Royal Navy's HMS Queen Elizabeth to arrive in Portsmouth today ahead of F-35 trials
ROYAL Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth is to return to Portsmouth today to pick up supplies ahead of trials with the F-35B stealth fighter jet.
The 65,000-tonne warship is due to return to Portsmouth Naval Base at 2pm today. She will be passing Round Tower in Old Portsmouth at around 1.10pm.
She left the city four days ago to conduct training exercises at sea, with a delayed departure due to an outbreak of Covid-19 among her crew.
The £3.1bn vessel had been set to leave the city on Monday, but her sailing was pushed back when ‘a small number’ of the ship’s company tested positive for the virus, according to a Royal Navy spokesman.
The infected sailors were removed from the ship and placed into self-isolation on land, while any other crew who had been in contact with them were quarantined.
Following the training exercises at sea, the aircraft carrier is returning for less than a week to collect supplies ahead of trialing F-35B jets.
The trials will see about a dozen F-35B stealth jets from the US and UK embarking on the warship – the largest number of warplanes on a British aircraft carrier for more than a decade.
The cutting-edge fighter jets are the world's only stealth planes that can accelerate to supersonic speeds and complete STOLS (short takeoffs and vertical landings).
Following the test flights, HMS Queen Elizabeth and her 1,600 crew will then set sail and join a multi-national task group where she will carry out further trials.
She is due to deploy next year on her first operational mission.