THE assembly of the biggest ship ever to have been built for the Royal Navy, HMS Queen Elizabeth, is almost complete ahead of her launch next year.
The aircraft carrier is being assembled at Rosyth Dockyard in Fife.
Aerial pictures show the ship with both 'islands' in place. The Aircraft Carrier Alliance said all that remains is for her to have two flight deck extensions fitted plus a ramp that gives aircraft an extra boost on take-off.
When complete, the 280 metre-long HMS Queen Elizabeth will weigh in at 65,000 tonnes.
She is the first of two new aircraft carriers being delivered to the Royal Navy by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance.
HMS Prince of Wales is under construction at shipyards across the UK.
Programme director Ian Booth said: "These new images show really clearly how far this programme has come.
"We are well on the way towards delivering a world-class aircraft carrier that will represent the UK globally for the next 50 years. By the end of this year HMS Queen Elizabeth will be fully assembled and we are already looking forward to her launch in 2014.
"There are thousands of skilled men and women working on this programme and they should all feel proud of what they are accomplishing."
The Aircraft Carrier Alliance is a partnership between BAE Systems, Thales UK, Babcock and the Ministry of Defence.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article