft carriers, ever since my uncle survived a kamikaze attack whilst serving upon HMS Indefatigable in 1944 with the British Pacific Fleet.
    This the Royal Navy's newest warship HMS Queen Elizabeth and with her sister ship HMS Prince of Wales, at 932 feet and 65,000 tons are the Royal Navy's largest ships ever. And will fill a gap in the navy's maritime operations, supposedly for the next 50 years.
      The ship is well supported with modern aircraft and helicopters, all manner of attack and defence firepower and a large contingent of troops, not forgetting all the latest radar and surveillance technology, in short a floating fortress. 
      And yet in some circles there is a certain disquiet, not just down to the scale of the costs, which always seem to run out of control upon such projects, but the thinking at the time of their planning was supposedly with the intention of turning Britain into a "modern sea power." The original cost being planned at £4 billion now already passed £6 billion and two years late upon delivery. Another problem arising from the purchase of the Lockheed American F-35 jets which are seven years late in production and with costs hitting the US at over £150 billion above the planned price. It's now been agreed Fleet Air Arm will cut their intended allocation of aircraft to just twelve per carrier.
       The original plan was also to build eight Type-45 Destroyers to act as escorts, four per carrier, although their production was finally cut back to six with some being more or less permanently at anchor, not forgetting their recent well reported problems with operations in warmer waters. It is now thought by many, if and when the carriers put to sea, almost the whole of the Royal Navy's fighting ships will be required to act as escorts.