Jacko,

As someone who spent 20 years of his life dealing with "floaty things" his comments are I agree controversial, but I have conclusions are not a million miles away from the truth.

OK, so what are J2, J6?

Staff branches, JN.

J2 = Intelligence
J6 = Comms, info systems and anything which involves sucking of teeth before muttering 'Ooooh, not sure the bandwith will be able to take it'.

There are those who contend that when it comes to air operations, the senior service perhaps needs to enhance its capabilities in those two areas, so that the Royal Navy approach to planning doesn't end up as

What fool picked battleship names? Could have used Malta and Gib, as the 1950s carriers were going to. Or just recycled some of the older CV names... Furious and Glorious, perhaps. (Since they'll likely be Gloriously over budget and someone will undoubtedly be Furious about that :))

I was always led to believe that these 2 particular names were chosen by the RN to make it more difficult for the govt to cancel the order. If they did then the next time the PM popped round to the palace for tea he would be forced to explain why he's scrapping a ship named after her or her fella.

probably just heresay though............:rolleyes:

Are the ships' names intended to be resurrections of the old battleship names or are they named for HM The Queen and Prince Charles?

Whilst it is perfectly fitting to name a ship after HM, it does seem fawningly Edwardian to use "Prince of Wales". After all what has he actually achieved to date - other than champion his own pet issues and cause some constitutional crises. If they'd really wanted to name the ships for Royalty then "King George VI" would have been more appropriate. He was a Naval Officer who actually saw action, was the monarch through WW2 and hasn't had a ship named for him. The name would also follow in the battleship tradition.

Personally I reckon Late and Overbudget will be more accurate. Or Reduced and Cancelled?

BP, are you sure that one CVF is to be named after HM The Queen?

The Queen Elizabeth Class was a dreadnought named after Elizabeth I.

Then quite rightly we had the KGV and POW. At the time of their building King George was dead and we did not have a POW.

So, are the CVF named after living Royals or historical?

As we already had a Queen Elizabeth BB maybe the CVF will not actually be Queen Elizabeth (II) but Queen Elizabeth (HM) - [Her Mum]?

Remind me how many CVA01 and Type 82 we ordered and how many we got?

Ah yes, my Dad told me about them!!!

Indeed, that's why I'm being cautious! At the least, I suspect CVF will cost a few T45!

MM

PN,
I suppose it ought to be HMS QE2, but the cruise liner banter would be too much.
These names must be a least partly chosen for modern royals - too much of a co-incidence to claim that they are purely for old BBs. Queen Elizabeth or QE2 - fine. but Prince of Wales is :yuk:

In fact Queen Elizabeth and KG VI would be a great names as current HM's parents.

BP. Quite agree. POW really is the odd one out.

And jibes about cruise liners? A II or no will make no difference, why, it has already started.

I wonder whether they will fit them with bow thrusters? Then they will be able to self-dock without escorts and get where cruise ships go.

Well at least where the QE2 went as her draft was a good 10 feet more than your modern gin palace.

Perhaps the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth combination will upset our German friends as they often accuse us of being stuck in WW2 nostalgia.

So we perhaps ought to go with names of great Europeans for these ships:

How about Bismarck and Tirpitz ?

If we were going to use proper carrier names Eagle and Hermes would have been my choices. Moving away from traditional carrier names, we could do with another Warspite as well.

I believe the ship is being named after the current monarch, following an ancient, if erratic tradition. The first ship-of-the-line built in a new reign is called after the monarch. If you scan through this list:

Wiki RN Battleships

you can see the Great Harry (1512), Elizabeth (1559), Philip and Mary (renamed quickly!) and so on. It has been a bit erratic in application, though. The Prince George (1702) was named after the future George II and so no ship was named after his accession, there were also Royal Georges and a Royal William named after George III, IV and William IV, but all before they were crowned. I have no idea how the RN ended up with an HMS Victoria sloop in 1839, but they did name 2 more battleships after her so that was alright...

In the last 100 or so years, King Edward VII (1903) and King George V (1911) were straight forward, but in 1937 George VI named 'his' ship in memory of his father. The first capital ship, an aircraft carrier, of the present Queen's reign was going to be CVA-01 in the late 60s. It just looks like it will take 50 years longer than expected to build the first ship-of-the-line!

There was also a tradition of naming another ship after the Consort, hence the Queen Henrietta, Prince Albert, Queen Mary etc. I have seen a potential name for the CVA-02 quoted as Duke of Edinburgh, but that seems to have been sidelined for the new carriers...

As for PoW, she's the 8th of the line and it would be nice to see it a 'lucky name' again. It also has the advantage that it would also cover naming a ship after the future King Charles given that it might take another 50 years before we see the next ships of the line.

As I understand it the chances of him taking the title King Charles are vanishingly small. His rumoured choice of title is George VII.

Well William as George VIII would also get over the whole 'King Billy' thing in certain parts of the country!

Pontius N. Just a minor point; we don't actually use escorts to berth ships. We use rather quaint little things called tugs.


http://www.tugphotos.co.uk/images/rollicker.jpg

:confused:
Well the last HMS Prince of Wales wasn't very lucky. It was sunk, along with with HMS Repulse, by a Japanese air strike.

Thats my point. Sixty or so years of PoW no 8 bobbing about being a 'Force for Good' would make it a lucky name again, rather than its unfortunate. immediate predecessor.

I really can't go back through 69 pages for the answer to this, so can someone tell me what aircraft will be available to put on these things? This detail seems strangely lacking from the news I've read.