A brilliant piece of telly - why 'Britains Biggest Warship' was a great advert for the Royal Navy
The recent TV series by Chris Terrill (Britain’s Biggest
Warship) has now concluded. This three-part show followed the challenges of
taking HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH (QEC) out of the builder’s yard and through to
becoming a commissioned warship.
Years in the making, it provided a candid perspective on the
challenges of what it means to bring a new aircraft carrier into service. The
reviews and the commentary online has been overwhelmingly positive, and Humphrey
personally regards this as the best TV programme made about the Royal Navy in
years. So why did it work so well?
It seems to be surprisingly difficult to make good television
shows about life in the Royal Navy. Documentaries about the Army can rely on easy
footage of exercises and the dramas of being in the field under fire. Indeed
Chris Terrils previous show ‘Commando’ interspersed training footage at
Lympstone with his experiences of being under fire in Afghanistan when working
with Royal Marines on the ground. This made for compelling TV.
By contrast ships are often harder to film –
documentaries that rely on ‘characters’ do not perhaps explore in enough depth
what really makes the ship work, while getting usable footage of a ship doing stuff
requires time in a helicopter or RIB – which is costly and not always feasible.
Unlike Army shows, it is rare to get a TV show where ships fire ordnance either
– live firings being an extremely rare feature in any Ships programme.
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Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
A documentary is often filmed over a period of weeks or
months, with the film crew embarked usually for a few days at a time over a sustained
period. This makes it hard to keep a coherent story going and increases the
likelihood of their not being embarked when something interesting is going on.
For example, the recent HMS OCEAN documentary covered a routine transit of the
Straits of Hormuz but didn’t cover the far more risky and challenging (at the
time) Bab-Al-Mendab transit.
It also increases the reliance on personalities and
stories, which many viewers, particularly those of a military background, find
grating. This though is the only way to get footage that is vaguely usable –
the challenge being that over a period of months this must be edited down to a
few minutes of usable screen time for each person – which can tell a highly
compressed story that does not always accurately portray what went on.
Finally, many documentaries get a negative reaction from
their non-target audience. The Channel 4 documentary ‘Sailor School’ was utterly
loathed by many serving RN personnel, who saw it as an insult to the work done
at HMS RALEIGH. But they were not the target audience, whilst Careers Officers
reported a significant rise in many young people applying to join who had seen
the show and loved it. Its hard to get a uniformly positive reaction to many
shows.
So given these challenges, why did ‘Britains Biggest Warship’
succeed in unifying praise, where so many other documentaries have failed?
The Platform
Firstly the show did a great job of making QEC come to
life as a showcase of capability. Rather than focus too heavily on individuals,
it instead wove together multiple vignettes and stories to show just how
capable the ship is, and how much work has gone into her. Watching it made you
realise in a way that endless MOD press releases about the ship being the length
of double deck buses didn’t’ just how large and capable she is.
This was underpinned by a film style that really brought home
just how capable the UK defence industry is, and how much work went into
bringing the ship together. It was pleasing to see the role of industry front and
centre – without them, there would be no QUEEN ELIZABETH.
It was also nice to watch a show that was able to capture
the challenges of sea trials in a non-sensationalist manner. Sea trials are an
inherently complicated part of ship acceptance, particularly for a first of
class vessel. The show did a great job of explaining why it was so complicated,
and in showing not only things going wrong, but more importantly how quickly
they were fixed. The story of the problem solving to get the propeller problem
resolved was fascinating to watch and a great example of the skills and
co-operation necessary to fix a challenging engineering problem quickly.
Its easy to moan about how the ship went to sea and had
problems with her propellers, but sea trials exist to make sure things work as
intended. When you’re taking a theoretical design featuring millions of parts
and turning it into a finished product 10 years later, it is inevitable that
there will be bugs. What matters is how quickly they get fixed. A good contrast
is the French experience with Charles De Gaulle, where a propeller fell off on
sea trials and the flight deck was found to be too short.
The People
Where this show succeeded was in telling the human story
of the ship and her crew. It was clear in all the interviews conducted that
there was a real sense of enormous pride by all the crew in the vessel and what
she was capable of.
It was genuinely uplifting to watch and listen to young
naval ratings talk with real confidence about their careers, the opportunities
they had and the great future that a career in the Naval Service had given them.
They were a real credit to the Service. Similarly, it was good to see the show avoid
the lazy trap of ‘drama’ by catching sailors on a bad day for an interview
(easy over 2 years of filming) and turning a short bad day into ‘DRAMA’.
Instead the show really brought out the finest qualities
of the men and women of the Naval Service and helped show how much it has
changed. It was interesting to note the comments online by former ratings who
were pleasantly surprised at how much the modern Officer corps differed from
the ‘Old Etonian’ model they remembered. They admitted the show had gone a long
way to breaking down their past stereotypes by showing how different the RN is
today.
Watching the show, one was left with a real sense of delight
at the pride shown by everyone in their platform and in meeting and overcoming the
challenges they faced. It was great too to hear the stories of how people had
been given a second chance and made something of their life in the RN – the former
convict who’d turned his life around was a great example of how the Navy makes
people into something better than who they used to be.
It was particularly interesting to see how the show
approached the issue of women at sea. Chris Terrill was also the producer of ‘HMS
BRILLIANT’ a documentary which covered the deployment of the Type 22 Batch 1
Frigate to the Balkans in the early 1990s. There was controversy at the time due
to the reception by many of the Ships Company to the presence of women onboard –
still a very new development for the RN.
