HMS Prince Of Wales: The British Aircraft Carrier Ready For Its First Sea Trials | Forces TV 

I'm an old American cavalry corporal and lifelong military historian. I've read in a bit about naval policy, but I can't claim I'm an expert. I'm pleased that the RN is back in the aircraft carrier business. When the PW finally puts to sea operationally, the UK will be able to project power where she needs it, wherever and whenever that is. And God knows the USN could use the help. The UK intervenes with a softer foot than the US does and there are situations where that's a very valuable talent. I will say this, however: the money to get the QE class afloat had to come from somewhere in a MoD budget already feeling the pinch after 10 years of active operations in the Middle East. The British Army was shrunk to provide that money, as was the RN's destroyer fleet. And those units will be needed should the carriers be required to deploy anywhere in a serious way. Long serving and proud battalions have been amalgamated into 'super-regiments' and now only a couple hundred troops in company bearing a lineage that once took entire regiments to hold up are taught the deeds of their grandfathers. There is a sadness in that. This is a proud time for the RN, and well-earned. But like most proud things in life, it came with some sacrifices. Hopefully those sacrifices will bear out. To the officers and men of the HMS Prince of Wales [pennant R-09], fair winds, following seas, and my sincere respects.

Nice to see the Royal Navy expanding again but I wouod love to see the construction of two new destroyers one for each carrier I think that would be fantastic 🇬🇧

That's a nice ship. I really like it! Love from U.S.

Congrats Brits. She is a beautiful ship and will serve the UK well. America salutes her!!!!!!!

Best the thing to see every morning when u open the blinds 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Love it, She and Queen Elizabeth are going to be in service for 50 years and their Aestheticly beautiful.

Congratulations Brits, glad to see you getting stronger along with us. Hopefully we can strengthen our ties.

Having served on two carriers HMS Indefatigable and HMS Ocean in the 1950's It is terrific to see these two new carriers. Now GB get on and build 2 more then the destroyers and frigates to protect them. Rule Britannia Once Navy always Navy.

Please buy more ships

Happy to have had her sister HMS Elizabeth visit my home of Haliafax NS. Cheers

We need more Type 45s

The number of aircraft that is told is very misleading, she can carry 36 f35s and 4 marlins but that is nowhere near her max. She can carry up to 70 aircraft at max, 60 in a time of war.

Is this another carrier? Happy days keep them coming 👍

This aircaft carrier is looking BEAUTIFUL even for HMS Queen Elizabeth shes the Beautifuest aircaft carrier in the Royal Navy 🇮🇳🇬🇧🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿❤❤❤❤❤❤ Edit: even tho they look same Edit2: before you all ask Yes I am Indian ,yes I like England so pls dont comment that why Indian flag is there 😂😂😂😂cheers🍻

The British Army needs more funds again!

I would think the *U.S. Navy,* would be *more than happy,* to provide the necessary help to their *older brothers, the Royal Navy.* You know, *"Hands Across the Sea",* and all that!

We done UK. A proud island must have a strong navy.

cant believe my sister is part of her crew !

1600 people that's alot boxes of coco pops lol. But she is getting fitted with 3 cwis systems for self defence and two dragonfire systems also 4 countermeasure systems with chaff,flare and ir jammers. Mini guns and machine guns.

Would be great to see Britain having the capability to put two carrier strike groups to sea !

Absolutely beautiful and impressive to see the Royal Navy ship, very great..thanks for the post

Absolutely love it. From America 🇺🇸 🇬🇧

3:42 cracking bit of baton work from the right there

So brilliant to see the second of these British carriers on the water.

"Once the carriers are taking part in operations, the question is: does the Royal Navy have enough ships to escort and protect them?" NO. Absolutely not. In no way, shape or form. The Royal Navy's surface escort and submarine fleets have been gutted by years of idiotic defence cuts. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary's support capability has also been reduced far too far as well. Six air defence destroyers? That means two available for operations at any one time. 13 frigates? That means 4 or possibly 5 available for operations at any one time. Eight attack submarines? That means two or three available for operations at any one time. So how are two air defence destroyers supposed to protect aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships and fleet train at the same time? Two ships in three places at once? Oops. How are four or five frigates supposed to stop enemy submarines having a field day with the aircraft carrier, amphibious assault ships or fleet train? One for the carrier, one for the amphibious assault ships, one for the fleet train and one or two more roving around? Hardly a particularly credible threat to enemy submarines. With two attack submarines how are we supposed to credibly threaten the enemy fleet, perform insertion missions and protect our own forces at the same time? Also if all our surface combatants are tied up protecting carrier, amphibious assualt ships and fleet train (at least partially) what about merchant shipping elsewhere in the world? How much mischief could Iran get up to if the fleet is deployed off North Korea?

