HMS Queen Elizabeth has arrived in New York – taking over from her out of action sister-ship HMS Prince of Wales.

The Royal Navy say that in the coming months, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be at the heart of a powerful task group made up of thousands of sailors, up to ten ships, F-35B Lightning jets, helicopter squadrons and Royal Marines Commandos, which will operate across Europe this autumn. But, the Royal Navy add, the aircraft carrier is first deploying to the east coast of the United States to undertake parts of HMS Prince of Wales’ deployment – as her sister ship undergoes repairs.

“The Royal Navy’s flagship is tonight at anchor in the shadow of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline on a high-profile visit to New York. Four years after her debut in the Big Apple, aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth returned to the ‘city which never sleeps’ to focus on Anglo-American military, political and strategic relations.

The 65,000-tonne warship is the floating venue for the Atlantic Future Forum – a conference which brings together the brightest minds and most influential thinkers from defence and beyond to strengthen UK and US bonds. She dropped anchor within sight of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour, HMS Queen Elizabeth’s unique profile adding to an already dramatic skyline.”

The carrier was welcomed into New York by the United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States, Dame Karen Pierce.

“HMS Queen Elizabeth is not only the United Kingdom’s flagship, but is a fantastic demonstration of the soft power and the close working relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as the transatlantic relationship. It’s an enormous honour to sail into New York on her. We share an endeavour in remaining the United States’ closest ally and I am very proud of what the ship has achieved for Britain in her deployment to the Indo-Pacific last year.”

Over the next few days, Captain Ian Feasey, HMS Queen Elizabeth’s Commanding Officer, will welcome hundreds of guests to the ship for the forum.

“It is an amazing privilege to bring HMS Queen Elizabeth back to New York and to be formally welcomed to the United States by His Majesty’s Ambassador. We are very much looking forward to hosting the fifth Atlantic Future Forum and welcoming onboard senior leaders that embody our deep and special relationship with the United States.”

You can read more here.

Tom Dunlop
Tom Dunlop
Tom has spent the last 13 years working in the defence industry, specifically military and commercial shipbuilding. His work has taken him around Europe and the Far East, he is currently based in Scotland.

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97 COMMENTS

        • Well for training purposes I guess as a whole one presumes, they are somewhat behind much of QEs crew especially in handling fast jets, even if there are obvious gradual changes in crew. I wouldn’t be surprised if some specific crew members from PofW might have temporarily transferred to gain particular skills that the US visit was aimed to provide them to bring them up to the existing skill levels their comrades on QE have developed.

    • A newspaper and a news network do not represent a whole nation. Considering the queen’s funeral was plastered over all networks in the US I would say yes the brits are welcome there. But do you have any examples to what do you mean by your open-ended comments?

      Not sure how many F35 etc will be on board but this is good soft power projection. Welcome to see other examples of say any European country doing the same in NY. Potentially Spain and Italy with their carriers could do it but not sure the French nuclear powered one would be able to dock there, and the others have no aircraft carriers at all!

      I hope Gravity industries get to fly to the top of the statue of liberty/around it and land back on the carrier that would also be a cool thing to see and another example of British innovation (I hope someday we do capitalise on it and have shock Royal Marines troops that can fly from ship to ship :)), but that is another story.

        • That article makes a big play on what is taught in uk schools on empire, in that it was rose tinted ‘fairy tales’, such a lie, as all of us know (I went to a comprehensive in Barnsley in the 1980s) the empire was simply never taught in schools, and certainly no jingoistic or even slightly patriotic element at all. It was all Russian revolution, civil rights in USA etc and some stuff on the bronze and Iron Age. Unless anyone else has a different experience?

          • How times have changed indeed WS. When i was at school our House names were Drake, Raleigh, Frobisher and Grenville or St Andrew St George, St Patrick and St David. In Rhodesia we had two flagpoles in the Quadrangle-one for the Federal Blue Ensign and one for the Union Jack and we sang God Save the Queen on special days in Assembly!
            It’s all gone to Hell in a Handbag😉

          • The Bessemer converter and the spinning jenny 😩😩
            Couldn’t wait to turn 16. 😁😁

          • Which school? Longcar then Holgate for me. Then sixth form in 1987. Didn’t do history after third year but do remember Saxons, Tudors, Stewarts, and Romans.

