All language subtitles for Worlds.Greatest.Warships.S01E03.Ark.Royal.and.The.Carrier.Giants.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-ALLEYESONME_track3_[eng]

Warships
are the ultimate symbol

of a nation's military might.

These things are monstrous
wonders of technology.

Enormous
vessels, crewed by thousands,

bristling with massive
guns and powerful aircraft.

They can deliver terrifying destruction

and turn the tide of history.

The ship were built to win the war.

There was no other reason.

From the
beginning of the 20th century

to the present day, these are the stories

of classic warships.

From Dreadnoughts to Bismarck,

to Japan's monster sea warrior Yamato,

the American super ships
Wisconsin, Lexington

and Enterprise, to today's
cutting edge Royal Navy carriers.

These are the world's greatest warships.

September 11th, 2001.

The aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise,

is in the Arabian Gulf on her way home.

Without warning, she is
ordered to turn around

and head to the coastal
waters of southwest Asia.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks
have shocked the world

and prompted the American government

to declare their war on terror.

As part of that war, Enterprise's
aircraft will fly hundreds

of missions against the Taliban
and Al-Qaeda in the remote

and distant mountains of Afghanistan.

This is just the latest chapter
in the story of Enterprise,

a story that already
stretches back some 40 years.

But the story of the
aircraft carrier goes back

a lot further than that.

So how did the aircraft carrier
grow from humble beginnings

to become the decisive weapon
in the Second World War,

the ultimate instrument of military

and political strategy in the Cold War,

and as we enter a new era,
promise to rule the waves

for decades to come?

They are still today
arguably the most complex,

expensive pieces of design
and engineering on the planet.

Within a decade
of the first manned flight

in the earliest years of the 20th century,

naval strategists were thinking
about launching aircraft

at sea, but direct military engagement

was not their primary concern.

Dave Morris is a historian
of naval aviation.

The whole reason in many
ways for the Navy to become

involved with aviation and aircraft

and taking aircraft onto
their ships is effectively

extending the view over the horizon,

and so reconnaissance is
really where the whole

of naval aviation begins.

When the first
World War broke out in 1914,

the need to find ways to fully combine

air and sea power intensified.

So at the start of the First World War,

it's in its infancy.

Aircraft are incredibly basic.

There is no means of actually
launching an aircraft

from the deck of a ship.

Basic catapults, basic arrester systems,

platforms on the fronts of ships.

All of it was ad hoc experiments,
almost flying by the seat

of your pants, trying out something new

for the very first time.

It was Britain's Royal Navy

that led this experimentation,
and the reserve collection

of the Fleet Air arm in
Somerset houses one of the few

remaining examples of an early attempt

at launching aircraft at
sea, the Seaplane Lighter.

A seaplane
Lighter is a towed vessel.

It doesn't have an engine,
it's not a powered craft.

It's a towed vessel
capable of transporting,

in this case, an aircraft.

This craft could be towed and
extend the range of a seaplane

before it could be launched to fly.

Crucially,
as the name suggests,

the Seaplane Lighter was
only launching seaplanes,

not fighter aircraft.

But in the early years of World War I,

Britain desperately needed
fighter aircraft at sea.

Since 1915, dozens have been
killed in raids on towns

and cities along England's East Coast.

The raids were carried
out by German zeppelins,

huge airships carrying
up to two tons of bombs.

An aircraft launched from
land offered little defense.

It would take a
sub with camel, typically 45

to 50 minutes to spiral
up to the 16, 17,000 feet

that the Zeppelin would be operating at

and maybe only have five
minutes at most on target

before it would then have
to return to its base,

possibly gliding because
it was out of fuel.

Salvation lay
in the Seaplane Lighter,

but not before some
serious trial and error.

What if we put a wooden
deck on top of this craft?

What if we towed the whole
contraption at 15 to 20 knots

into a 15 to 20 knot sea
breeze, get an equivalent

cross deck wind speed of around 40 knots.