It’s a 72,000 tonne ship. 65,000 tonnes is the ship’s weight at point of delivery not when it’s fully loaded

May she serve long and herd and bring her crew home...... and more may we hope her crew never needs to be in danger.

I went seeing this in Liverpool today

Love from India.🇮🇳🇬🇧.

Worked on the POW as an electrician while it was in Rosyth. The size of the thing is incredible

I don’t hear the Top Gun theme when a vstol aircraft takes off from a ski ramp.

Its been great to see the Carriers come to fruition and our Type 31 and 26 Frigates etc. Its actually starting to look like a Navy we can be proud of. Our enlisted personnel deserve the best we can give them. Hopefully plenty of future "exports" with Type 26 also.

Makes me proud to be British.

HMS Prince of Wales: gets sunk in 1941 as battleship by japan HMS Prince of Wales now: *where you looking for me?*

Wish you well with the sea trials... Shes a beautiful and great ship.... Congratulations.

Need to spend more money on our military, dangerous times ahead.

617 Squadron is about to deploy to QE for the first time. Exciting times. Can't wait to see the first footage of QE and PoW sailing together.

Yeah...beutiful We are British

I dont think they qualify as “Super Carriers”, but beautiful never the less.

I hope this is the beginning of the re-equipping of the Royal Navy to bring her up to world standards. For far too long our military capability has been decimated by successive governments preferring to spend public money on such things as welfare benefits over the defence of the realm and our interests. Sadly though, the increase in building ships for the RN will bring them up to only 2013 levels, less one ship from that time. We not only need more ships, especially post Brexit, but more aircraft and tanks and other hardware for the army. Including comms, IT, up to date defence radars and so on. And, most importantly, we need to increase the manpower of the armed forces and improve retention. Unfortunately, in our diverse, multi-cultural society, conscription would be an almost impossibility.

That is one of the sexiest ships I have ever seen

All these naval experts in the comments screaming we need more ship, have you been living under a rock? We’ve got global combat ship under construction right now? We can’t just shit out a fleet of ship they take time

Good feeling knowing I’ve contributed a small part in the build of both these ships

In the far future, Britannia will rule the wave again!

Absolutely fantastic

As an American, I am proud for you Brits, too.

More videos on gurkhas please.love and respect from nepal future gurkha😄💕💂

Just as an American watching from afar, I wish the MoD had pursued a third ship of the class. That would truly allow the Royal Navy to have a carrier permanently at sea, with another in refit and the third being readied and conducting training. Of course, having the organic hulls on hand to provide the escort and support group would also be a good idea. At minimum, though, it's good to see another Royal Navy flattop.

Should have been named ‘Ark Royal’

So proud to be British right now🇬🇧

We need this as retrofit in AL or as whole new ship

Wonderful to watch look forward to see you arriving at Invergorden soon

Beautiful ship let’s hope ‘he’ proves he’s worth in the trails. Now just to give our carriers the necessary escort ships so we don’t have to rely on anyone else & we’re golden.

Scrap foreign aid. How many ships could be built over 15 years instead of wasting British taxpayers money abroad.

Is it still correct to refer to a ship as 'her' if it's called the prince of Wales?

Yes they are beautiful ships Makes one proud to be British again! MBGA Pity we could some British planes for them

Two carriers....One FAA Sqn....One RAF Sqn...And a joint OTU..... based at RAF Marham. For the £Billions dumped into the airbases' massive new infrastructure.... the MOD could have fitted out both 08 an 09 with CAT...deemed ''just too much'' when they were being laid down...Doing so, would have provided the proper Fleet Air Defence capability so desperately needed. ....which is and will be sadly lacking. God Bless the RN.

I envy the Brits!!!!!!

Remember to add turet defences!

I personally think we sound raise our spending to about 3% gdp as we do need more people in the military a lot more can be spent on advertising and have more to spend on our own ships or upgrading the challenger or for the tempest and other aircraft

The two towers on the carrier is just completely alien to me being american😂

There are two?

Wiki-page still says it can carry 70+ Aircraft. Fixed and rotary. Says the same thing about the first carrier. But I keep hearing that they can't really carry even 50. What's up with that?

The last time I was on a Royal Navy carrier during sea trials it was in the North sea during a force 11 gale. 'KIN ELL !!!

Excellent, but it should not be forgotten that we scrapped three carriers and built two. However capable they are, ships cannot be in two places at once. We need a third light carrier of Invincible Class size. This would be invaluable for smaller missions where the Queen Elizabeth Class would be unsuitable. Sadly this is unlikely to happen.

