HMS Queen Elizabeth welcomes UK and US jets for major exercise

The Royal Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth has embarked the largest number of fighter aircraft onto her deck as she prepares to take her place at the heart of a UK-led NATO Carrier Strike Group.

Two squadrons of F-35B stealth jets, the RAF’s 617 Squadron (The Dambusters) and the US Marines Corps VMFA-211 (The Wake Island Avengers), have joined the 65,000-tonne carrier as she sails for exercises with allies in the North Sea.

A 23 September Royal Navy statement said that with a total of 14 fighter aircraft and eight Merlin helicopters, it’s the largest concentration of fighter jets to operate at sea from a Royal Navy carrier since HMS Hermes in 1983, and the ‘largest air group of fifth generation fighters at sea anywhere in the world’.

In this month’s group exercise, HMS Queen Elizabeth will be joined by seven Royal Navy destroyers, frigates and auxiliaries, plus other supporting units, to form a fully sovereign Carrier Strike Group.

Commodore Steve Moorhouse, Commander UK Carrier Strike Group, said the group would be put through its paces off the north east coast of Scotland as part of Joint Warrior, NATO’s largest annual exercise.

‘The United Kingdom’s maritime renaissance has been unfolding over many years, as we introduced a new generation of ships, submarines and aircraft into service. But this marks the first time we have brought them together in a cohesive, potent, fighting force,’ Moorhouse said.

Usually based in Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma, in Arizona, VMFA-211 arrived in the UK just under two weeks ago. Landing at the home of the Lightning Force, RAF Marham after the trans-Atlantic flight, they worked up with 617 Squadron conducting the RAF led Exercise Point Blank before embarking in the carrier.

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