The HMS Prince of Wales docked in Australia for the first Royal Navy carrier visit since 1997, marking a milestone in UK-Indo-Pacific engagement despite past mechanical setbacks.
The Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, arrived in the Australian naval base HMAS Coonawarra near the port of Darwin on Wednesday. It was a historic milestone for Operational Highmast, the months-long deployment of a UK flattop to the Indo-Pacific region.
Likely, there are sailors now serving onboard the carrier who weren’t born when HMS Illustrious made a port visit to Fremantle, Australia, in 1997. That was the last time a British aircraft carrier docked at an Australian naval base.
The HMS Prince of Wales Docks in Australia
“Once berthed, the ship’s company were treated to a traditional “Welcome to Country” ceremony on the jetty by the native Larrakia people as the historic land owners and custodians of the Darwin region,” the Royal Navy said in a statement.
HMS Prince of Wales, which is leading the Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG25), recently took part in the Australian-led Talisman Sabre 2025 international military exercises that included more than 35,000 personnel from 19 allied and partner countries. For the first time, drills took place in Papua New Guinea as well as in Australia.
During the exercises, the Royal Navy flagship carried out joint air operations with aircraft from the United States Navy’s only forward-deployed flattop, USS George Washington (CVN-73). It was the first bilateral exercise for the nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier since it returned to Japan last November after completing its mid-life Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH) in 2023.
The CSG25 has been mostly without incident, apart from one of the air wing’s fighters being grounded in a distant land for the past month. One of the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning multirole fighters, which had embarked, was forced to divert to an airport in southeastern India due to weather conditions.
However, after it landed, a problem arose with its hydraulic systems, which necessitated the fifth-generation stealth fighter to remain at Thiruvananthapuram International Airport until engineers could be dispatched to resolve the issue.
Only this past Tuesday did the F-35B, the short takeoff and vertical landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, finally begin its return flight to the UK.
Although this left the carrier with one fewer fighter, it should be seen as a minor issue, especially when compared to the past “drama” that HMS Prince of Wales has endured. The carrier was sidelined in August 2022, just as it was preparing for a high-profile deployment to the United States, due to a malfunction with its starboard propeller shaft.
The British Military Is Experiencing Multiple Technical Failures
The carrier had to be towed to port and then to the Royal Navy’s repair facility in Scotland, where the flattop underwent nine months of repairs. Her sister ship, HMS Queen Elizabeth, suffered a similar mishap that also resulted in the expensive warship being taken out of service for nearly a year.
The Royal Navy’s two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were approved in 2007 by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. However, HMS Prince of Wales faced cancellation and scrapping even before it set sail due to concerns over funding. Ultimately, it was determined that abandoning it would be more expensive than completing it.
Although there have been other issues, including an engine room flood in late 2020 that required months of repair work, the problems seem a thing of the past.
More importantly, Operation Highmast is already receiving high marks for HMS Prince of Wales.
Finally, all the warship needs to do is make it back to the UK, and it will be a far more successful deployment than the last Royal Navy vessel to be named for the British heir apparent. The King George V-class battleship HMS Prince of Wales was sent to Singapore in December 1941 to deter Japanese aggression, and had the dubious distinction of being the first capital ship to be sunk by enemy aircraft while at sea!
About the Author: Peter Suciu
Peter Suciu has contributed over 3,200 published pieces to more than four dozen magazines and websites over a thirty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. He is based in Michigan. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: [email protected].
Image Credit: Shutterstock/Martin Lueke.
