Aircraft Carrier Question
 

So do ALL planes need the catapult/arrestor system to takeoff/land on an aircraft carrier?

Say the Lexington?

What type of cargo craft can land on her?

Maybe adding ski ramps?

Even thinking about WW 1/2 type of aircraft...

The only jet plane that could take off and land on a carrier without either aresting wires/gear or a catapult would be the Harrier - either the USMC version or the RAF version. During the Falklands the British used a container ship to bring Harriers to the Falklands and they took from there.

Never considered if a WWII airplane could land successfully on a modern carrier without having to have her arresting wires in order. They took off without catapults but landing could still be hairy unless they came in almost at stall speed. The RAF landed aircraft during the Norway evacuation on carriers that didnt have aresting gear successfully.

However all depends how operational you want them to be - i.e. how much load they can carry and still get off the carrier or land successfully. If I remember right the RAF planes that landed on that carrier came in about as light as they could make them.

As far as I know the Harrier still needs a ski ramp to enable it to take off from a carrier with a full load of fuel / weapons (I think it can take off vertically if neccessary but its maximum take off weight is so reduced that it can only do so when very lightly loaded). As Olefin has stated Harriers were taken to the Falklands aboard merchant ships (SS Atlantic Conveyor and Atlantic Causeway) but it wasn't planned to fly combat missions off the ships - the intention was to use them to carry "spare" to replace anticipated losses to enemy action, which would then operate off the two RN carriers if required. However as Olefin said, Harriers did land and take off from both vessels, but not to go directly into combat (there's a lot more info on this link, including a couple of photos)

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2012/0...r-falklands30/

As for your other questions, a C130 Hercules made multiple landings / take offs on the USS Forrestal in 1963 without a tail hook or catapult so it's obviously possible on some carriers (I have no idea how the Lexington compares to the Forrestal). More info here

http://www.theaviationzone.com/facts..._forrestal.asp

good info there

and never even thought about the Doolittle raid bombers - although if I remember right those bombers may have been winched aboard - but they were able to take off fully loaded -

Takeoff would be more likely to be possible but still probably very difficult.

I found some stats and an A-4 with minimal stores, on a carrier going full speed into a 30 knot head wind would only need to accelerate to about 70 knots relative to the ship. I think that would be possible with the full run of the deck.

The problem with landing is that minimum speeds are generally at least 20% faster than takeoff, and I believe that breaking is not going to give you the same deceleration rate as the engines would for acceleration.

plus keep in mind the fun it is to land on a carrier deck unless you have a trained spotter and operational landing lights and other aids - especially if you are talking an untrained pilot

its a great way to take a very rare operational aircraft and carrier and turn them both into flaiming wrecks depending on the ordinance and fuel level on the plane

WW2 carriers had a crash barrier (steel cables) that could be erected to stop tailhook-less planes. It usually did some damage to the propeller, pilot, and plane, but it was better than nothing. No idea if those survived the addition of the angled-deck for landings.

USS Lexington AVT-16 is one of the survivors of the World War II Essex-class carriers, she was laid doen 15 July 1941 and commissioned 17 Feb 1943. She has a full load displacement of 42,500 tons and measures 820ft (250.0m) at the waterline; 894.5 ft (272.8m) overall. She has a hull beam of 103ft (31.4m) and her flight deck has a beam of 185ft (56.4m). Draft is 31ft (9.5m). SHe has a crew of 74 officers and 1,382 enlisted (1,456 total).

She has been assigned as a training carrier since December 1962 and was scheduled for replacement in 1992. She cannot maintain or support tactical aircraft and her deck edge elevator has been welded in place. She is unarmed and mounts SPS-10 surface search, SPS-49 air search and SPS-64 navigation radars.

Lexington serves basically as a sea-based runway for touch-and-go landings in support of the training schools.

USS Forrestal, CV-59 is the first aircraft carrier to be built from the keel up after World War II and is the first true 'super carrier'. She was laid down 14 July 1952 and commissioned 1 October 1955. She has a full-load displacement of 78,200 tons. She measures 990ft (301.8m) at the waterline and 1,039ft (316.7m) overall. Her hull has a beam of 130ft (39.6m) and her flight deck has a beam of 250.25ft (76.3m). Draft is 37ft (11.3m). Crew consists of 148 officers and 2,810 enlisted (2,958 total) with an air group of 300 officers and 3,100 enlisted (total of 3,400), a Marine detachment of 2 officers and 70 enlisted (72 total) is also carried.

She can maintain an air group of a maximum of 85 aircraft. Her armament consists of two 8-cell NATO Sea Sparrow SAM launchers (scheduled to be increased to three during her next refit) and three Phalanx CIWS mounts.

Her Radar suite includes a Furuno 900 series nav, a SPS-64(V)9 nav, a SPS-67 surface search, a Mk23 TAS target acquisition, a SPS-49(V)5 air search, a SPS-48C 3D air search, a SPN-41 microwave landing aid, a SPN-43A marshaling, a SPN-44 microwave landing aid, 2 SPN-42 CCA and 4 Mk95 missile fire control (to be upgraded to 6).

EW/ECM suite consists of SLQ-32(V)4, WLR-1H, WLR-8, WLR-11, SLQ-17, four 6-tube Mk36 SRBOC decoy rocket launchers and a SLQ-25A Nixie towed torpedo decoy.

During the Cold War, the air group was 20 F-14A, 24 F/A-18, 10 A-6E, 4
KA-6D, 4 EA-6B, 4 E-2C, 10 S-3A and 6 SH-3H or SH-60F.

I am thinking like Morrow and the KFS here...

