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Today on "Impossible engineering"...

The HMS Queen Elizabeth,

an aircraft carrier of record-breaking proportions.

It took cutting-edge naval and aerial engineering...

We're actually going to execute the ship

on rolling vertical landing.

...And bold risk-takers from the past...

We often talk about the bravery of the pilots.

But actually, you know,

they must have been slightly crazy, as well.

I do love this airplane.

...To make the impossible...

...possible.

Captions by vitac www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by Discovery communications

July 2014.

The largest warship in the history

of the British Royal Navy

is being floated for the first time.

The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier dwarfs its predecessors.

This $4.9 billion vessel weighs over 71,000 tons.

For engineer Stuart Justice, it's the project of a lifetime.

The Queen Elizabeth has a range of 10,000 nautical miles.

It can carry up to 40 aircraft,

including the groundbreaking F-35B lightning fighter jet.

Some of the world's strongest marine gas turbines

propel this massive floating airport.

They act as an onboard power station,

generating enough electricity to power a small city.

The Queen Elizabeth will be the flagship of britain,

allowing the nation to undertake major military

or humanitarian missions anywhere on the planet.

But less than a century ago,

a ship of this size and ability would be inconceivable.

Once upon a time, a nation's Navy

was limited to what it could do on the water --

fighting at sea, firing toward land from the water,

or delivering an invading force.

It wasn't until the mid 19th century

that the first attempts to combine air and sea power

were made.

In 1849, an Austrian ship tried to drop bombs on venice

using a hot air balloon.

The mission failed because the wind changed.

It took the development

of a revolutionary new type of aircraft

before the aircraft carrier could be realized.

The seaplane was the catalyst

for a naval engineering revolution.

Oh, that is so cool.

Dr. Rhys Morgan is getting a taste

of the challenges early aircraft-carrier pilots faced.

The birth of the aircraft carrier

depended on the skill of the pilots

and the creativity of the engineers.

But what we recognize as aircraft carriers today

are a long way from the early ideas.

The first aircraft carriers were simple transporters.

Planes had to be lowered onto the water

and launched from the sea's surface --

very slow and very dangerous.

Those early seaplanes were very flimsy.

They were made from wood and fabric.

And the sea conditions made it terrible for the pilots.

Taking off in rough seas must have been incredibly difficult.

We often talk about the bravery of the pilots.

But actually, you know,

they must have been slightly crazy, as well.

There had to be a better way.

Then in 1912,

British pilot Charles Sampson attempted the impossible

when he launched a seaplane

directly from the deck of a moving battleship.

It was leftenant Charles Sampson

who first attempted to take off from a moving ship.

And, of course, using the principles of engineering,

using the -- understanding the principles of flight,

it was actually very beneficial to have a moving ship,

because the ship was already creating airflow

over the wings.

And that creates lift.

Lieutenant Sampson used a specially adapted battleship

with a short, sloping runway fitted to the foredeck.

And on may 9, 1912,

with the ship steaming into the wind,

Sampson fired up the engine,

and his flimsy seaplane rolled down the ramp and then skyward.

These early aircraft carriers

only had about 30 meters of takeoff deck,

so it was an extraordinary feat

to get the plane off the ship and into the air.

But the ship Sampson used had one major disadvantage --

there was nowhere to land.

The planes could take off quickly,

but they were still slow and dangerous to recover.

As we come in to land, it's gonna be incredibly bumpy

but nothing like the kind of conditions it would have been

for some of those early seaplane pilots

out in the English channel and the north sea.

Just a few years after Sampson's flight,

one man would come up with a solution

that would change naval aviation forever.

In 1918,

shipbuilder William beardmore created the HMS argus.

It was the first ship to use a single flight deck,

allowing aircraft to take off and land on the same runway.

The argus was fitted with a retractable pilothouse

in the middle of the runway

that could be lowered out of sight during flying operations.

This meant planes could be deployed and recovered

in record time.

The aircraft carrier was an effective weapon

for the first time in history.

William beardmore's continuous flight deck

set the template for all modern aircraft carriers.