Could they launch a Camel
from a towed Lighter

and then take a fighter plane to sea?

Landing was a totally different
problem to solve altogether.

It could not land back onto the Lighter.

It was not safe enough and
long enough in deck space

to land.

It would have to do a
controlled crash into the sea

alongside the Lighter,
and hopefully the pilot

would get rescued.

As pilots and
sailors began to master

the new technology, the Seaplane
Lighter came into its own.

Only nine days after the
first successful experiment

to see a sop with Camel take off

from a Seaplane Lighter
towed at sea, took the whole

contraption into the
center of the North Sea,

waited on station and then
intercepted Zeppelin L53

and successfully shot it
down, shocking the German

Zeppelin crews into realizing
they could be intercepted

by fighter planes far out to sea.

The aircraft had
proven it could be a viable

sea-based weapon, and
the British were keen

to scale up the technology.

How could they develop
that into a full size craft?

How could they effectively
take multiple aircraft

wherever they needed
to go around the world

to deliver their aircraft,
almost like taking their airfield

wherever they needed it.

And this was the key
final piece of the puzzle.

Launched in 1918, HMS Argus

was a reconditioned commercial ship

with a runway built on top of her hull.

And she was a real game changer.

HMS Argus was the
world's first aircraft carrier.

By that I mean a ship that
was capable of both launching

aircraft from its flight deck

and recovering them onto the
same deck with a hanger under

that deck in which they could
be stored, fueled, armed,

and sustained in operations
for a considerable period.

You have a lifting
system to get aircraft

up and down from a big hangar
deck below, and you have

an arresting system to stop the aircraft

as they land on the deck.

Argus could now take 20 aircraft

anywhere it wanted anywhere in the world.

By the end of the war, the
German fleet was spending

nearly all its time in
Schillig Roads, its main base.

And the admiralty came up with the idea

of using aircraft from Argus
to attack them in their harbor.

They'd practiced operating from Argus.

They were ready to go
in early November, 1918,

but the armistice happened

before they could carry out the attack.

Argus may not
have played a leading role

in World War I, but the blueprint
for the aircraft carrier

we know today had been drawn.

And in the next war,
carriers will be at the heart

of the action.

As the world slid
towards war in the 1930s,

Naval engineers were restricted

by treaty in the size of
battleship they could build.

Allowances for aircraft
carriers were far more generous.

So there's a strong incentive to develop

and build aircraft carriers.

And what you see is half-built
hulls of capital ships.

Mostly cruisers are
converted on the stocks

into aircraft carriers.

The next
step was to move beyond

just sticking a runway on
top of an existing ship.

HMS Ark Royal,
completed in 1938,

incorporated all the admiralty
ideas on how aircraft

should be operated at
sea from the 20s and 30s.

She was big, she was 800 feet long.

She had stowage in her two
hangers, one over the other

for 60 or slightly more aircraft.

Ark Royal is a
pioneering warship for the British

because she's the first
full-size fleet carrier

that they really built from the keel up.

So she's a world beater
for the European Theater

when she comes in.

Ark Royal's
flight deck was nearly

250 meters long and sat a full
20 meters above the waves.

Her command and control functions
were housed in an island

on the starboard side of the deck,

the common feature of
aircraft carriers to this day.

But it was the interior of the Ark Royal

which was truly revolutionary.

Andrew Chung is curator of ship's plans

at the National Maritime Museum.

This is the general arrangement drawing

for the aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal,

showing her as completed.

Now, it's an indicator
of just how complicated

this ship was.

One of the secrets to Ark
Royal's very impressive aircraft

capacity was this new
enclosed double story hangar

that her designers built into her.

In terms of the height
of the average person,

that's effectively a four
story hangar divided into two.

It was the first time that a
proper weatherproofed hangar

of that size had been built
into a British aircraft carrier.

And unlike previous large
carriers in the Royal Navy,

this one was designed to
optimize aircraft handling.

So the lower hanger
was given over entirely

to aircraft maintenance,

whereas the upper hanger was
intended purely for re-arming,

refueling, and preparing
planes for their next mission.

