Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers

Concept of a Queen Elizabeth class carrier 

The Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers are a class of aircraft carriers currently being built for the Royal Navy.

The plans are for two ships to be built; HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, the latter potentially not entering service.

These carriers will succeed the previous Invincible class, with many modifications and improvements that will give a wide range of capabilities.


The QE class is being designed to accomodate several types of aircraft. The main complement will be the F-35C Lightning II jet, designed to be a 5th generation fighter jet that will be able to complete various objectives off the giant platform. It will also be able to house several types of rotary wing aircraft, such as Sea Kings, Lynx, Merlins, Chinooks and even Apaches. Due to using CATOBAR (Catapult Assisted Take Off But Arrested Recovery), aircraft from other services such as the RAF, USAF and ALA will be able to operate from the carriers.

Concept - F35C taking off from a US Nimitz Aircraft Carrier

The maximum embarked air group is to be 36 F-35C jets and 4 Early Warning Aircraft - this is twice the capacity of the previous HMS Ark Royal. It can also be used to land foreign aircraft due to the change to CATOBAR.

Two Chinooks on the Flight Deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth (Representation)

Each QE Carrier will be 284m in length, the longest ship to enter service. This is around 75m longer than the previous Invincible Class Carriers, and weighing in at 65,000 tonnes also makes the QE class over 3x larger than the Invincible too.

Although these carriers are bigger than the previous Invincible class, they only require 600 crew compared to the 720 that was used in the previous class of carriers.

A good idea of how big these carriers are in relation to the "competition" can be seen in the following picture:

QE design has slightly changed, but it is still a fairly accurate comparison.

Although not as big as the RU Kuznetsov, the QE class will be more technologically advanced and will have a wider capability than the Russian counterpart ever did. It also sports a larger flight deck which can be (and likely for HMS Queen Elizabeth) used as a Helicopter Landing Dock, either as a replacement or in party with HMS Ocean.

HMS Ocean - The Royal Navy's Helicopter Carrier