In a shipyard in Scotland the future of the Royal Navy is slowly taking shape. But the construction of the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is a mammoth task.
Imagine an aircraft carrier as a 65,000-tonne jigsaw puzzle and you have got a good idea of the scale of the building of HMS Queen Elizabeth. The pieces are being built at six shipyards around the UK and will be slotted together at Rosyth in Fife using an enormous crane which was transported by sea from China.
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The world's carriers
- US: 11, with one under construction
- Russia: One, the Admiral Kuznetsov
- UK: One, HMS Illustrious which only carries helicopters - two under construction
- China: None but is thought to be building several
- France: One, the Charles de Gaulle
- India: One, the Viraat, formerly known as HMS Hermes, but converting another, the Admiral Gorshkov, into the Vikramaditya. A third is under construction
- Italy: Two, the Giuseppe Garibaldi and the Cavour
Around 10,000 workers across Britain are employed on the £5bn project with up to 25,000 engaged in building components for the Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft.
The carrier will have 12 F-35s, or Joint Strike Fighters, costing around £65m each."It's the biggest shipbuilding project for the Royal Navy ever and is second only in engineering terms to the Olympics," says the man in charge of the whole project, David Downs, engineering director with the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) consortium.
"All my nights are sleepless, worrying about it," he jokes.Continued
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