So the admiralty believed
that with this arrangement,

they could come to a very
efficient turnaround in aircraft

and avoid a situation

that they'd experienced in older carriers

where ground crew doing one thing

with one aircraft would get in the way

of ground crew doing
something entirely different

with another aircraft.

The Ark royal
also included catapults

to help launch planes from her decks

and arrester the cables to slow them down

when they returned.

And she was about to be put to the test

against the most fearsome
battleship on the seas,

the jewel in Hitler's naval
crown, the mighty Bismarck.

A quarter of a long and
crewed by over 2000 men,

Bismarck boasted fearsome
and firepower and speed.

She terrorized Britain's
vital Atlantic convoys.

Something needed to be done.

The hunting of
the Bismarck far out to sea

demonstrates, again, just
the importance of the Navy

being able to take aircraft to sea.

The Atlantic is absolutely
vast so trying to cover it all

by sea is finding a needle in a haystack.

It's still very difficult
doing it from aircraft,

but you suddenly start
to increase the chances

of finding your target.

Bismarck had
already sunk HMS Hood,

the biggest battleship in the
British fleet when she was

spotted on the 26th of May, 1941.

Swordfish biplanes were launched
from Ark Royal in pursuit.

The trustee Swordfish
was able to drop down

to almost sea height,
level out and approach

60 feet above the waves
and launch their torpedoes

against the Bismarck.

The damage they
did to Bismarck was fatal.

One of the torpedoes hit the rudder

right after and jammed it.

So no matter what they tried
to do with her engines,

Bismarck could only turn in circles.

The ship was intact apart
from her ability to head home.

And so she could do nothing
but wait for the big guns

of the home fleet to come
up at dawn on the next day.

Although
Bismarck was ultimately sunk

by battleships, it was air
power that had crippled her.

Dr. Jann Witt is an expert
in German naval strategy

in the Second World War.

To a certain extent,

you could call the Bismarck
the essence of a battleship,

but at the same time, she was a dinosaur.

She was the best, almost
the best you could achieve

in battleship building, but in strategic

and also in tactical
terms, she was outdated

because she falls victim to a new weapon.

Ark Royal may
well have changed the rules

of engagement on the high seas,

but the British aircraft carrier

as an all round package
remained a work in progress

and challenges remained.

Principally, how to
build planes best suited

to this complex form of aviation.

It is probably, I
would say the most challenging

form of flying.

So if you imagine just the
three biggest challenges

of trying to land on and take
off from an aircraft carrier,

the first thing is your
runway is absolutely tiny.

Secondly, your runway
is moving up and down.

So when you're trying to take off,

you're moving up and down.

When you're landing,
it's moving up and down.

So your aircraft have
to be incredibly robust

because when you land, you're
gonna slam down on that deck.

And the third point is
that your runway moves.

So when you take off
and go on your mission

and you come back, your
runway isn't gonna be

where you left it.

So all of those things make naval flying

incredibly difficult.

At the beginning of World War II,

the Royal Navy is still
using, in many ways,

quite outdated aircraft,
Gladiator biplanes,

Swordfish, typical of the aircraft

that would be on the Ark
Royal, Skewer dive bombers,

but still quite slow.

The necessity for a fighter
aircraft purpose built

was very, very high.

The solution
to all these problems

was a very British compromise.

Let's take an already successful plane

and adapt it for life on the ocean wave.

What we have here
is the Super Marine Seafire.

The modified naval version
of the Spitfire aircraft

converted to go on ship
decks with folding wings.

It can enable 'em to go into
the hangar spaces below,

that had takeoff catapult spools fitted

to strengthen parts of the fuselage.

It had a deck hook, a rester
hook fitted to the tail

of the aircraft, but
there's still compromises.

The pilot is still sat very low.

The pilot is still sat quite a long way

rearwards behind the engine,

which gives bad visibility on approach

to the ships for landing.

