The Queen’s respect for the Armed Forces shone through in her touching reply when told about the plans to repatriate her, a staff officer has revealed.
Originally, Operation Overstudy included a plan to bring the Queen back to the UK aboard a small BAe 146 if she had died overseas.
It was thrown out following issues with the repatriation of Princess Diana in September 1997 which did not go smoothly "due to difficulties in loading the coffin into the freight bay".
Instead, she was scheduled to be flown home aboard the Royal Air Force's C17 Globemaster aircraft - which is how she returned to London last week after leaving Balmoral, Stoke on Trent Live reports.
Staff Officer Pete Morgan said: “I never met HM The Queen, but when I was a staff officer in 2009, I was tasked with reviewing and rewriting the Operation Overstudy plans, which detail how we would repatriate her body if she died overseas.
"The existing plan was for her to be transported back in a BAe 146, a smart business jet operated by 32 The Royal Squadron.”
When the RAF sought approval for the change of aircraft the Queen touchingly replied: “If it's good enough for my boys, then it's good enough for me."
The Queen’s coffin was escorted home by Princess Anne when Her Majesty returned to Buckingham Palace for the last time after a journey across Scotland.
Her coffin was flown from Edinburgh Airport to London on an RAF Globemaster C-17 flight.
Earlier the same day, the funeral cortege had left Balmoral and drove through several towns and villages where members of the public lined the streets to pay their respects.
On her arrival in London the Queen was guided home to Buckingham Palace in front of hundreds of thousands of mourners in London’s rain soaked streets.
From Perivale to Paddington, generations of families broke from stunned silence to spontaneous applause as Her Majesty’s coffin passed by.
As dusk descended on the capital, brightened only by the guiding light of the Queen’s hearse, royal watchers huddled under brollies to catch a fleeting moment of history.
As the royal cortege snaked through west London from East Acton to Marble Arch, parallel rush hour traffic came to a standstill to witness the Queen’s historic final passage to the sovereign’s headquarters.
Illuminated by the flashlight of thousands of mobile phones, the Queen’s specially commissioned glass hearse designed by Jaguar-Land Rover with Her Majesty’s knowledge, slowed to a crawl towards the Victoria Memorial outside.