In 2018 the idea that there was once an issue with women
at sea would seem ridiculous to the overwhelming majority of RN personnel – many
of whom were born after the ban was lifted. But in the early 1990s, there was
still a very large contingent of personnel who had spent many decades serving
at sea in all male ships. The level of cultural change required to adapt to an
entirely new way of working and life in what was a very close-knit community was
difficult – it is reasonable to say that the documentary captured how challenging
it was at times.
But, equally this is now almost 25 years ago – a literal
lifetime to many of the crew on QEC. The RN has changed and now almost all its
personnel will have joined after the ban was lifted and have never known
anything different. In some ways this series
represents the completion of a journey, by showing how the RN has changed,
adapted and overcome its early problems and now wholeheartedly integrated women
into sea service.
Particularly interesting was the way in which the 1st
Lieutenant was shown on the original documentary to have clear views on women
at sea, which he admits he holds, but also admits that he would not go to sea
without them. His very honest and human way of explaining this captured the challenges
some of the older sailors who remember life before women were at sea must feel.
While his views may seem anachronistic now, it is worth remembering that the RN
has come a very long way in 30 years, and that there are still people out there
who remember the Navy of old.
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Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright |
The Potential
The final great thing about the show was the way it showcased
the enormous potential offered by the QEC / F35 combination in a manner that
avoided slipping into unnecessarily technical or jingoistic speech.
The QEC platform has huge potential for the future, and is
very much a world leader. It was telling to consider that when she was pictured
next to the USS GEORGE BUSH, one was looking at a class of ship whose namesake (USS
NIMITZ) was laid down in 1968 – 50 years ago, and is still in service.
The NIMITZ class are very impressive platforms, but they
are at their heart based on an over 50 year old design. The QUEEN ELIZABETH represents
the first entirely Western new carrier design in decades, and is being keenly
watched by the USN, who are reportedly very impressed (and envious) of the ship
and her capabilities.
The show managed to put across a simple but very effective
message. The UK is a nation capable of building astoundingly complex warships
able to use the most modern technology and conduct operations across the globe
at a time and place of its choosing. This would not be possible without the enormously
capable UK shipbuilding and wider defence industry, or the efforts of both DE&S
and the Aircraft Carrier Alliance to deliver these ships into service.
The show did an outstanding job of showcasing just how
much work went into getting QEC ready to become a commissioned warship. Chris
Terril and his team should be immensely proud of their show, and the MOD
deserves real credit for supporting and enabling it to happen. Is it too much
to hope that a 2nd series will be made to follow the flying trials
and embarkation of F35 though?
It would be great to see a 2nd series - even though we know there would still be the trolls that would deny it has aircraft!
ReplyDeleteIt has no aircraft or AEW capability and won't have for another 5 years.
DeleteWrong. IOC for Crowsnest (first 849 flight operational) is due 2020. IOC for F35 carrier strike is 2021. These are primarily funding constraint-driven.
DeleteI noticed it is listed on BBC iPlayer as Series 1 Episodes 1-3 rather than just Episodes 1-3, so am hopeful there will be at least one more series therefore - Series 2 rotary and fixed wing trials, S3 first deployment maybe?
DeleteGreat series, and a v impressive ships company
As one of the ship’s designers, starting on concepts in 1998 and seeing it through to trials I am delighted to observe what others see in this new class of ships. The feature that the US navy is most interested to see is the UK design concept of ‘Lean Manning’. Typically a US carrier of roughly the same size would require a crew of 3000personnel, compared with QE Class of approx 700. (These figures do not include the Air Wing). Rest assured if we had not introduced smart new concepts like my Mechanised Weapon Handling Facility, and many others the ship was unaffordable in both Acquisition and through-life costs and the Treasury would have culled the project years ago. The film shows a lot of the important stuff but does not dwell on any of these features. I hope there are future programmes that can bang the drum for UK Naval Engineering. I have offered Chris T my services to explain it all to him. We will see what happens. Malcolm Burton.
ReplyDeleteMalcolm - thanks for your comments and I utterly agree with your thoughts on showcasing naval engineering in future.
DeleteI am curious about how vulnerable these automated systems are to battle damage such as racking. Also single point failures,can problems be fixed or bypassed in combat environment?
DeleteGrubbie, you will just have to trust that we knew what we were doing. My background includes submarine weapon handling systems, Trident Missile Systems, Hypervelocity Launchers and suchlike. All manner of vulnerables are considered and failure modes analysed and taken care of. If I say to you that QE/POW Class are realistically 2 ships in one, one inside the other and one behind the other it might give you a clue as to how deliberate we were with the designs.
DeleteWell they say that necessity is the mother of all invention so it's great to see that our boffinry has triumphed over the treasury.
DeleteThe whole of the UK owes you a pint.
We should consider ourselves extremely fortunate that this critical project has been allowed to reach fruition. Many commentators believed that it would not and one wonders what the outcome would have been had the build been delayed by another 1-2 years. Massive respect to all involved from design team to shipyards to the crew themselves. I remember in 1985 when Ark Royal was on her delivery voyage that the TV news reporter commented that she would probably be the Navy's last big ship. Thankfully, he was wrong.
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The Navy is the integral part of the military. The Navy ensure the security of the state in water. The US navy is the strongest navy in the world. Navy bases
ReplyDeleteBut where is the air-defense and CWIS?
ReplyDeleteTrust us,we know what we are doing,said the designers of rapier mk1 and a totally non functioning torpedo prior to the Falklands campaign. Trust us they said as they fitted both gyrocompass in the same compartment of the type 42.
ReplyDelete