It unlikely their would be, Hammand didn’t have his own aggenda as it was a twist of fate that landed him with the Job and he will follow the Government & Party line till he has got to grips with his new department and the direction its going. in some aspects his life is made easier by their already being a plan and a policy intended to achieve it with the SDSR & Force 2020.

The fun now is ensuring he delivers on whats needed on Force 2020 whilst ensuring current commitments are maintained and some ability to respond to the unexpected remains. The other aspect is delivering the drawdawn and restructure as specified by the SDSR, with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the pull back from Germany and the re-rolling and cuts to the UK infastructure.

The fun one to watch for is if he makes any positive comment about converting both carriers or goes with the strict adherence with the SDSR statements as that will show if both carriers converted was a Fox fancy or unofficial Tory policy !

According to their Schedule they were fitting the first sponson on Friday so i wonder if it was the welding that in place where the accident happened.

The trouble is now the schedule will go to pot as their will be fire, accident and health & safety inspections before they can even consider doing any further work on the ship as it sounds like they had trouble verifying everbody was out safe. So it will be a little while before they know the extent of the damage and what its going to take to repair it.

Hopefully it wont be too bad and they can get it fixed and carry on with construction before winter fully sets in.

Yeap John Reid selected Lossiemouth for the F-35B basing when he was defence minister (spot the jock bias when 3 english bases were to loose the Harrier !)

Given the SDSR and the restructuring i suspect it will be Marham as the F-35C is seen as Tornado replacement now.

Its always possible we may see a flight at Yeovilton, it depends on if the MOD decide to have a more carrier orientated training facility and permament use of the RN of part of the F-35 fleet as the JFH wasn’t all that successful

I thought it relevant to post on this thread, if not then apologies, but I recently and provocatively pressed an RAF officer, (who informed me he had been well involved in the project), about the status of the trio of F-35’s that have been ordered for MOD, where he confirmed that the first two will be B’s (STOVL), but that attempts to have the third constructed as a C model instead of the supposedly ordered B, are in progress.
Does anybody have any more hard info on this?

There was something in the defence press about swapping the third B for a C at our expense where the USMC get a B quicker than they hoped for. The Two B’s already being built will be used in the development program so i doubt we actually ever take ownership of them, just pay for them 🙁

Don’t forget at the time it was assumed that the F-4B Phantom net all its manufacturers claims and was a viable next generation supersonic missile armed interceptor capable of replacing the previous 50’s era interceptors on all fleet carriers.

Don’t forget the RAN were also seriously looking to replace Melbourne with an Angled Deck Essex equipped with Phantoms as well as the USN replacing its Crusaders on its Essex attack carriers.

It was about 63/64 when the USN let it be known that performance fell somewhat short of McDD claims with its current configuration and engines. Thats what prompted the F-4K with its spey engines as a fix and McDD look at more extentsive design revisions to enable a Phantom derative to have the low speed performance to operate safely from smaller carriers (F-4HL High lift, F-4FVS with swept wing, etc).

Its often best to remember to judge these reports in context rather than hindsight as they can be quite interesting as a guide to the intentions of the period and the hopes for the future.

An interesting aspect form this, is that whilst the Phantom & Buccaneer were seen as 60’s generation aircraft designed in the 50’s the UK was looking at matching the capabilities of both aircraft in a single, smaller design making use of the advances in technology for aircraft like the Vickers Supermarine 583 & the AFVG as they knew the Phantom/Buccaneer solution was too big and heavy

Hello all,

Anyway I didn’t want to leave without saying thanks to the people who were genuine.

I think form that line that CockneyJock has not returned to the forum, he was just making his farewells.

A pity as some interesting comments regarding the assembly at Rosyth and the lack of real news that supposedly on the web !

The CVF design when originally selected was 300m long and the 20m removed from the lenth was mainly in the fwd end of the hanger which effectively put the end of the catapult into the angled landing deck when previously it was clear of it.

It should also be noted that they are using the 90m catapults, the shorter 75m ones would probably not foul the landing area but they prefer the capability of the full length cat over flight deck operational flexability !.

I see they have shown 12 F35s on deck. So that’s what the air group will look like. At least there won’t be a problem finding room for them.

There are 3 F-35C on the deck lifts if your look at the starboard rear view on the link 😉