Britain's Biggest Warship - Season 2
Season 2
Britain's Biggest Warship Goes to Sea
HMS Queen Elizabeth is Britain's biggest ever warship. It took nine years to build her at a cost of £3.5 billion. Nearly 1,500 sailors, marines and aviators have left for a make-or-break four-month deployment on the high seas. This is to forge the brand new ship's company into an effective fighting force, but their main mission is to test the top secret F-35B Lightning Stealth Fighter – the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world that will give the ship its lethal sting.
Episodes
Let Go All Lines
As she leaves her home port of Portsmouth, tens of thousands turn out to bid HMS Queen Elizabeth farewell, but as she heads over the horizon, no-one has any idea what lies ahead. Within hours a Russian warship is detected, and the British ship needs to take immediate evasive action. Later, in mid-ocean, the ship's company has to deal with floods and dangerous fuel leaks but eventually, Queen Elizabeth glides majestically into Mayport Naval Station in Florida, USA. Over a thousand British sailors flood ashore taking the local bars by storm and the police by surprise.
Eventually, the ship returns to sea for her most challenging mission to date - to land an F35B Lightning Stealth Fighter on her flight deck for the first time. It is a highly risky operation. Will it go to plan?
Don't Feed the Birds
The next phase of flight testing for the top secret F35 jets is underway. Coping with a rolling, pitching, wind-blown deck is hard enough, but a full-blown hurricane is looming.
After five weeks at sea and on the eastern seaboard of the USA they land the state-of-the-art F35 stealth fighter in a dramatic display of flying. But this is just the beginning of the story. For the next phase of flight testing, HMS Queen Elizabeth, along with her escort and bodyguard HMS Monmouth, must test the F35 on the rolling, pitching, wind-blown flight deck in all weathers and wind strengths. The captain, Jerry Kyd, has to seek out stronger and stronger winds to push the aircraft to its limits but is then confronted by a massive full-blown hurricane heading straight for him. Does he run for it or does he hunker down? After consulting with his commanders, he decides to stay put and the ship braces for impact.
In the midst of hurricane-driven seas, the F35 is tested almost to destruction. Meanwhile, HMS Queen Elizabeth must take on 1,000 tons of fuel from a tanker in a raging ocean in an operation called Replenishment at Sea – the most dangerous thing a warship can do short of battle itself.
It is not just the flight team who are responsible for the testing of the aircraft - each of the 1,500 members on board has a part to play in this vital deployment. And all life is here. This episode meets the captain's personal steward, who confesses to his own violent past before he joined the Royal Navy, and discovers what happened to a young Marine engineer who went missing on port leave.
Manhattan Ahoy!
After three months at sea, the test pilots from the Royal Navy and RAF have successfully landed the F35 jets on the flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth for the first time, and even tested launching and landing in hurricane conditions. But with just a few weeks to go before the warship arrives in New York in spectacular style, they are about to try a method of landing never attempted before, which carries great risks but could revolutionise carrier operations globally.
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