The undercarriage is still
woefully weak for an aircraft

that has to punch down onto
an aircraft carrier deck

in all winds and weathers.

So when it's flying, the Spitfire/Seafire,

it was still a very, very capable fighter,

but it still had many, many shortcomings

as a deck landing aircraft.

The Americans
made no such compromises

with the planes they would
place on their carriers.

In America, there was no Air Force

and fighters and strike aircraft
were designed for the Navy,

by the Navy for naval use exclusively.

This strategy
will be brought to life

in purpose-built carrier aircraft

such as the Hellcat and the Corsair.

This was the best that
money could buy at the time.

This was taking a design
from the drawing board

and creating a carrier born
aircraft with all of the things

that that would benefit from and require,

a very strong undercarriage,
very strong wing,

powerful engine, deck hook
designed from the outset

to be in the best
position on the aircraft,

landing on carrier decks
in all winds and weathers,

taking the rigors of
thumping onto the decks

and being pulled to a halt
by the arrester wires,

higher, better visual
position for the pilot.

The impact
of these purpose-built

American planes was not
lost on the British Navy

high command, who saw a
solution to their problem.

From 1941, the
Americans came up with

what was called the Lend-Lease Act,

where they lent us the aircraft
for the duration of the war.

And in the end, thousands of aircraft

came to the Royal Navy in that way.

This was an enormous
step forward for aircraft

for the Royal Navy at
that time in the war.

But it
wasn't only the Royal Navy

who were keen on maximizing
the military potential

of naval aviation.

In late 1941, six
Japanese carriers traveled

three and a half thousand
miles across the Pacific.

In total, they launched 353
planes against the battleships

of the US Pacific fleet anchored
at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

Four battleships were sunk.

Four more were heavily damaged.

Nearly two and a half
thousand Americans died.

Pearl Harbor
showed for the first time

that carriers had a strategic
role as a striking force

that could travel considerable
distances, attack targets,

and cause a lot of damage
when they got there.

But whilst Pearl
Harbor was a stunning triumph

for the Japanese, it would
have unforeseen repercussions.

Not only had the US Navy's
own aircraft carriers escaped

the attack, but America's
response would herald the arrival

of arguably the greatest
carriers in history.

After Pearl Harbor, there was no doubt

that the capital ship
of the Second World War

was gonna be the aircraft carrier

and was no longer the battleship.

The centerpiece here was
the Essex class carrier.

These were very large ships,

38 to 39,000 tons full load displacement.

They had capabilities to
receive a lot of punishment.

They were very survivable because of that

and also because of their
large anti-aircraft battery.

But most of all, they could
carry a very large air group.

In total, an
astonishing 24 ships of this class

were built.

Each ship could carry up to 110 aircraft

housed in 3,600 square
meters of hangar space

and were crewed by more than
two and a half thousand men.

They had a range of 28 and
a half thousand kilometers,

equivalent of traveling
from Los Angeles to Tokyo

three times.

With a top speed of 33 knots,
the Essex class carriers

dominated the world's
biggest ever battlefield,

the Pacific Ocean.

The Essex class aircraft
carriers can fairly claim

to be the finest aircraft
carriers produced by any nation.

They captured that balance

of aircraft capacity, protection,

both passive, and active and high speed

better than any other carrier
design that was produced,

and as significantly, the United States

was able to produce them in numbers.

The Essex class carrier program

was one of the biggest industrial
achievements of the war.

11 of them had been ordered by 1940,

and in the end there
were 24 of them completed

before the war had ended.

When you think of that in terms
of shipbuilding, it's huge.

The ship were built to win the war.

There was no other reason.

In 1941, Japanese
airplanes had launched

a devastating attack on the
US fleet at Pearl Harbor.

The US Navy was reeling from the attack,

but it was about to take delivery

of the most iconic aircraft
carriers in history,

the Essex class.

The USS Lexington was one of
the first Essex class carriers

launched in 1943.

Kenneth Kohlstedt was a gunner on board

during his first
deployments in the Pacific.