- The designers of the HMS Queen - Elizabeth aircraft carrier

may owe a debt to William beardmore

and the HMS argus,

but they've taken beardmore's concept to a whole new level.

The Elizabeth is twice as long and three times wider

than the argus.

The deck's 17,000 square feet of surface area

is larger than two football fields.

But the unprecedented size of the Queen Elizabeth

presented builders with a unique challenge.

Their solution --

three different companies would build the Queen Elizabeth

using six shipyards and hundreds of different suppliers

from across the United Kingdom.

Work begins on the Elizabeth in 2008,

requiring enormous manpower.

A collaboration of this scale has never been attempted before.

Each self-contained section of the ship,

complete with cabins, corridors, and pipework,

was constructed in a different location.

Even key mechanical components

are preinstalled in the self-contained sections,

like this huge diesel generator.

Each section is transported by barge

to a giant dry dock in rosyth, Scotland,

where they will be joined together.

If the self-contained sections of the ship don't match up,

the project would be a multimillion-dollar failure.

And in June 2012, it's the moment of truth.

The Queen Elizabeth's hull is assembled,

but to propel this mega-ship,

engineers will need to draw on innovations from the past...

This boat is absolutely gorgeous.

It's so sleek.

It's like a shark going through the water.

And you can understand just looking at it

why they called it the spitfire of the sea.

...To produce more impossible engineering.

Wow.

The Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier

is the next generation of warship

in the British Royal Navy's illustrious history.

This mega carrier is over 900 feet long

and three times the size

of britain's previous aircraft carriers.

But a vessel this size will need a monster motor to move it.

Engineers had to figure out a way to generate enough power

to move this mega-ship

at a fast enough speed for modern warfare.

Less than a century ago,

designing engines with this much power

would have been an impossible task.

Early man relied on elbow grease to push him across the water...

Until he learned how to harness the power of the wind.

Ooh!

It wasn't until the early 1800s that engineers discovered

steam could provide a mechanical solution...

...and another 100 years before diesel engines ruled the waves.

But in the 1940s, a brand-new technology was on the horizon.

Engine power was the difference between life and death

in world war ii.

One boat above all others embraced this philosophy.

This boat is absolutely gorgeous.

It's so sleek.

It's like a shark going through the water.

And you can understand just looking at it

why they called it the spitfire of the sea.

Britain's motor gunboats were on the front lines

of naval combat in world war ii.

This boat, the MGB-81, was built in 1942

and is the only one still running today.

It was an incredibly well-designed boat,

beautifully engineered.

It had these incredible engines.

It had three v-12 Packard engines.

These each had a brake horsepower of 1,250 pph.

That's equivalent to six Formula-1 engines.

And this was in the second world war.

It's just unbelievable.

It's just starting to take off now.

Look at it go.

These boats used incredible amounts of fuel.

They had to carry 10 tons.

And it was high-octane fuel. It was aviation fuel.

If they got hit, they would literally explode.

Being a skipper on that boat was like riding a bomb.

The reason they needed these huge engines

was because the boat was made of mahogany.

It must have weighed a ton.

It would be like your granny's wardrobe.

This boat is idling at the moment.

We're still trying to keep pace.

Hello, there.

You've got a beautiful ship here.

They needed this huge engine capacity

because they needed to get up to a ship,

drop some depth charges,

and then get the hell out as fast as they could.

The MGB-81 can go an astonishing 50 miles an hour,

even while loaded to the brim with heavy armaments and fuel.

Wow, you can see the bow wave just crashing over there.

But just five years later, in 1947,

another motor gunboat would come onto the scene.

...To the wake of new progress at sea.

Jets take the water.

Motor gunboat 2009 was equipped

with a cutting-edge propulsion system --

the gas turbine.

The gas turbine works through a series of stages.

It first sucks in air through the fans at the front,

and then a series of compressors squeeze that air,

increasing the pressure.

And then it mixes the air

with a steady stream of highly explosive fuel

and then combusts that fuel-air mixture.

And that explosion generates very, very hot gases.

And those gases shoot out the back of the engine,

turning these turbine blades.

And these turbine blades drive a shaft

connected to the propeller.

The MGB 2009

was the first naval vessel in the world

to use a gas turbine system.