          • Nice stadium. Went there once to see Reading v Barnsley. Can’t remember the result – 20 years ago or something…

          • Wasp Snorter is right. I went to an Independent school in the 1980’s and while we were taught about Empire (our head was a former British Army Officer who served in India), it was for a term or two. Our history was far more diverse in nature, learning far more about the Greeks and Romans onwards.

            It must be the Americans, as my Grandparents generation (1940s & 50s), never really went on about Empire either. They simply don’t understand that we don’t really care for it much.

            They should concentrate on today’s US Empire! From nations denied their Independence, something I cannot remember the British doing in the past 60 years. To Include American imperialism through outright military conquest; gunboat diplomacy; unequal treaties; subsidisation of preferred factions; regime change; or economic penetration through private companies, potentially followed by diplomatic or forceful intervention when those interests are threatened. The US won’t give Puerto Rico, American Samoa their Independence, even locking up activists.

          • Snap. I did well at history ( by my standards ) and got Grade B GCSE in 88. I wanted to learn about classical history, Romans, and all that, we had never ending Russian Revolution, Nazi Germany, and US rights.

          • It was beginning to change even in my day and I’m retired now, the rose tinted view of the Empire I understand from a head of Dept who sadly died some years back hasn’t been seen in schools here in this Century and probably before. If only the truth of their own history, so intwined with lies and nationalistic fantasy and fervour from the very beginning were so liberal esp about the history of slavery. They like to claim because we have a monarch it simplistically means we haven’t faced up to our past easy for many Americans to buy into that and strengthen pre existing prejudices, it certainly helps obscure the simple fact their own system is far closer to that that existed here in revolutionary times than our own ‘monarchy’ led system actually does today. Appearances can be deceptive unless you dig dealer, After all even the Poles used to elect their final Kings, just didn’t call them Presidents. And of course while they were still perpetuating slavery we lost over 2000 military personnel fighting to end it. But hey nuance, balance and proportionality isn’t important to all on left or right sadly when you have an agenda. Sadly in the US it’s important to obscure your decline, own historical missteps, move towards Fascism and potential break up of society and a unified Country, so an external villain is always helpful whatever the cost to truth and reason.

          • I agree. The article is poorly researched and totally inaccurate. I doubt any history teacher from the early 60s onwards taught their class about the Empire in a ‘fairy tale’ way – they were mostly anti-Imperialist left-leaners.
            I don’t recall that the days of Empire was even taught in my particular comprehensive school in Crawley in the mid-late 60s.

          • Yes the further you go from Britain the more you hear about the empire, in schools for a long time, certainly since the 80s and earlier there is an amnesia on it. We even didn’t talk about the falklands war which had happened a couple of years earlier. I can see why, what a subject to broach and what narrative do you decide on, it would have made great classroom debate though, much better than what tsar Nicholas the second was doing, and the Bolsheviks and menshiviks etc

        • All done to obscure their own horrendous record of colonisation home and abroad and of course severe ethnic cleansing. Just consider how many indigenous people still live in S America despite their movement was via North America, logic tells us that unless serious environmental effects warp the figures ( weather, terrain etc) there should be higher populations to the north in this case than towards the ends of their expansion towards the South, similar to European expansion east to west. One wonders what could possibly have happened to all those in receptive areas to the north central part of the Continent.

      • No they don’t but the repeated anti-UK rhetoric in the NYT does have an impact in the wider sphere as does old oirish Joe’s comments(BBC brush off & trade deal issues anyone ?) Lets not use the Queens funeral as justification of any overtly political friendship as the royals have a special place in a lot of Americans hearts – the Queen of course doubly so.
        Ironic really as they fought a war (or two) to ensure they were unshackled from the UK and by associated its Royal family.

      • I don’t share the view that most of the US media are anti British.

        There is generally good acceptance and knowledge about how we both work together militarily and both work hard with NATO as well as to help the Ukrainians.

