Hat tip to the Aviationist Blog for finding and posting this time lapse video of the installation of the HMS Queen Elizabeth’s first of two islands that was put together by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance – the coalition of several ship building companies delivering the UK’s latest aircraft carrier flagships:
The island had been constructed in Portsmouth and brought to Scotland by barge. Both carriers (the Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales) are being built in a modular fashion (a construction method already being used to build cruise ships and other large ocean going vessels) at several yards all over the UK and then shipped to Rosyth, Scotland, for final assembly into an aircraft carrier.
The Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers will be the biggest and most powerful surface warships ever built for the Royal Navy and will have 679 permanent crew who could potentially see deployments for as long as 9 months. You can learn more about these ships on the Aircraft Carrier Alliance’s webpage or its YouTube channel.