Buccaneer - failed carrier launch

[etsd0001]

What you can see when the a/c is postioned on the cat' are the cable strops.

The strop is looped round the leading edge of the cat' shuttle and then attached to the a/c. Once fitted, the shuttle is driven forward to tension it and in doing so the a/c is rotated until the tail skid touches the deck. This gives the wing an optimium angle of attack of 9 degrees.

Now a steel hold back bar is fitted between the tail of the a/c and a fitting in the cat' groove. part of this bar is stressed to fail at 51,000Lbs. The idea is that the combined impulse of engines and the catapault is applied instantaneously and in the reqd quantity at launch.