        Even the Tangerine Tinted Buffoon would have welcomed the 3% of GDP. And TTB did welcome the promise to make both QECs deployable as well as to ask questions about how quickly and cheaply they had been built compared to the Ford Class*. Which even TTB realised, in a rare moment of clarity, was over specced and overpriced for what was needed.

        *I am NOT saying that QEC is comparable to a Ford I am just saying that QEC could do a lot of taskings that a Ford would be tasked to do and an awful lot cheaper and allow higher carrier numbers in a mixed fleet of QEC (type) and Ford.

    • NYT and CNN are both members in good standing of US “Woke” media. Costal effete liberal “elites.” Does not represent the interior of the country, or what they refer to as the “flyover” states. In any event, welcome to the Big Apple! Many useful human beings, not in the media, reside there. 😉

    • Probably effecting temporary repairs so she can proceed under her own power without damage and/or waiting for parts to be manufactured/delivered such that the dry docking is to a tight timeline?

      Then that has to mesh with the tide windows.

      Dry docking a carrier is very, very well planned.

    • She had around 3500000 ltrs of fuels taken off which was completed on Thursday, no news as to when she will go north havent seen at this time the program for the tugs for her to sail, early October due to tides in Scotland, may yet get delayed due to the weather etc.

      • That’s a lot of fuel. 3.5 million litres if my eye sight is working ok.
        I would guess the plan would be to get everything off the ship that doesn’t need to be there.
        Is there some way they get stuff on and off the ship apart from hand balling a lot of it?
        Like do the kitchens have containers that travel or is it handball the lot from the outside door?
        Closest I’ve got to a ship is a row boat on a pond.

        • Half the Fuel was Avcat/aviation fuel, and the rest diesel. Fuel is pumped off at around 100000 ltrs and hour. I only deal with fuels, i dont know much about that side of the stores.

  4. Who needs a national flagship/Royal yacht when you got big Lizzy. It’s an important fact as well that this is the only super carrier in the world that can be used for these types of Port visits as she is non nuclear. Amazing soft power demonstration. Typically Nimitz class has to sit over the horizon.

  5. Minor aside. I note Forces News is rescreening a video comparing INS Vikrant to HMS Queen Elizabeth. Of interest, of course. But state cost of V as 2.5 billion, and QE as 6.2. Did tell them that the 6.2 billion was for the class a while back, but no response.

    • If Vikrant only costs £2.5Bn after all the delays and fiddling around I’ll be amazed.

      I’d be amazed if the real cost want closer to both QEC TBH.

      • Certainly no better value, even as quoted. The Vikrant cost is £ for £ similar as she is around 45K tonnes, I think.. That’s without operational comparisons, though to be fair that’s not the remit of the video. Getting the correct unit cost from open sources should be i.e. for the Forces channel 😏

        • I agree.

          QEC program costs have been reported in parliamentary answers and are therefore in Hansard and other open source places.

          Sloppy.

  6. It was a Labour Government that ordered the 2 Aircraft Carriers. It was Cameron Tory Government that kept changing its mind between cats & no cats?.

    • Your right Gemma. They were six years behind schedule and the cost had risen by over thirty per cent. The Cameron Government didn’t keep changing it’s mind. It didn’t actually change anything. It reviewed the option of CATOBAR in 2011 and decided to stay with STOVL in 2012.

        • It took less than a year and in the meantime the project continued, compared to the six year delay caused by Labour’s indecision. The 2010 review might have been responsible for a number of things but this wasn’t one of them.

          • I thought Cameron decided to go from F35B to the F35C ( and hence going to CATOBAR) and then back again – or did I imagine that…or was that all done mid ‘review’ either way surely that would have impacted on some of the carrier schedule?

          • The carrier program was delayed by a year or more, I assume to save money.

            The usual save now spend more later under another’s watch.

            I brought it up a month or so ago when a poster was slamming the Tories for the delays to the QEC program, and, you know me, I like things fair and blame correctly attributed between the whole useless shower.

            Google it. “Defence Secretary Hutton carrier delay”

            I remember it well anyway but a simple Google reinforced what I already knew.