P51/p38 piston aircraft...civilian Cessna's...C2 Greyhounds...ultralight aircraft.

And of course any helicopter and such...

Plus some deck mounted artillery would be nice... :P

you could even add in a couple of Harriers - given a long deck for take off they could probably carry a decent load - not fully loaded but better than just minimum load

My assumption here is two fold:
1. The arrestor/catapult system is removed from the Lexington when it becomes a museum ship
2. Its a rather complicated system that will have minimal spare parts or knowledgeable staff for operation and repair.

I might be wrong but thats why I was thinking of aircraft that could land/takeoff without it...

or you could make the assumption that with the loss of so many carriers in 1996 they tried to get her back and operational but either they didnt manage to do so or they only got one cat back to operational status - or its lacking some final parts (and thus possibly being the focus of player character adventure to get those parts a la Last Submarine type game)

What about the

DHC-5 Buffalo
DHC-4 Caribou
Short C-23 Sherpa
Short 330
Short 360
Short SC7 Skyvan

Or how about an Avenger torpedo bomber - there are a decent number still airworthy in the US - and they would be good for patrol, ASW and attack

Great feedback team. Thanks!!!

I guess I wasnt so far off any how... :)

I was working out the details but something along the lines of trying to bring the "Lady Lex" back online and needing to use cadets from the Galveston Sea Aggies as crew...

This just came to me

North American Rockwell OV-10 Bronco

"With the second seat removed, it can carry 3,200 pounds of cargo, five paratroopers or two litter patients and an attendant"

Lots of STOL aircraft would be able to land on a modern carrier deck without needing arrester cables.

http://youtu.be/pUdzVnZBaoY

http://youtu.be/kEb74IquE1A

The sort of planes that can land on Alaskan rivers (Super Cub, Pilatus Porter for example) would find even a WW2 escort carrier not too hard to operate from.

--
Michael B.

Another option is to carry helicopters instead. I wonder how many Black Hawks or Ospreys a Essex could handle?

Okay....my cousin Jacqui is a USN carrier aviator (she flies F/A-18Es). I've relayed the question to her, and should have a reply in a day or two.

She could carry the Harrier II, A-4s and F-8s for certain, since she had the SCB-27C conversion same as Oriskany. Also AH-1Ws and any other helicopter. Maybe A-10s. She also had the storage and handling facilities for nukes.

What about older civilian types like a Cessna 306 or something...170?

At its heyday, the Lady Lex had an air group of roughly 80 aircraft (Korea). Her last air group before conversion into a training carrier consisted of two squadrons of S-2 Tracker ASW fixed-wing aircraft and a squadronof SH-3 Sea King ASW helos, all told about 45 aircraft.

Any of the Cessna 150-172 series would have no problem size-wise landing on even an Invincible-size deck; my personal best in a 152 was 64 paces (my stride probably wasn't quite a metre) with about a 10-15 knot wind. Most light singles would be ok, non-STOL twins would need the carrier to be augmenting the headwind.
The big difficulty would be training non-carrier pilots to get used to a moving runway.

The Doolittle Raid used 16 B-25 aircraft; the first aircraft (Doolittle's own) had only 142 meters of deck to use.

--
Michael B.

Okay....got a reply from my cousin the Super Bug driver. She says that if you had an Essex, then any aircraft landing will need a tailhook. Period. A Forrestal-class or larger, a WW II warbird, or a light aircraft like a Cessna 182 or a Beech Bonanza, would be able to land, but you'd need to be precise on the approach, because you'd need pretty much all the angled deck to land. To launch, you need 25 knots of wind over the deck, and they did that when the WW II warbirds launched off of Carl Vinson for the 1995 VJ-Day anniversary, or the two B-25s off of Ranger for the 1992 anniversary of the Doolittle Raid.

WW II arrestor hooks are too narrow for today's ships, though.

I wonder how much of a refit it would take to install the proper gear. Or would it be better to try to dig up older Cold War era planes the carrier was refitted to carry back in the 60's. Texas isn't all that far from Davis-Monthan they might have some older Naval Birds that could be salvaged for use.

In the 90s, there were still lots of F-8s at Davis-Monthan and there are likely still dozens of A-4s there.

As I see things developing, A/C loses would be critical by April at least for everyone. The boneyards would have been refurbishing and returning airframes to service as fast as possible. by May at the latest. Lexington would most likely been operating F-8s, A-4, Harriers, and maybe S-2s as well as any helicopters still able to fly. I have her with an airwing of 8xF-8H, 10xA-4G, 6xHarrier II, 5xUH-60 LAMPs III, 3xS-2s, and 12xAH-1W in the Gulf of Mexico in early 1998.

Here's the video of C130 landings on the Forrestal:

http://youtu.be/ar-poc38C84

Needs a lot more distance for the takeoff than for the landing, in fact.

An important function of arrested landings: you get to use a lot more of the deck for other stuff (marshalling aircraft, takeoffs, etc.). If you don't have arresting equipment, you probably don't want to spot planes on deck during landings, even with the angled flight deck.

--
Michael B.

I definitely agree on the boneyard aircraft being available by later in the war - at least until the Mexicans overran Davis Monthan - so the question is how much of a priority would the carrier planes have been with the need to get things like stored Phantoms, B-52's, etc.. back up to speed to replace air losses in Europe, Iran and Korea?

I can see at least some F-8's and A-4's for sure but would any have been left in the US for the Lex or would they have been sent overseas immediately?

I would imagine by late in the war (1998) before things went completely to shit you'd see A1 Skyraiders pulled out of stocks and refurbed for carrier duty, if not land duty. The OV-10 Bronco flew as late as DS; could the A37 Dragonfly do carrier ops?