The other day I was playing the Desert Combat mod of Battlefield 1942 (basically, a Gulf War simulation game) and was on the aircraft carrier while it was moving. A helicopter approached and tried, with great difficulty to land, but kept veering about erratically 10 feet off the carrier as he tried to land without flipping upside down/crushing people.
Now I know this game’s controls are greatly simplified for the sake of playability/fun, but it kind of put things into prespective- Landing a helicopter on a heaving, churning flight deck appears incredibly hard! Unlike a plane I don’t think helicopters get any arrestor gear to help them land/stop. What’s keeping the flight deck’s movement from pitching the whole helicopter into the ocean when it tries to land?
I know nothing about landing choppers on aircraft carriers, but I do seem to recall that several non-carrier experienced helicopter pilots were able to do it in April of 1975, offshore Vietnam.
It’s gotta be easier than landing fixed-wing aircraft on a carrier. I can’t imagine it’s much more difficult than landing anywhere else, since a heli can hover giving the pilot plenty of time to maneuver. IANAP, however.
I’ve never landed a helicopter on an aircraft carrier, but I’ll make a couple of guesses. First, helicopters experience “translational lift”. This is improved rotor performance resulting from directional flight. What happens is that when a helicopter is in a hover it is flying in its own rotor wash. Once you’re moving in any direction at about 15 knots, you’re no longer flying in your own turbulent air and the rotors work better. Since an aircraft carrier is moving, your rotors are in undisturbed air all the way to landing. I’ve experienced this while landing on windy days.
But there’s also another factor. Ships move up and down. I imagine it can be difficult in heavy seas to time the landing just right. I believe that smaller ships that have helicopter facilities use a cable to actually haul the helicopter onto the deck. IIRC, the cable is lowered from the helicopter and the free end is attached to a winch.
And you have to be careful of air currents generated by the ship’s structure. I think there should be a downdraft at the stern of a carrier as air “spills” off the back. A crosswind that you may feel in the air may be shifted by the “island” on the starboard side. Of course, land-based pilots have to deal with these as well such as in pinnacle landings or on gusty days.
Except for dealing with the rising and falling deck caused by heavy swells, I imagine it’s not that difficult to land a helicopter on a carrier. I’d love to try it.
IIRC, there is a phenomenon at the stern of the deck on a carrier called a “blurple” (or something like that) - this is a bubble of air that actually causes an approaching aircraft to pitch up. Perhaps the chopper was being caught up in that “updraft” and was having trouble… I am sure some other more knowledgeable folks could tell us more about this subject.
Most frigates, destroyers, and cruisers are equipped with a system called RAST (recovery, assist, securing and traversing), where a probe on the bottom of an SH-60 helicopter can be attached to a winch cable on the ship and the helicopter can be pulled in to land when the seas are rough.
In Desert Combat (DC), the choppers are quite hard to land properly*, even on dry land, much less a moving carrier. Just flying around can be difficult if you lose track of the center point for your controls. I would hope that flying a real helicopter would be easier, or at least more intuitive.
Part of the problem is that, like most FPS games, you don’t have much depth perception to know how far away the ground is. In addition, the chopper controls in DC are on the keyboard, which is somewhat suboptimal. You have the arrow keys, which control your cyclic (I hope I’m getting this right, steering about the main rotor), and the forward back keys control the collective (up/down). The strafe keys control your rotation the way pedals would (spin on axis). The problem here is that they don’t auto center, and since they’re keys, it’s hard to tell when you’re centered. So when trying to land it’s easy to wind up oversteering and doing exactly what Incubus was talking about.
Quite frequently you’ll see choppers flying along apparently fine, and then the pilot will get distracted or have network latency problems and suddenly the thing is upside down spinning into the ground.
*for most people. I’m sure someone will be along shortly and say “I can do it every time!” That’s just super.
Never have done it, but I remember someone saying this: “Try fast roping down a 10 foot rope with 12 foot swells.” Simplified, yes. And a different situation. He was rapelling off a helicopter onto an aircrapt carrier.
However, I can imagine landing a helicopter on a flight deck to be really difficult.
I was on a LPD off Vietnam and made a few landings (as a passenger). I sure don’t recall any assist equip, but a LPD is pretty large.
Anyway, the Hueys tended to land while moving forward. I wonder if this was due to the effect mentioned above by Johnny L.A.? I did land a couple of times on a LST. Cross corners, IIRC. That platform sure looks small from a hundred or so feet up.
Peace,
mangeorge
I landed dozens of times on an LHA (Helicopter Carrier) as a passenger (CH-53D, UH-1). They approached from the stern (square end), and came to a hover maybe 40 feet above the center spot, then came down. More of a challenge in swells to come down as the ship deck goes down, rather than when the ship deck is rising. Same for Fast Roping. Ouch if you hit with the deck rising. Ship was moving, maybe 7 to 10 knots.