          • More unexplained waste. I don’t suppose it will ever end. I agree with your comment of course. If having a pop at someone at least get the right one. I wish people would stop trying to put a party slant on things.

      • Your right of course. He got his twelve O levels; three A levels; his first class honours degree at Oxford after he sat and passed the entry exam and later his Master of Arts degree all by accident.🤔

        • He was still a twat who had ideas well above his level of intelligence. He liked to think he knew it all , and you know what they say about know alls….well they are right…in Camerons case anyway.

          • I was taught that you should respect a person and not condemn them unless you knew them so I’m not going to say anything about you.😉

  7. I was very fortunate to visit NYC twice with the RN. Great run ashore, and some random dude bought me a double Wopper with cheese 😆🍔

    • Pleased you had a reasonable experience. Odds are much better when you interact w/ ordinary Americans. BTW, it’s known as “the Whopper, “by Burger King (a burger chain rhatcmay still be owned by a British private equity firm).

      • Thanks for the spelling correction. It’s been a while since I last visited a Burger King. Fleet week no, but both visits fell over the 4th July weekend. I also visited Norfolk Virginia. A lovely couple took me and my mate out in Virginia Beach if memorie serves me well. Had a great night. Got back on-board at 3 in the morning, then had to be up 6 for a coach trip to Washington! Brilliant times. Did 4 weeks in Vegas for Red Flag exercise at Nellis. That was great fun too for a single 24 year old 😀

    • Probably not. They set up a regular boat schedule to get the crew ashore and back safe. Invincible class used to dock, but where much smaller then the QE class.

    • I was working in NY in 2018 when she last visited. You can’t actually see her from Manhattan since she is the Verrezzano Bridge side of Governors Island. Best viewing is to catch SI ferry which I to get a close look. New Yorkers on the ferry just assumed she was USN. I do remember Merlin landing at the Downtown heliport and FAA officers strolling down Wall Street in their flying suits carrying briefcase. Quite cool.

    • It’s has become a bit quiet. Unless someone is quietly designing away.
      Unless it doubles as a hospital ship or something else useful I don’t think it’s needed.
      Do the royals even want some boris boat? I have my doubts. Unless it runs on cabbage leaves or old plants it doesn’t do much for the image.
      It was meant to show of British industry etc but is that really commercial ship building? Better building an extra type 31 and putting it on tour.
      If it comes out of the business budget and the manning, running cost also comes out of somewhere apart from defence then ok. Have a fancy floating show off lounge for government big wigs.

      • Like the idea of another T31 to be a ‘faux’ royal yacht!
        Fit it with much better wardroom and some slightly better appointed cabins….bit of carpet…
        Nice motif on bow like The T45s.
        Proper dual purpose.
        AA

      • To be perfectly honest, the idea of a RY is good if the case can be put correctly. Didn’t they estimate the Brittania venue alone was responsible for hundreds of millions in trade deals? If only for that, doesn’t that make it worth it? You couldn’t have a grey ship do that. It still has it’s hard military edge that would put many politicians off after the injectors in their own country started jumping up and down. They never did that when it came to the blue & cream pearl.

        I have a few mates who were assigned to her (Brittania), they were RM divers. Twice a day, a little bimble around her rear end was a posting & half they said.

    • Haven’t heard Andrew but whilst on the subject, does anyone know why the MoD is footing the bill? More money not going where it’s needed! For the cost of the Royal Yacht, how many soldiers could be saved from the chopping block, or have the interim anti-ship missile paid for, or another much needed P8, or another 50 Challenger 3s, etc., etc., the list is endless where that money could be put to much better use…..

      • What The Royal Yatch did for British forgeign policy and business abroad should not be dismissed- but I’m sure those that have decided the Royals are just financial parasites would have a dickie fit if a new one was commisioned- They that know the price of everything and the value if nothing
        I for one would love to see a new one , but I agree I’m not sure the MoD should fund it.

  10. The brightest minds and inflential thinkers….is it?
    Does that include Biden and if so perhaps someone should recommend he forget his blind allegience to his heritage in the RoI and try to dig up some commonsense instead of spuds.

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