The innovation was big news.

MGB 2009 is a triple-screw 110-foot craft

featuring a compressor turbine that enables the engine

to develop and maintain greater power

than on any other ship of comparable size afloat.

The gas turbine was once a piece of impossible engineering

that's now commonplace.

Everything from naval vessels to cruise ships

rely on them for power.

The gas turbines on the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier

take this world war II-era technology

to a whole new level.

The installation of the Queen Elizabeth's turbine system

was a feat of engineering in itself.

The Queen Elizabeth is powered

by two Rolls-Royce mt30 gas turbines,

the world's most power-dense marine turbines.

But unlike their predecessors in the motor gunboats of the 1940s,

these turbines are not used

to directly turn the Queen Elizabeth's propellers.

Instead, they act like a giant turbocharger,

generating huge power boosts

to drive the ship's electric motors at key moments.

But the Queen Elizabeth's gas turbines have another vital job.

But a 21st-century aircraft carrier

is only as good as its fleet of fighter jets.

I do love this airplane.

So the Queen Elizabeth is being developed

in tandem with America's latest and greatest fighter jet

to, again, make the impossible possible.

The Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier

is the largest warship ever produced in the United Kingdom.

It's as long as London's houses of parliament

and as tall as Niagara Falls.

But building a next-generation aircraft carrier

isn't just about the ship.

The fighter jets that deploy from it are equally important.

So, the Queen Elizabeth is being developed in tandem

with the new U.S. Lockheed-Martin F-35Bs,

the most advanced short-takeoff and vertical-landing aircraft

in the world.

The F-35B has a top speed of over 1,200 miles per hour

and is virtually undetectable by radar.

The joint strike fighters will take off

using a system unique to British aircraft carriers.

It's known as the ski jump.

State-of-the-art aircraft carrier design,

along with the cutting-edge F-35B,

will make the Queen Elizabeth unrivaled in its capabilities.

But without the pioneering designs of the past,

this combination of air and sea power would be impossible.

After world war ii,

propeller planes were replaced with faster, more powerful jets.

Runways had to grow much longer to accommodate heavier aircraft.

But there are limits to how long a runway on a ship can be.

Airships could be deployed from a small deck space,

but the slow and unwieldy blimps aren't useful in modern warfare.

Helicopters, first mass-produced in the 1940s,

allowed vertical takeoff and landing,

but there's a limit to how fast they can travel

before the forces exerted on the rotors take their toll.

The perfect solution would be a fighter jet

that could take off and land like a helicopter.

Some of the first experiments

fell somewhere between helicopter and plane.

The American-designed convair pogo

was a propeller-driven plane designed to take off and land

while balancing on its tail.

Okay, John, give a little power.

Pick it up a little more, a little more.

Keep her up. Keep your nose up.

Bring her down, John. Attaboy. Okay.

The British had a very different idea.

While Americans experiment with aircraft

which take off standing on their tails,

britain pins their hopes

on an evolution of the flying bedstead.

The flying bedstead was the nickname

given to the thrust measuring rig,

designed by engineer Dr. Alan Griffith.

It took to the air untethered for the first time in 1954,

causing a sensation.

These are the first films of the fabulous flying bedstead.

Whispers of this extraordinary new flying machine

reached us about five months ago.

Designed for experiments in vertical takeoff,

the bedstead has two jet engines mounted end-to-end.

Their exhausts shoot the blast downwards

and thus give the machine its upward thrust.

Alan Griffith's flying bedstead

inspired one of the most revolutionary aircraft

of all time...

...the Harrier jump jet.

Former U.S. fighter-jet pilot Art Nalls

has the only privately-owned Harrier

flying in the world today.

The Harrier was revolutionary

because it was the first operational airplane

to successfully vector thrust.

That gave it what we call

vertical short takeoff and landing capability,

or V/SToL.

I do love this airplane.

Art's had a love affair with the Harrier jump jet for 35 years.

It began the moment he took his first flight in one as a rookie.

He slammed the power board, threw me back in the seat.

The acceleration was unbelievable.

He brought it into the hover, and after we landed,

i just went, "this airplane can do anything.

When do i start?"

