In February 2024 it was reported that propeller issues on the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier would leave the vessel incapable of participating in an important NATO exercise. This was only one of several design or engineering faults to affect the Queen Elizabeth, the lead ship of the latest class of British aircraft carriers. A series of mechanical setbacks would go on to disrupt the Royal Navy’s plans for the vessel.
The problem began on Feb. 3, when the Royal Navy reported that “routine pre-sailing checks” uncovered “an issue with a coupling on (HMS Queen Elizabeth’s) starboard propeller shaft”.
As a result, the carrier was not able to leave port in order to join Exercise Steadfast Defender, the largest demonstration of NATO seapower since the Cold War.
In this exercise, the Queen Elizabeth carrier was planned to operate with its sister ship, the HMS Prince of Wales.
The latter ship had recently returned to sea duty and had experienced its own propeller-shaft issues, resulting in the Royal Navy not being able to carry through with its plan for one ship to relieve the other while on-station.
Both ships experiencing very similar problems with their propulsion systems raised the question of whether these mechanical failures were simply part of a normal process of “wringing out” new designs during actual operations.
There are plenty of examples of discovering problems with a new naval vessel – problems of the kind that can only be unearthed when the ship is put to sea.
Potential Design Flaws for HMS Queen Elizabeth?
But the other, far more dire possibility is that there were systemic flaws in the design of these carriers.
Propeller issues seem to be occurring at more than standard frequency and causing operational disruptions. According to a report in The Guardian, the Prince of Wales suffered a breakdown in August 2022, one day after it had set sail for the United States.
The breakdown was caused by a broken propeller shaft, which was later determined to have been misaligned when it was installed.
The vessel also flooded twice during its first year in service, after its commissioning in 2019.
After the Prince of Wales incident, the propellers on the Queen Elizabeth were examined, and the engineering team detected no misalignment issues.
The defects in these propeller systems were thus determined as “not a class issue” with the design of the ships, as the British Ministry of Defense reported in April 2023.
The Guardian’s and other reports raised more questions about the reliability of these ships, and about just how thorough the checks performed on the Queen Elizabeth actually were.
Normal For a New Ship Type or Not?
So are these mechanical issues simply teething issues experienced by a class of relatively new warships, or something more complicated?
Royal Navy representatives stated, “It’s not uncommon to have maintenance issues with state-of-the-art ships which contain complex engineering and technology.” But by comparison with other nations, the UK ships seem to have more than their fair share of difficulties.
France’s Marine Nationale has only one carrier, the Charles De Gaulle, France’s first-ever nuclear-powered carrier. It is the only carrier in the fleet and the only non-U.S. carrier to use a catapult to launch its aircraft.
The ship was commissioned in 2001. It suffered breakdowns in 2009 and 2010, but has experienced no other difficulties since.
In the United States, the brand-new USS Gerald R. Ford carrier, the first in its class, experienced a propulsion-system problem in 2018. This forced the ship to curtail its planned sea trials at the time, but no other serious issues, mechanical or otherwise, have slowed its progress since.
About the Author:
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is now an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
