Flying off the Deck
 

Just been reading an article in a flying magazine about a pilot attempting to do his first night deck landing in a Phantom (three "bolters" and off to land ashore). As a young first tourist on 360 in the 60s I heard tales from the RN aircrew about their style of flying, carrier ops in particular. So the question is, how difficult was operating off a carrier compared with operating off land bases - standing by for incoming...........................

The "runway" was always into wind, so no crosswind problems !

In a nutshell - "The three best things in life are a good landing, a good orgasm, and, a good bowel movement. The night carrier landing is one of the few opportunities in life where you get to experience all three at the same time. (Author unknown, but surely someone who's been there).

Sums it up pretty accurately !

A lot of the difficulty revolves around the lighting available. There can be little or no depth perception which is important for a night visual approach. The lighting has changed over the years and tends to be less in an operational situation.

Hello Sailor:D Not strictly true.

The carrier sailed into wind but with the angled deck there was a slight cross wind component.

What was/is the reasoning to having an offset deck? ie why have two runways when one would do the trick?

Being a simple crab I'd guess one reason (probably if many) is that you can perform the aforementioned low bolter/miss the wires, etc,, without clobbering any aircraft positioned "up front" :E near or on the bow catapults.

DaveReidUK - genius! Thank you. I like the rubber deck - I could sometimes do with this with undercarriage. All hail Winkle Brown.

As a young and innocent rotary wing pilot on my first tour back in the '60's I went up on the flight deck one wild night and stood near the island to watch Sea Vixens carrying out night decklanding practice including touch and goes. Only did it the once - it scared the bejesus out of me! Only watched them from Goofers after that. Sea Vixen Observers must have had balls of steel to sit in that cubby hole with only a tiny side window to see out of during a carrier landing.

Much easier to stop and land than land and stop in my opinion!

Here is a link to my absolute, all-time favourite Flight International article, back in the day, when it was an interesting read.

"The Ark's Strike Power" 1976 | 2198 | Flight Archive

A very compelling account a backseat ride in a Buccaneer launched from the Ark offshore from Virginia, combined with detailed descriptions of operations on the carrier

I love learning new words. :O

goofers | naval air | goofers platform | 1946 | 1719 | Flight Archive

Just to clear up an issue. Nil wind, carrier speed provides the wind. Result is a cross wind for the angled deck.

I seem to remember reading an F-4B driver saying that he'd rather face a couple of MiGs than do another night landing on a deck.

You make it sound as if a carrier can only launch and recover aircraft in dead calm conditions, which I'm sure isn't what you meant.

That would be a tad inconvenient in a war. :O

As 4Greens says, the only time you had a crosswind over the deck for landing fixed-wing aircraft was when the actual wind in the vicinity was zero.

If the actual wind was anything above zero then the Officer of the Watch would select a ship's heading which would ensure that the relative wind was straight down the angled deck for landing aircraft.

Thanks for that.

Forgive my ignorance of these things, but does that imply that the necessary ship's forward speed will be a function of the wind speed (given that the effective "drift" angle is fixed when the carrier is built) ?

So for example in a light wind, you can't steam ahead at 35 kts and expect to get a relative wind direction down the angled deck ?

Dave,

As explained, the ship would steam on a heading to give a relative wind down the angled deck but in nil wind there would be a resulting (slight) crosswind for the angle.

Whilst I did plenty of night DL's rotary on a variety of decks I only had one night sortie in a Gannet; I'd have loved to do one in a Bucc or an F4!

To answer the OP the difficulty of deck landings (DLs) compared to shore based was reflected in the long wait for the experience level to build up until a pilot was qualified. For FW they would be day qualified, NDV (non diversion flying) and night qualified all with their own criteria of competence. We RW only had to put up with day/night/command qualifying since we were NDV most of the time once we got over the horizon from land ;)

In response to Democritus' comment I quite enjoyed being on the flight deck during night ops, and frequently we'd be out there waiting for the FW recovery to finish so that we could do a running change on our cab for the next sortie. Ark was intensely difficult for RW as they created a munitions dump extension of the deck aft of the island which became Spot 6 and the favoured spot to put Sea Kings for turn rounds. Night landings there with Ark turning hard out of wind to regain the MLA in marginal weather was....character building. Swing the lamp for a few tall tales :cool:

Thanks, John.

Yes, I understand the part about the ship's motion generating a crosswind component across the angled deck.

So, assuming it's steaming at 35 kts in calm conditions, with a nominal 9° angled deck, you would have about five and a half kts of built-in crosswind.

And in windy conditions, the ship would sail on a heading such that an equal and opposite crosswind component resulted from the wind, with the net effect producing a relative headwind straight down the angled deck.

But obviously the latter scenario depends on the actual wind speed being at least five and a half kts. So my (rephrased) question is - what happens in a light wind?

Does the ship steam slower, so that the built-in crosswind effect is reduced and can still be cancelled out by the lighter wind?

Or does the ship still steam at full speed, to maximise the headwind component, with the residual crosswind being accepted as a fact of life?

I appreciate that we're only talking about a few knots of residual crosswind, and the wind itself may well be variable in strength and direction, so the question may be an academic one.

Just curious and keen to learn.

Dave,

Flat chat, regardless!

An oft discussed issue was that nearly all FW landings were left wheel first, so any crosswind (from the right) obviously had little or no effect on the arrival.

http://www.eacott.com.au/gallery/d/1...+Ark+Royal.jpg

http://www.eacott.com.au/gallery/d/1...cc+landing.jpg

Thanks, that makes sense.

Though only after I'd looked it up in my Aussie Slang dictionary. :O