0:48 Nice logo.

Thats in portsmouth Queen Elizabeth boat is gone somewhere

at least this prince of wales has planes on it. the last one went down in malaya cos of no air cover...

First of all all, well done to all who on both projects who worked hard from top to bottom to produce these in UK. It makes people proud to be British and I hope another 2 will be built along with other boats in UK to make our Navy great again. We lost it in the past where great shipyards, especially in the NE become North Sea rig builders. The North has people crying for jobs in this industry but more so the proven areas to produce and as well as Scotland NI also. We need to build our Navy again on home soil. Last but not least, how pissed off I am one of these great boats was not named ARK ROYAL.......... It should have been a given as respect to RN. May God keep all safe who sail on these 2 boats over the next 50 years, some not even born........

Wonderful Ship.

We need 10 new destroyers, 13 frigates, 6 SSNs and support ships !! We need to be a 50+ major warship fleet !! Build two more amphibious ships for the Royal Marines and grow the marines to 10k

Time to build 2 more:)

lets hope the engines work properly.

“I’d like to see American destroyers protecting out carriers” Sir you have no idea, we probably have 20 orbital bombardment platforms looking after you😂

Well, that has come round pretty quick. You wouldn't want this and an American Ford Class sitting off your coastline full of UK/US air assets.

Yeah uhh watch out for the Bismarck remastered version :D

Superb ship. It is not good enough that our Royal Navy doesn't have enough capable ships to protect her.

When the next dreagnought?

beautiful and huge ship. but why it does not have an angled deck and catapult? and max speed of 26 knots is too slow, that is most regrettable.

Officers and Crew of this very fine ship soon to be added to the line .. .. from this vantage point her lines show her to be one extremely serious ship of WAR .. .. designed from the keel up as such!! SPITE and endurance ,, superior training and dedication ,, the very best equipment and those excellent F-35's ,, the iron men and women of our Royal Navy will doubtless see her through decades of successful service to the nation ,, the Alliance ,, and the world over!! Best ,, No. 9!!

1) Pause video at the start. 2) Open Rule Britannia video. 3) Start Rule Britannia Video 4) Put this video back in the foreground

Love how they gloss over the fact that the delays were almost entirely problems that were pointed out well in advance. Kinda like Market Garden, but with fewer casualties.

British: "Supercarrier!" Americans: "Aww, look at the baby!" But seriously, Americans would call that an assault ship.

72,000 tonnes, full load with room for 10,000 tonnes worth of upgrades. My question is, why is the aft tower so big?

4 smaller carriers wouldn't be a bad thing,I'd say that would then meet the bare minimum,2 big 4 small.

Still way smaller than the Nimitz and Ford class,they are 100,000 tons with 70 plus aircraft, and would have been great if we had 3 Carriers not 2 but still, it's great that Blighty has now got 2 descent Carriers,we now need a few more Frigates and destroyers for the Battlegroups.

R.I.P WWII Prince of Wales

So two new super carriers and 8 type 26 frigates in the works. Damn son

I don't know why one of these new carriers was not named HMS Ark Royal. There has been an Ark Royal in service in the Royal Navy since the time of Queen Elizabeth, when the Royal navy defeated the Great Spanish armada. The person who is in charge of naming naval ships has distroyed Royal Navy Tradition

She's a good looking ship👍

Beautiful

Experts have said there will be at least 12 F35`s on the QE AC. Not enough to need shooting down

It's good to see our British allies finally putting forth some kind of naval power. However, their carriers are not super carriers as defined by the US. Their tonnage is less than half of a true super carrier like to US Ford class carriers and far less capable. That British Naval Officer saying that their destroyers protect US carriers and that it would be nice for our destroyers to do the same is a little insulting. Of course we will protect your carriers but deploying one of your destroyers in your waters to "protect" one of our carriers which already has two or three US destroyers and a couple submarines already defending it in a Carrier Battlegroup along with air assets is nothing but a token gesture.

I think we need a cruiser next

We need more destroyers now at least 10 new ones or the 12 that was originally planned. It's all good having the Aircraft carriers but they are going to need protection with destroyers and subs.

These new carriers are a perfect compliment to the American strike forces. The military leaders of both countries made the NATO alliance the greatest seagoing strike force ever.

Jez ,Bryan are you watching this

When dealing with something new there will be problems. So yeah, it might've sprung a leak here or there, it's NEW. What do you think sea trials are for.

I wish You were right!

Build four air defence versions of the Type 26 to bolster the Royal Navy