Royal Navy flagship returns home without £100m fighter jet after footage leaked of it crashing into the sea

The Royal Navy flagship is to return home following the first operational deployment of the carrier strike group (CSG), which has been dogged by incidents including the loss of a £100 million fighter jet at sea.

The aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, with seven warships and a submarine, set off from Portsmouth Naval Base following a visit by the Queen in May for its show-of-force voyage to the Far East.

But the ships and their combined crew of 3,700 sailors faced several incidents, both diplomatic and technical, during the 25,000 nautical mile round trip.

The pilot ejected and was found safe, but the state-of-the-art fighter jet languished at the bottom of the sea and has only recently been recovered.

A member of the £3 billion carrier’s crew has been arrested on suspicion of leaking video footage of the incident.

The jets are operated by the renowned 617 Squadron, also known as the “Dambusters” squadron.

A visit to the carrier by Prince Charles scheduled for a few days later was cancelled following the incident.

Earlier in the voyage, Type 45 destroyer HMS Defender was involved in a stand-off with the Russian navy after it sailed close to Crimea in June.

The Kremlin claimed warning shots were fired by Russian vessels at the destroyer as it passed through the contested part of the Black Sea last week – an assertion dismissed by the UK Government, which said only that a routine “gunnery exercise” took place.

Dramatic eyewitness accounts revealed that Defender, which is also returning to Portsmouth on December 9, was buzzed by Russian military jets and the sound of naval gunfire could be heard as it sailed from Odessa in Ukraine to Georgia.

In July, its sister ship HMS Duncan, also arriving at the Hampshire naval base on Thursday, suffered a mechanical issue with its engine, forcing it to undergo repairs before returning to the CSG six weeks later.

In the same month, a number of ships in the CSG, including the carrier, experienced a Covid-19 outbreak despite all the crew being double-vaccinated.

A sailor aboard the Type 23 frigate HMS Kent was also confirmed to have died in July. An investigation has been launched.

The voyage culminated in the carrier taking part in a joint exercise with warships from the US, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan before arriving in Yokosuka.

The exercise was part of efforts to achieve a “free and open Indo-Pacific” vision led by Washington and Tokyo.