They wanted to have two
squadrons of aircraft on the ship

rather than one for each division.

That is fighter, dive
bomber and torpedo bomber.

It's a very flexible type of
strike force that you have.

You can be going out after ships

where you'd be using your torpedo bombers

and they typically would
do a simultaneous attack

where the torpedo bombers
would come in from low altitude

and the dive bombers would
come in from high altitude.

Thus, they're splitting the
defensive guns of the enemy.

He's gotta handle both at the same time.

This variety of
aerial firepower was critical

in overwhelming the Japanese fleet.

And it gave Lexington and her
fellow Essex class carriers

the starring role in the
US advance towards Japan.

In 1943, the Americans began
an island hopping campaign

in Pacific on their way to Tokyo.

And the centerpiece of this campaign

was the Fast Carrier Task Force.

The task
force had aircraft carriers

at its core.

These will be surrounded by
battleships and destroyers

to keep the enemy at arm's length,

allowing the carriers to
launch aerial attacks.

Lexington led Task Force 58.

Its first major engagement
was at Truk Lagoon,

a Japanese carrier base
in the Central Pacific.

The Japanese get their first
taste of what the Essex class

carriers can do when they raid Truk Lagoon

in February, 1944, in the very aptly named

Operation Hailstone.

This Japanese bastion
is effectively destroyed

as a frontline base over the
course of a series of raids.

Most of its aircraft are destroyed

either in the air or on the ground.

Any shipping are lucky enough
to be caught in the lagoon

is sunk and the Japanese
never use Truk again.

They can't.

They've had notice served
to them that their premier

Central Pacific bastion
is no longer an option.

The Americans called
it the big blue blanket,

which was the air cover they gave

to the amphibious operations
that captured the islands

that moved west across the Pacific

to the very shores of Japan.

They could stay at sea for
weeks, even months on end

because they had logistics
support groups with oil tankers,

ammunition, stick ships, stores ships.

They could even provide
replacement aircraft and pilots.

It's one of the most powerful expressions

of naval power in the pre-nuclear era.

Four months
after flattening Truk Lagoon,

Lexington joined 14 other US
carriers in the Philippine Sea

for what will become
the decisive engagement

of the war in the Pacific.

This was the
largest aircraft carrier battle

of the Pacific War.

We brought 15 aircraft carriers

to the battle and the
Japanese brought nine,

and there's no other
battle that had that many

aircraft carriers in it.

They hurl this force at
the new US carrier fleet

in the hope that they can turn
the tables on the US Navy.

And it's a complete disaster.

The US remembers it as the
great Mariana's Turkey shoot

where dozens of Japanese planes are lost

for each American pilot shot down.

The battle effectively ends the Japanese

carrier fleet for good.

And it means that in the later battles,

the Americans confidently
come up with this huge

aerial superiority which the
Japanese simply cannot match.

Since victory
at Pearl Harbor in 1941,

Japan's Navy had been
outmaneuvered and out-fought

by the US Navy.

The war was slipping away.

The Japanese employed a
final desperate tactic

to knock out US carriers,
the Kamikaze attack.

Planes packed with explosives
and carrying only enough fuel

for their outward journey would
be flown directly into enemy

targets in suicide attacks
designed to cause maximum damage.

Lexington's defense was her
Bofors anti-aircraft guns.

Let's take out downtown.

This is the largest machine
gun produced in the world.

It was made in Sweden, utilized

by almost every country in the world.

And it fires 120 rounds a minute.

And what's unique about the
gun is you had a trainer

who sat on this side
and a pointer over there

who actually fired the gun.

As the gun is training,
each operator, the pointer

and the trainer would have to coordinate

to bring the gun in the position.

As he's coming around, it was
the pointer's responsibility,

the man on the left side of
the gun, to actually fire it.

When he was in position,
he would push his treadle

with his left foot and the gun would fire.

Once the kamikaze threat was acknowledged

and everyone knew that these
people were out to kill him,

the gunner had to stay on their toes.

