Originally Posted by
sandiego89
A cable break was my first thought as well. Nasty. I recall the #1 wire being removed from a few of the Nimitz Class carriers some 15 years ago, making them a 3 cable system. I believe the reasoning was the #1 wire was always below glideslope, was less than 10% of arrestments, but with all the care, crewing and maintenance still required. The Fords have only 3. With 3, do they still call the preferred 3 wire the three 3 wire, even though it it is the middle of 3 wires?
Seems like reasonable reasoning for three wires only on two CVNS (listed at the URL). However these NIMITZ Class CVNs ALL have conventional arrestor gear modified to two differing standards (irrelevant to discussion). The FORD Class will use AAG Advanced Arrestor Gear which is technologically much different to the old gear. Long ago it was envisaged to retrofit AAG to some Nimitz carriers but then decided NO.
Advanced Arresting Gear (AAG) | NAVAIR (navy.mil) &
Aircraft Launch and Recovery Systems | General Atomics (ga.com)
ADDITION: I don't recall seeing any other reference online to this so-called 'hit wire'. "...The number two wire, located in the same spot as number three on other carriers, will be the "
hit wire."...
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/OK+tw...gy.-a090332253
LONG AGO LSOs had a newsletter online which was very informative - then the USN / DoD became very secretive with a lot of good information removed from the internet. Some of it survives in my big PDF but sadly some info refers to the online source which is no longer available even on the WayBack Machine. I don't recall at the time the 3/4 wire diagrams were posted in the newsletter whether the question of nomenclature for a '3 wire' on a three wired only 'boat' was mentioned. However I'll post the diagram....
