Royal Navy crew reunited with families for Christmas as flagship returns home to Portsmouth
Royal Navy crew have been reunited with their families in time for Christmas after the Navy's flagship returned home following the first operational deployment of the carrier strike group.
The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, with seven warships and a submarine, set off from Portsmouth Naval Base following a visit by the Queen in May for its show-of-force voyage to the Far East.
This morning (Thursday 9 December), crews onboard HMS Defender and HMS Diamond also sailed into the Naval dockyard to be welcomed by their loved ones.
HMS Diamond is the third ship of the Type 45 or Daring-class air-defence destroyers built for the Royal Navy. She was launched in 2007.
Diamond was commissioned in a traditional ceremony on 6 May 2011, and formally entered service on 12 July 2011.
Lt Cmdr Helen Taylor, HMS Diamond
Hundreds also lined the shore to see HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier enter her home waters after 7 months at sea.
A traditional homecoming on the jetty at the naval base.
HMS Queen Elizabeth is the lead ship of the Queen Elizabeth class of aircraft carriers and the Fleet Flagship of the Royal Navy.
She is capable of carrying 60 aircraft and is named in honour of the first HMS Queen Elizabeth, which in turn was named after Queen Elizabeth I.
The ship began sea trials in June 2017, and was commissioned on 7 December 2017. She entered service in 2020.
Construction of Queen Elizabeth began in 2009, with the naming ceremony taking place at Rosyth on 4 July 2014, by Queen Elizabeth II.
Keeping a carrier strike group all in working order takes an enormous amount of personnel and expertees, most of whom are based in Portsmouth.
Jon Pearson, Warship Suppprt Director BAE Systems
Hundreds of people work on the carriers daily, operating computers that control every system from communication to navigation, using the latest technology.
Sally Simmonds has been behind the scenes to see how those people work tirelessly to ensure everything is working order.
Report by ITV Meridian's Sally Simmonds
The CSG has been dogged by incidents including the loss of a £100 million fighter jet at sea.
But the ships and their combined crew of 3,700 sailors faced several incidents, both diplomatic and technical, during the 25,000 nautical mile round trip.
The carrier had originally been expected to return to Portsmouth on December 10, but the arrival was brought forward by a day because of concerns about the weather.
The narrow entrance to Portsmouth Harbour means that the 65,000-tonne warship would not routinely enter during heavy winds.
The most serious incident of the deployment happened in November when an F35B Lightning jet crashed into the Mediterranean after tumbling off the edge of HMS Queen Elizabeth’s flight deck.
The pilot ejected and was found safe, but the state-of-the-art fighter jet languished at the bottom of the sea and has only recently been recovered.
A member of the £3 billion carrier’s crew has been arrested on suspicion of leaking video footage of the incident.
The jets are operated by the renowned 617 Squadron, also known as the “Dambusters” squadron.
A visit to the carrier by the Prince of Wales scheduled for a few days later was cancelled following the incident.
Earlier in the voyage, Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender was involved in a stand-off with the Russian navy after it sailed close to Crimea in June.
The Kremlin claimed warning shots were fired by Russian vessels at the ship as it passed through the contested part of the Black Sea last week – an assertion dismissed by the UK Government, which said only that a routine “gunnery exercise” took place.
Dramatic eyewitness accounts revealed that Defender, which is also returning to Portsmouth on December 9, was buzzed by Russian military jets and the sound of naval gunfire could be heard as it sailed from Odessa in Ukraine to Georgia.
In July, its sister ship HMS Duncan, also arriving at the Hampshire naval base on Thursday, suffered a mechanical issue with its engine, forcing it to undergo repairs before returning to the CSG six weeks later.
In the same month, a number of ships in the CSG, including the carrier, experienced a Covid-19 outbreak despite all the crew being double-vaccinated.
A sailor on board the Type 23 frigate HMS Kent was also confirmed to have died in July. An investigation has been launched.
The voyage culminated in the carrier taking part in a joint exercise with warships from the US, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan before arriving in Yokosuka.
The exercise was part of efforts to achieve a “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision led by Washington and Tokyo.