The Harrier's capabilities

come from its radical design.

The aircraft has one central jet engine

with large intakes on either side of the cockpit.

Its amazing maneuverability

is thanks to four adjustable nozzles along its fuselage.

These can point thrust in any direction,

allowing the aircraft to hover and even fly backwards.

The Harrier jump jet's gravity-defying capabilities

allowed aircraft carriers to be designed much more efficiently.

Harriers operating from smaller aircraft carriers

are actually force multipliers.

A Harrier could operate from the forward half of the ship,

and helicopters could operate from the stern of the ship,

essentially as if it were two separate runways.

As revolutionary as the Harrier jump jet was in the 1960s,

the F-35Bs on the Queen Elizabeth

will take aircraft-carrier firepower to a whole new level.

To create the perfect operating conditions

for the F-35Bs on the Queen Elizabeth,

engineers are using some equally futuristic technology.

Pilots and engineers are running test flights

in a highly-advanced simulator system

so they can perfect the aircraft and ship design

while they're both still under construction.

The Queen Elizabeth -- it's a marvel of engineering,

and it's a magnificent aircraft carrier.

But without the aircraft, it's pretty much nothing.

It has to interact with the aircraft seamlessly,

and so through this simulator,

we're able to allow the aircraft to take off, land, maneuver,

approach in all sea states, all conditions,

and check that the systems all work and interact correctly.

Actually, there's a very comprehensive representation

of operating from the ship.

It's not only the aircraft cockpit,

but it's also the control tower on the ship, as well.

This multimillion-dollar simulator

allows pilots and engineers to minimize the hazards involved

with running an airport at sea.

It's possibly the only landing point

you can execute a safe landing on for hundreds of miles.

And although it's very big, it's not that big.

It's maybe a tenth the size of a conventional runway

for a military fast jet base.

And although it's a marvel of engineering,

it's only one small point, and it can be difficult to find.

Flying methods have been developed for the F-35Bs

that will be unique to the Queen Elizabeth.

The bread-and-butter landing will be the vertical landing,

and that will be familiar to Harrier pilots and all,

but the difference between the Harrier and the f-35 is,

for us in the U.K., we're actually going to execute

the ship-borne rolling vertical landing,

which is a landing with a certain degree of forward speed,

which allows us to carry more fuel and more stores

back to the ship.

The lift generated by the wings,

combined with the lift generated

by the downward-thrusting engines

allow for a slower approach speed.

This means the F-35Bs can land on a very short runway.

As i touch down, apply the brakes,

and then come to a stop.

The Queen Elizabeth

and its cutting-edge fleet of fighter jets

will be an unstoppable force at sea.

But in modern warfare, every second counts.

It's very, very important to be able to transition

from having the aircraft here stored in the hangar deck

up to the flight deck,

to a large number of aircraft in the sky very, very quickly.

In 2014, a new aircraft carrier came on the scene

in the United Kingdom,

dwarfing every ship the British Royal Navy has owned --

the HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Over 900 feet long and weighing over 70,000 tons,

it's a wonder of the engineering world.

The Queen Elizabeth is the largest,

most technologically advanced warship

ever produced in the United Kingdom.

For engineer Stuart Justice, it's the project of a lifetime.

Below the carrier's expansive flight deck,

the scale of the construction is immense.

At 500 feet long by 100 feet wide,

the Queen Elizabeth's hangar is spacious enough

to hold two battleships inside.

But it's also perfectly proportioned for its real job --

stowing the carrier's fleet

of F-35B fighter jets and helicopters.

But storing the aircraft is only half the challenge.

In modern warfare, aircraft need to be able to travel

to and from the flight deck with ease.

Engineers look to innovations from the past for the solution.

The British may have created the first aircraft carriers,

but it took an American design

to turn them into the kings of the high seas.

The Essex class of aircraft carriers,

like the U.S.S. Intrepid,

have been described as the most significant warships

in American naval history.

They were an innovation driven by the second world war.

The key thing to keep in mind is Europe's already at war.

France surrenders to Hitler.

We're still at peace, but the United States becomes very worried,

so we embark on building the largest naval force

the world has ever seen.

