The UK Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth has embarked the largest number of warplanes ever onto the deck as it prepares to take its place at the heart of a UK-led NATO Carrier Strike Group. It also represents the largest air group of fifth-generation fighters at sea anywhere in the world.

Two squadrons of F-35B stealth jets – the RAF’s 617 Squadron (The Dambusters) and the US Marine Corps VMFA-211 (The Wake Island Avengers) – have landed on the 65,000-tonne carrier as it sails for exercises with allies in the North Sea.

She will be joined by seven Royal Navy destroyers, frigates and auxiliaries, plus other supporting units to form the group, which will be put through its paces off the coast of Scotland as part of Exercise Joint Warrior – NATO's largest annual exercise.

Onboard, the carrier’s air wing is made up of 14 Lockheed Martin F-35B short take-off vertical landing jets and eight Merlin helicopters. The deployment marks the largest concentration of fighter jets operating at sea from a Royal Navy carrier since 1983.

HMS Queen Elizabeth is expected to be fully operational with strike carrier capability later this year and it is hoped she will be deployed for the first time in early 2021.

Usually based in Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Yuma, in Arizona, VMFA-211 arrived in the UK just under two weeks ago. Landing at the home of the Lightning Force, RAF Marham after the trans-Atlantic flight, they worked up with 617 Squadron conducting the RAF led Exercise Point Blank before embarking in the carrier.

HMS Queen Elizabeth, along with her 1,680 sailors, aviators and marines, is due to return to her homeport of Portsmouth next month.