Not only were they defending the ship,

but they were defending their home.

To this day, a
Japanese flag marks the spot

where a kamikaze pilot
crashed into the Lexington,

having avoided the hail
of bullets from the Bofors

machine guns.

Kenneth Kohlstedt was on board that day.

The Lexington was off the
Philippines, but two kamikazes

dropped out on the clouds,
going from left to right

across the bow of the ship.

Our radars had picked up the contacts

as they were coming in,
but our defensive patrol

was unable to find them.

They probably saw the
ship at the same time

the ship saw them.

And the ship started turning right

to keep the guns focused on them.

We got the first one, but the
second one kept boring on in,

and he was coming down
from about 5,000 feet.

He got hit several times,
but he just kept coming in.

The gasoline on the aircraft
spilled over the crew,

which were out in the open

and incinerated all of them,
which was really horrible.

As a result, we lost 48 people

and 132 were wounded.

The pilot had obviously
intended to hit the flight deck

and make a large hole on the flight deck,

which would've put
Lexington out of service,

but he hit this area instead.

So in spite of the horror of
the deaths and the wounded

that happened, he did not
seriously damage the ship.

This pilot who was flying the aircraft

that crashed into the
Lexington was probably

one of the original kamikaze
pilots that had been selected.

Amazingly, the
whole incident was captured

in a series of extraordinary photographs.

This photo album was made
by a sailor on board this ship

in 1944.

He was photographer on board

and his name was Daniel John Connolly.

He took all the original photos

of the kamikaze strike
on five November, 1944.

And during the attack,

he was standing approximately right here,

and he received a bronze star
for photographing the aircraft

coming straight in at him.

And there was at some point that he said,

"Well, I gotta get outta here."

Not even a direct
hit from a Kamikaze pilot

could slow down the mighty Lexington.

By the end of the war,
Lexington had shot down

372 enemy aircraft and
destroyed a further 475

on the ground.

She had sunk over
300,000 tons of shipping,

and not one Essex class carrier
was sunk during the war.

Well, without
the Essex class carriers,

it's difficult to say what
alternate history would've been,

but we definitely would not
have had the striking power

that we had during the Second World War.

When the second
World War finally ended

in 1945, the victorious
allies would redraw

the map of Europe, and in
turn, usher in the Cold War.

The Cold War was played
out not against one opponent,

although obviously the Soviet
Union was behind everything

that was going on in the communist world.

But sometimes you had to
fight their surrogates.

North Korea, North Vietnam,
and other countries.

Carriers were invaluable in
that they could provide power,

a pulse of power bigger
than most air forces,

in order to cover the big blue
blanket again, if you like,

wherever Western foreign policy dictated.

And the aircraft
carrier that was built

to meet this new challenge
with something special.

This is the
big E, The Enterprise,

the first nuclear
powered aircraft carrier,

the largest ship in the world.

Enterprise
was a giant in every sense.

She was longer than four
jumbo jets laid end to end.

Her four and a half acres of
deck space was the equivalent

of three football pitches.

She could accommodate 90 aircraft

and house a crew of nearly 6,000.

Enterprise was powered by
eight nuclear reactors,

which gave her an unlimited range.

In her 51 year service,
Enterprise covered nearly

2 million kilometers, projecting US power

to every corner of the globe.

The USS Enterprise impresses
me from her sheer scale.

At the time she was completed in 1961,

the US Navy pointed out that
she's the largest mobile object

ever built by man.

Dave Zilber
was a damage control officer

on board Enterprise.

He remembers well long stretches at sea.

Because
it was nuclear powered,

there was nothing to stop
it from continuing underway.

It was just getting food in
stores for the crew, you know,

so even if you loaded it
all out just for the crew,

you could just keep
going for years and years

as long as you could keep
bringing on more stores.

You knew that something
special was happening

when they'd throw out
steaks and lobster tail,

not always a good announcement was coming.

It's like, "Okay guys, now
we're gonna stay out underway

for another two weeks.