When the U.S. was thrust into war

by the Japanese-led attacks on Pearl Harbor,

having a top-of-the-line fleet of aircraft carriers

became of utmost importance.

As we get to the period past Pearl Harbor,

a carrier goes from the up-and-coming new vessel out there

to being the dominant vessel at sea.

So, as we build less battleships,

we start building more carriers,

and this is our ultimate carrier design of the period.

The designers of the Essex class carriers

took early U.S. carrier designs

and supersized them.

The U.S.S. Intrepid is 60 feet longer

and more than 1/3 heavier than its predecessors.

The key difference with the Essex class,

in terms of the flight deck, is that it's larger.

When we look at the earlier carriers

the United States had built, for the most part,

they had slightly smaller dimensions,

reflecting the fact that when they're designed in the '30s,

we're talking about lighter aircraft.

In some cases, still biplanes.

So you need larger space for these aircraft to launch.

You want to launch more aircraft on a major strike.

With larger, heavier aircraft,

designers of the Essex class aircraft carrier

faced a similar challenge

that engineers of the Queen Elizabeth face today --

how to get planes to and from the flight deck quickly.

A big innovation that allows for that

is one of the elevators being moved off to the side,

sticking off from the flight deck.

This is going to take less space away for the elevators.

The elevator on the side of the deck

allowed planes to be transported from the hangars below

and onto the flight deck

without interfering with flying operations.

These ships were so well-engineered

they became history's most prolific

aircraft-carrier design.

Ultimately, they complete 26 of them,

17 during the second world war.

Intrepid is the third of the Essex class.

Despite coming under heavy enemy attack during the war,

not a single Essex class carrier was sunk.

Engineers had made the impossible possible.

The engineers of the Queen Elizabeth

have taken the United States Essex class carriers'

revolutionary deck-edge elevator design

and supersized it.

But building an elevator with this much lifting power

would be impossible without the work

of one of history's great engineering innovators.

Born in 1810,

William George Armstrong began life as a lawyer

but switched careers to become an engineer.

He invented a simple concept

that changed the world of engineering forever --

the hydraulic accumulator.

Armstrong discovered that

by placing a weighted piston on top of a cylinder of water,

he could store hydraulic energy.

Whenever power was required,

it could be instantly released in a highly controlled way.

His design would be used

on one of history's most iconic landmarks --

London's tower bridge.

Stored hydraulic energy allowed tall ships to pass

along the river thames.

Engineers of the Queen Elizabeth

have exploited Armstrong's genius

to lift heavy aircraft at high speeds.

Their elevator system can raise aircraft

from the hangar to the flight deck

in around a minute.

This incredible design would be impossible

without Armstrong's principle of the hydraulic accumulator.

William George Armstrong and his hydraulic accumulator

may have influenced the Queen Elizabeth,

but today's engineers are leaving their mark, too.

Historically, aircraft carriers

have had very similar profiles --

a large flight deck

and a single tall superstructure known as the island.

But instead of having a single island,

the Queen Elizabeth will have two,

each with its own specific function.

The fore island will be the nerve center

of the ship's operations.

And the aft island will handle the aircraft.

The two massive superstructures were built off-site,

then floated to a dock in rosyth, Scotland,

for installation.

March 2013.

The fore island, all 655 tons of it,

is craned into position.

For the first time,

the Elizabeth's huge floating hull

looks like an aircraft carrier.

Three months later, the aft island shows up,

producing an aircraft carrier

with a profile unlike any other in history.

It's been over a century since the first step was taken

toward what would become the modern aircraft carrier.

By drawing on innovations from the past,

adapting, improving, and making groundbreaking innovations

of their own,

the engineers, designers,

and every one of the 10,000 workers involved

in the construction

of the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier

have succeeded in making the impossible...

Possible.

Speaking personally, being able to work on a program

such as this makes you feel very proud.

When her majesty the queen named the ship HMS Queen Elizabeth

on the 4th of July,

literally, the hairs on the back of your neck were standing up.

It was an incredibly proud moment

for everybody who's worked on it and the nation as a whole

to see that we as a country have built this ship.

May god bless her and all who sail in her.

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