Bingham artist Tim O'Brien visits HMS Queen Elizabeth

Artist, Tim O’Brien was invited last week by the Royal Navy to visit Portsmouth and have a tour of their fleet flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Tim’s mission was to produce some sketches for future paintings.

He saw most areas of the ship including the bridge and witnessed the crew loading supplies into the hangar before it sailed at the weekend for its next deployment.

The navy’s largest and most powerful vessel is currently the topic of a documentary series The Warship: Tour Of Duty (BBC2).

Tim, from Bingham, said: “ Having visited the navy’s previous two aircraft carriers, HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean, it was interesting to compare their size as the Queen Elizabeth is huge.”

HMS Queen Elizabeth is the largest and most powerful vessel ever constructed for the Royal Navy. This awe-inspiring warship is capable of carrying up to 40 aircraft.

As well as state-of-the-art weaponry and communications systems, HMS Queen Elizabeth boasts five gyms, a chapel and a medical centre.

The flight deck of HMS Queen Elizabeth comes in at an enormous four acres, and will be used to launch the fearsome new F35 Joint Strike Fighter fast jet. Four fighter jets can be moved from the hangar to the flight deck in just one minute.

The ship’s two propellers weigh 33 tonnes each. The powerplant behind them generates enough power to run 1,000 family cars.