We're not getting that port visit,

but we're gonna give you
steak and lobster for dinner."

With a ship's
company of nearly 6,000,

the Enterprise was not so much a warship

as a small city at sea.

Like any city, keeping
it going was a complex

logistical operation.

There was
the Public works department,

there was an electrical
officer, auxiliaries officer,

and we all worked for the chief engineer,

and we all had divisions
of people underneath us

with a lot of experience.

We had Warren officers, we
had Chief Petty officers

that ran the enlisted troops

of various different
backgrounds and experiences.

More than any
of the ship before her,

Enterprise had perfected
the art of sea power.

Its huge size and immense
crew meant it could launch

multiple deadly air
strikes against targets

all over the world.

Once each
aircraft came down and was caught

and then released off its
tail hook, then they would

move those aircraft off
to their parking areas.

So you had aircraft handlers,
you had plane captains,

you had the catapult officers
and the catapult crew.

They're all out there on the deck.

You had fuelers, you had ordinance men,

you had everybody in
different colored shirts

and helmets designating
what their job was.

Some of them are in radio communication,

some of them it's just all hand signals.

And you've got the blast
from the jets coming off.

Before an aircraft would
launch, they'd put up

these jet block deflectors behind them

and then they'd drop it so the
next aircraft could come up

on the catapult.

It's a very hot, windy,
dangerous place to be.

One of the many
aircraft Enterprise carried

in her early days was
the A5 vigilante bomber,

which had a nuclear strike capability.

The combination of unlimited range

and the Vigilante's ability
to deliver nuclear weapons

made the USS Enterprise
the most powerful piece

of military hardware in the world.

Carriers like the
Enterprise, their greatest

influence, I believe, on
the Cold War, was to show

the Soviet Union and Warsaw
Pact and Allied Navies

just what the United States could produce,

and what the United States
could produce in numbers

with their carrier battle
groups all over the globe.

Although the
US would switch to launching

nuclear weapons from submarines
rather than carriers,

Enterprise has been at the
sharp end of every major

US military maneuver
over the last 50 years.

In 1961, when the USS
Enterprise was brand new,

she took part in the Cuban missile crisis,

which nearly made the Cold War hot.

She carried out a number
of tours off North Vietnam

from 1966 to 1973.

She operated in the Pacific,
Mediterranean, the Atlantic.

Her aircraft took part in
strikes against Namibia,

against Bosnia.

Her aircraft took part in the
no-fly zone coverage over Iraq

in the early stages of
conflict in the Persian Gulf.

She didn't finally pay off
as an operational warship

until 2011.

And with more
than 51 years of service

and 25 deployments,

she has always answered the call to serve.

It's a direct descendant
of the sort of power

that can be projected by
the US Navy in World War II,

and in the era of the
Cold War, all it takes

is for a US carrier battle
group to appear on the horizon

for the demands of the United
States to be taken seriously.

The lesson of
the Enterprise was clear.

Any nation considered a
first ranked military power

needs an aircraft carrier capability.

It was a lesson Britain, the country

that had pioneered the use of air

and sea power, had all but forgotten.

But today, something truly
extraordinary is being built

at a Scottish shipyard.

The Queen Elizabeth class carriers.

The Royal Navy had pioneered
aircraft carrier technology.

It had been the first to
combine air and sea power

in battle, and it had developed the first

recognizably modern aircraft carriers.

But since the defining
battles of World War II,

it had been left behind by
the US and other nations.

The new British
Queen Elizabeth class comprises

two ships.

Queen Elizabeth, which is
carrying out protracted sea trials

at the moment, and has
sister ship, Prince of Wales.

It's due to go to sea in late 2019.

They're the biggest warships ever built

for the Royal Navy at 919 feet long.

They're a hundred feet
longer than Ark Royal.

They were built Rosyth Dockyard
just north of Edinburgh.

Three
years ago here in Rosyth,

the naming of HMS Queen Elizabeth
was a strategic awakening

for the United Kingdom.

