Originally Posted by
SLXOwft
N_a_B, I believe the USN use of this island position goes back as far as the Kittyhawks? In a way it may be odder that they didn't move from the 'traditional' position when designing the CdG.
Clearly the French are not sold on the 'benefits' of the two island design. They are however willing to accept the additional costs of sticking to nuclear power and CATOBAR; Also 25% higher crew numbers than QNLZ & POW (assuming the '2000 marins' includes the airgroup).
Slight Thread Drift
Have you read this paper?
The Queen Elizabeth Class Aircraft Carriers: Airwake Modelling and Validation for ASTOVL Flight Simulation It stretches my understanding but I was interested that they considered that the operations lift between the island could affect the airflow. I trust that this was investgated later on.
Not quite. The Kitty Hawk location is further forward - as was Enterprise and Nimitz - mainly to incorporate a lift aft of the island (boiler room position also impacted on CV). Trouble was you ended up with a bottleneck that restricts access to a larger chunk of the stbd quarter parking area, which is why Ford has moved the island further aft - as have our French friends. It's only really a factor where you have a CTOL or STOBAR angled deck.
As BIng points our, our two island design is heavily influenced by provision for uptakes - no point having separated machinery spaces if the uptakes are a single point failure or demand complex ducting routes. Emitter separation is also a driver. The use of the after island as Flyco is just a happy by-product.