Ah Widger, you remind me of many a fine time aboard doing exactly what you wrote. Thanks for the nostalgia; though I never had the pleasure of going to a hotel except when Ex Hairy Funnel involved a run ashore to Edinburgh and the Irish Pub!!
Ivor, ironically, and compared to some of the comments made on anticipated time aboard in the future, the RN FAA were also part time 'embarkers' for around 2/3rds of the period 2000-2010 both in SHar and in GR7/9 as they did the same time at sea as the rest of JFH. Of course that was because the RAF wouldn't let the RN Sqn go to sea more often - because there was an Op on perhaps?! One where land-based ops were more appropriate. I couldn't agree more with you on training and gaining the skill to go to sea safely. Now that we are buying -B we can train more akin to how it was done on Harrier and not in the way the USN does with such devotion to FCLP.
Will a bigger ship require more personnel to run? Likely, yes. Will it be a cramped flight deck? Initially, no, and not for at least 10 years or so after FOC of QE. Later, yes but then everyone would have had time to work up to that level.
The dream of angled decks and cats and traps is now just that. We're buying two expensive floating airfields that will go someway to compensating for a lack of range and/or host nation support. They will be fantastical to see in operation and very useful for projecting influence far from home shores. Training to fly on and from them will be easier than flying Harrier from CVS so I simply do not buy any hint of an increased training burden at all.
Good luck to the RN and RAF pilots who will do it.
Last edited by ICBM; 22nd Jun 2012 at 23:23.