The moment when we proved to the world

and to ourselves that we
still have what it takes

to be a great maritime industrial nation.

What they give
Britain is a strategic reach

that this country has not
had since the older Ark Royal

class carriers were decommissioned.

The key feature of these ships is size.

It future-proofs them 'cause
they're designed to last

for 50 years.

We don't know what aircraft
will be around in 50 years time,

but we do know that the
present generation will last

quite a long way into that.

But with size you can cope with change.

Is is as sophisticated
as any aircraft carrier

that you'll find anywhere in the world.

Everything about the modern
aircraft carrier has taken

everything we've learned
in the previous 100 years

is now cemented into one package.

Everything about
the new carrier's design

is intended to improve on
all that have gone before.

The Prince of
Wales and Queen Elizabeth

are very, very different.

The most obvious part of this difference

is the fact that they have two islands.

What they've done is taken
those two traditional bits

that you have to have
in any aircraft carrier

to make it work, the bit
that controls the ship

and the bit that controls the flying,

and they've completely separated them out,

so that makes them
visually very distinctive

but it also means that
there is much less confusion

in the way they operate the ships.

The islands will
hold some of the most advanced

military equipment ever installed,
including a revolutionary

radar system which allows
each ship to track 800 objects

in a 200 kilometer radius.

F-35b fighter jets will
be the crucial component

to the air capability.

Four planes can be delivered from hangar

to flight deck in just 60 seconds.

And the carriers do it all
with a much smaller crew.

An American
carrier has a ship's company

of roughly 4,000 men
to operate an air group

of about 70 aircraft.

Queen Elizabeth with the full
air group embarked is expected

to have about 1,600 sailors on board,

plus 250 Marines if they're embarked,

so considerably less.

To do that, they use the
sort of computer controlled

automation that supermarkets
and Amazon would use.

In other words, one
man with a touch screen

can control a robot to go and
collect a bomb off a shelf

in a magazine and bring it via
a railway line to a bomb lift

and then bring it up to the flight deck

where armorers can take it, fuse it

and put it on an airplane.

We've never had anything with
that degree of automation

before, and they've got it.

The projection is that by
the end of their working life,

they won't even be
operating manned aircraft.

They'll all be drones.

So I don't think we even really know

what the full capability

of these ships is gonna be going forwards.

The Queen
Elizabeth class is designed

to build on all the lessons
of the aircraft carrier

through history, to be fearsome
enough to project power,

but flexible enough to
perform multiple tasks

in peace time too.

They are very much
multi-mission vehicles

so they can function as aircraft carriers.

They can function as
anti-submarine warfare ships.

They can form the core of a battle fleet

or act in conjunction with
say, a US carrier battle group.

They can also take part in
more peaceable activities,

pacification, anti-piracy,

and even disaster relief,
which was the sort of thing

that we have used our
amphibious landing ships for

in recent years.

I think there's
no better proof really

that the carrier is
still there as the apogee

of naval power than the fact
that the Britain's Royal Navy

has invested vast sums in
building two state-of-the-art

carriers, because there's
nothing really to beat

a carrier as a means of power projection.

It's a piece of your own real estate

that you can take anywhere in
the world to deploy in support

of land forces, to control
the oceans, to protect trade.

They're incredibly versatile assets.

It's been over
100 years since those early

experiments of combining air
and sea power in World War I.

100 in which aircraft
carriers have featured

in the iconic battles of World War II,

policed the World during the Cold War

and remain center stage
to the present day.

They are still today, perhaps
arguably, the most complex,

expensive pieces of design and engineering

that humans are putting
together on the planet,

even in an age of
airliners and spacecraft.

The captain of the
1970s Ark Royal, Captain Fell,

once made I think a very good statement.

He said, "The role of my
ship is to go anywhere

at high speed and do anything
the British government

wants me to do when I arrive there."

And think about that.

That's precisely what they can do.

And the
Royal Navy's commitment

to the Queen Elizabeth class
carriers stands as testament

to the enduring importance

of these multifaceted fighting machines.