Not an Officer but there was an Aircraft Handler on Ark V who had served on Ark IV and been for a swim off Atlantic Conveyor in '82. An absolute wealth of experience and good dits who may just about still be in the Navy. Sadly he will be long gone by the time QE is ready.
I think the benefits of experience operating from a big deck will be relevant to those UK aviators of both cloths currently flying F-18s. They'll probably find it quite spacious on QE compared to what they are used to as we will never have a similar number of aircraft onboard as a CVN. Hopefully we will retain enough and get them into the F-35 training pipeline soon enough for it to be worthwhile.
When given a choice between 1 ship with Cats and Traps and F-35C in 2023ish or 2 ships with F-35B in 2018ish then of course 1SL is going to go for the second option. There's a lot of elements to a carrier apart from the CAG, and nearly all of them involve RN manpower.
Post Afghanistan JFH was getting worked back up to where it wanted to be with regards maritime ops, sadly it wasn't allowed to get there.
We have already had RN and RAF intimately involved onboard the USS Wasp for F-35B initial sea trials so the next step is to build on the upcoming trials of both F-35B and F-35C as a precursor to First of Class Flying trials from the QE. We have the right people in the right jobs to do this today.
Last edited by WhiteOvies; 27th Jun 2012 at 16:08.