BRITAIN’S largest naval warship is coming to Scotland, the Royal Navy has confirmed.
HMS Queen Elizabeth on Thursday sailed from Portsmouth for the first time since her global operational deployment to the Indo-Pacific.
The nation’s flagship has been undergoing essential maintenance since December following the seven-month mission, but now returns to sea to carry out training exercises.
The 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier is set to return to Glen Douglas near near Loch Long, Argyll and Bute for a routine logistics visit this month, and hopes to visit Liverpool on her return leg to Liverpool.
Captain Ian Feasey Royal Navy, Commanding Officer of HMS Queen Elizabeth, said: “We return to sea today as the United Kingdom’s Very High Readiness Strike Carrier for routine operational activity and training.
“The hard work of both my ship’s company and our supporting industrial partners has improved the condition of the Fleet Flagship.”
Only 24hrs back at sea and all those involved in aviation are back in action 💥
— HMS Queen Elizabeth 🇬🇧 (@HMSQNLZ) March 10, 2022
Merlins 🚁 from @846NAS have landed on and will work with @HMSQNLZ to maintain aviation currency.@FAA_RN @RoyalNavy pic.twitter.com/Uk0gBopxDd
A statement on the Royal Navy website adds: “During this short stint at sea, training will focus on individual, team and whole ship exercises as well as working with commando-carrying Merlin helicopters from RNAS Yeovilton-based 846 Naval Air Squadron.
“The ship will be conducting further exercises and training later in the year as the carrier is kept at very high readiness to deploy anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice.”
Sister ship HMS Prince of Wales also recently left Portsmouth for the Arctic, where she will lead a task force in her role as NATO command ship on Exercise Cold Response, the large-scale Norwegian-led exercises which will see 35,000 troops from 28 nations operate together in the harsh environments.
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel