Lets talk about aircraft carriers, mainly 2 totally unrelated questions I have about them.
I’ve noticed that they keep the planes extremely close to the edge of the deck. Has a plane ever fallen overboard? Would it sink quickly, or would they have time to fish it out with a deck crane or whatever? What happens to the person responsible for ‘chaining’ it down? Would they get thrown in the brig? Thrown out of the navy? Or would they just dismiss it with a “Don’t worry, these things happen”?
I’ve been looking around at different countries aircraft carriers, and it appears to me that the US is the only one that uses catapults. All the other carriers had a jump ramp style deck, and are shorter in length then our carriers. How can they get a plane off a shorter deck with no catapult? They can’t all be using harrier jets can they?
Thanks, just some random questions popping into my head on a slow workday.
Yes it’s entirely possible to accidentally drop a plane off the edge of the flight deck. The deck edge coaming is like a curb only about six hinches high. More than easy enough to get over it if a tractor driver is moving too fast. It’s a risk but like everything else on a carrier it’s dangerous so people are very, very careful. A plane is never unchained from tiedowns unless the tractor is connected and someone is riding brakes or the engine is turning with a crew in the cockpit. When a plane is spotted there is always someone in the cockpit riding brakes while manually pumping the hydraulic accumulator. I’m sure it’s happened but can’t recall any specific reports.
FWIW the closest I saw to that was a near elevator accident on the Ranger (CV-61). An alert 5 fighter was spotted with one main wheel on elevator 4 and the other two on the deck. The elevator decided it wanted to drop a foot. That got our attention. We carefully got the crew out but there was little we could do if the elevator dropped. Suprisingly the tiedown chaines, two on each mount, held but were probably close to failure. They managed to ge the elevator back where it shold be and locked but things could have turned very unpleasant, loud and expensive.
A plane in the water sinks far too fast for any hope of recovery. A fueld F-14 weighs about 65,000lbs so its not particularly buoyant. A Hawkey or something with lots of internal cabin volume might float for a bit. There’s a reason aircrews are trained in underwater esacpe. Even if a plane floated long enough to snatch it with a crane it would be a moot point unless the carrier wasn’t moving. They are always moving. The Nimitz class carriers weigh around 95,000 tons so they don’t stop on a dime. They can cruise over 30 knots so coming to a stop might put you into the next time zone.
I think some South American countries still use conventional carriers, mostly obsolete, small US carriers - refitted WWII types. We are the only country sailing modern big deck carriers such as the Kitty Hawk, Enterprise and Nimitz classes. The little carriers can’t handle big planes like F-14s and the A4 skyhawks and such they fly are getting pretty long in the tooth as they’ve been out of production for more than 20 years. IIRC the Russians have a Yak VTOL plane that can use a ski jump style ramp on carries like the hybrid Kiev. http://www.bharat-rakshak.com/NAVY/Gorshkov.html
The French carrier Charles De Gaulle has a ‘conventional’ flight deck, if I remember rightly. The Royal Navy has also commissioned two conventional carriers to replace the three Invincible-class V/STOL carriers, and these will carry non-V/STOL Typhoon fighters in service.
The French CDG does have steam cats, but I beleive they want to use their Rafales and aren’t in on the Typhoon. The Steam catapult is a British invention. I am not sure what we did (how we worked our catapults) before then; perhaps hydraulically? I know that the old WW2 battleships launched their floatplanes off catapults that were ballistically fired, with something like a huge blank gun cartridge.
I once read --but of course can’t remember where-- that in the 1960’s an incident occurred where an A-4 rolled off the flight deck. Bad, but worse (and the reason it made history) was that it had a live nuclear weapon underneath. Supposedly, this occurred in VERY deep water like the Marianas Trench or some such. I am told that before SSBNs were in service in numbers, it was practice to for the big carriers to keep one or more aircraft on alert with a nuke. Padeye will likely recognize this as one of those “now, this ain’t no shit” stories from a Sea Daddy.
mega-frickin’-ROFL! I haven’t heard the term “sea daddy” in ages. It’s a no shitter as well. While it is the stated policy of the United States to neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons on vessels I know that some bombs are ordinary and some bombs have armed marines around them. You do the math. This was the case at least in the early eighties.
Not necessarily. They use a ramp that acts like a ski-jump. The ship is turned into the wind, plane puts its flaps down and guns it off the ramp. It works… [sub]usually[/sub]
Almost certainly so. I’m not aware of any non-VTOL jet that can take off without a catapult. Harriers launch in a transition setting between vertical and conventional flight. This allows them to take off with a higher gross weight than
The only non-vertical, non catapult takeoffs I’m aware of in the past 20 years were with the old piston engine C1 trader cargo planes but that was rare instances in the early eighties. I’m sure it could be done with a turboprop like a Hawkeye or Greyhound but I doubt if it has been done and those aren’t combat aircraft anyway.
Good link. What’s interesting is the way the Kuznetsov has a phenomenal amount of non-aircraft carrier type weaponry - SSSM’s, ASW. It’s sacrificing payload that could be dedicated to aircraft for non-carrier missions. I wouldn’t have thought it was cost effective to have a carrier chasing submarines; it’s risking a high value asset against a (relatively) low value target.
It’s as if the USSR (original designers) couldn’t decide on what the ship’s mission was. Perhaps that’s reflected in calling it a heavy aircraft carying cruiser rather than an aircraft carrier. Alternatively, it could be a lack of belief in the ability of the ship’s escorts to protect it, so the ship has to defend itself.
Re: Kuznetzov: Maybe it has everything including ths kitchen sink because it was designed by a “Naval Committee” instead of being based in a longer tradition of Carrier operations.
Re: Nukes on carriers: (Now, this ain’t no shit) In the days before the SSBN was in service in wide numbers and before the missiles had hit-anywhere-on-earth range, carrier based aircraft were used to fill the percieved gaps. Nowadays, a few fighters are almost always fuled up with weapons ready to run intercepts in case of attack by whomever, or in case there is a need to intercept something, etc. In the days I refer to, they also kept one or two bombing-capable aircraft loaded with a “special weapon” in case there was a need to suddenly go to all-out war against some nuclear power. Keeping an aircraft on alert (especially if you don’t intend to launch it except under the most extreme conditions) is a pain, and of course it also means X less aricraft that can’t be used for regular missions. And there’s the whole deal Padeye mentions about special Marine details to guard what may or may not actually be real weapons, special magazines, special control over the weapons and components, etc. The policy was never popular in the Navy except among those brass who wanted to be sure the Navy had a piece of the strategic pie. So once the SSBNs came on line, the alert nuke a/c went out and the policy of carrying nuclear bombs on carriers became a rarely-if-ever thing, although the “we don’t confirm or deny” policy (like a shell game) meant we act as if we do or at least can do this to this very day.
I believe that Aviation Leak & Space Mythology once stated that although there was a lot of grief over “nuclear cruise missiles” on US ships (this was during the “homeporting” controversy in the 1980’s), there really were no more than 28 such nuclear weapons in the entire USN, and that due to the costs of maintaining and securing them the Navy took them out of service rather quickly. This was an instance of the “we don’t confirm or deny” policy working against the Navy, rather than for it.
As far as a/c falling off the edge, I was on the USS Saipan, LHA (a helicopter carrier) in the Gator Navy, 22nd MEU in 1991-92. I was the cargo, in the Marine Expeditionary Unit. We had Harriers aboard, and during high seas air ops, we had a Harrier taxiing to his spot (next to the edge) when he lost front wheel control (apparently they only have control in a 90 deg arc???) and the plane rolled toward the edge as the ship rolled same direction. It went over. There are steel nets all around the flight deck, down horizontally during flight ops, up vertically duing non-op times. The plane got caught up in the net, partially on deck, engine still running. Pilot ejected. Plane Captain climbed up on the hanging, running Harrier and shut it down, one of the bravest acts I’d seen on that cruise. The pilot floated down from the ejection, under the parachute, and the chute got hung up on that same safety netting elsewhere on the ship, hanging him below the deck, above the water. He awoke to see something big and gray coming toward him, then going away, then coming toward him, then going away. He was swinging, and that was the hull. He was pulled up hand over hand by three guys.
Amazing sequence. We all thought the plane blew up from the ejection seat explosion. We thought the Harrier was gone, we thought the pilot was dead or at least wet. Hell, as it was we didn’t even need to slow the boat down. I saw this on the video camera in the Ready Room as it happened, then heard the rest on the Safety recaps meetings as they dissected the incident.
A Harrier is a relatively light plane, but this one did not get wet, the net was strong enough.
Regarding the heavy armament of Russian carriers, the Soviet/Russian navy has long put on every sort of weapon they could physically fit onto their ships. I guess they like spares…
Probably, though, it relates as much to the cost of ships - few nations can afford to have a ship that just launches aircraft, hunts subs, or does anti-aircraft duty as the US can. The Russians just took it to extremes - all of their ships seem to be jacks - of - all - trades. Good reference here.
If anyone is even slightly interested in flight sims on their PC, Flanker 2/2.5 models the Kuznetsov and the take off ramp. From what I understand, it does a pretty good job of it too.
Standard Soviet design philosophy. Build ships to be as multi-purpose as possible, ecause they didn’t have as many ships as they wanted. Also, earlier Soviet naval aircraft weren’t particularly capable, so why not slug a few SSMs on that big ‘ol hunk o’ steel…?
Differing fleet needs, geo-political needs, and design philosophies, that’s all.
There is some very interesting film of US carriers during the evacuation of Siagon. Crew are pushing helicopters over the side to make room for more to arrive. I don’t know if these were the big carriers or helicopter carriers, but it looked like those choppers fell a long way.
Add Brazil to the list of operators of conventional CV-type carriers. The French Clemenceau was sold to Brazil after the de Gaulle went operational, renamed the Saô Paulo. Brazil has maintained conventional-type carriers since WW2, but at least since 1980 did not operate any cat-launched AC off of the old Minas Gerais – probably not economically worthwhile to refit.
The Argies did operate cat-launched fighter/strike AC (A4s and Super Etendards) on the carrier 25 de Mayo up to 1980/81, but age caught up with the ship shortly before the Falklands War. (and if it hadn’t, a RN sub would have…)
The new Brit CV(F) type aircraft carriers are expected to be in service 12 years from now.
This was the case at least in the early eighties.