HMS Prince of Wales (R09)

HMS Prince of Wales will be the second of the Royal Navy's two s. As of 2011, the vessel was scheduled to enter service in 2018.

The ship will be assembled at Rosyth Royal Dockyard using blocks built by participating shipyards. Once in service the ship will be officially affiliated with the city of Liverpool, in the United Kingdom. Construction began in May 2011 with the first steel being cut at Govan shipyard by Dr Liam Fox on 26 May.

The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers will be the largest, most powerful surface ships that Britain has ever built. Their design is unique amongst aircraft carriers of the world in the positioning of the ships' flight controls, separate (behind) the ships' main bridges.

Although it had been intended to convert the Prince of Wales to a CATOBAR configuration, the government announced in May 2012 that the Short Take-Off and Vertical Landing (STOVL) F-35B variant jet would be purchased instead. The carrier will now be completed with a "ski-jump", in the STOVL configuration.

Name
The second Queen Elizabeth class ship was given the name Prince of Wales at the same time as her sister ship received the name Queen Elizabeth, making her the eighth ship to bear the name Prince of Wales. However, controversy over the decommissioning of HMS Ark Royal under the terms of the SDSR in 2011, and the subsequent loss of the name Ark Royal led to a campaign for one of the new aircraft carriers to receive it. In May 2011, reports surfaced that HRH The Prince of Wales had been approached by a senior Royal Navy officer on the subject of changing the name of Prince of Wales to Ark Royal, a matter that the Prince of Wales was reportedly "pretty relaxed" about.