Just watched a Sea Vixen dump a load of stuff in the sea
 

Admittedly, years ago. Just wonder how often this went on in the past and what a waist and when did it end? I'm no echo warrior but there must be so much s£it down there?
vid around 1:16 and the "cradle" goes to the depths
"

Quite simple the strop was stressed to such an extent during launch that
it was cheaper to manufacture a new one than to recover test and ship back
onto the carrier.

cliver029

Saturday evenings in the late '50s or early '60s there was a live TV show ('Saturday Night Live' or something) fronted by Raymond Baxter which tried to do something spectacular each time; one time it was a locomotive crash at Longmoor military railway and another was live shots of an aircraft carrier.
I remember Baxter saying that when catapulted away, the strop was left to simply fall off imto the water and that each strop cost £7-0s-0d (pre 1971 money if you don't know)

Not quite the same type of "stuff" but I remember the Sea Vixen, when it was in Red Bull's hands, mistakenly dropping a mechanics toolkit from the weapons bay on a slow flypast at a Coventry airshow. I bet words were exchanged later..

No weapons bay in a Sea Vixen!!!!!
All weapons were carried on the pylons.

The strop was certainly strong enough to carry a piano across Kowloon Harbour.

At first I thought this must be a windup when posted in the Mil Forum, then it shifted here and the discussion went downhill :confused:

Seriously, all steam catapults in the RN (until Ark Royal) launched fixed wing with Bridles, which went into the 'oggin: not just the Vixen. Ark was fitted with bridle catchers allowing their re-use up to (IIRC) 20 or 30 times, when they were then untethered and allowed to go off the launch.

The USN developed a replacement whereby the shuttle latches on to the NLG and pulls the aircraft down the cat without a bridle.

As mentioned, the Vixen didn't have a 'weapons bay' :hmm: :=

This photo shows the bridle catcher ropes :
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c23e7add39.jpg

And here's the bridle being arrested by the catcher as the F4K launches from Ark waist cat
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b408bfb713.jpg

OK so no weapons bay so where could the toolkit have been stored that could be opened in flight? Just asking because it did happen.

A panel in one of the booms opened or failed (not sure which) in flight, raining spanners on the airfield.

On that particular aircraft the tool kit would have been behind the radome along with the folding ladder. That is where I always kept it No radar was fitted, just 1800Lbs of ballast.

Talking of pianos...

One day when all the seas are dry or we can travel across the oceans on the seabed, people will come across an old white Jaguar XJS in the middle of the Bay of Biscay and think, "How the hell did that get there?"

I stand corrected. Presumably the hatch visible here:

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f6be43f12c.jpg

Re. the Pete and Dud's bit above, Ark Royal did a Grand Piano Launch in November 1978 as seen here.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....6c14f12b64.png

I believe on some ships the bridles were recovered up to a set number of launches, then jettisoned with a final launch without the recovery strop.

DaveReidUK
That is the hatch where the undercarriage locks and hook lock were stored..
Possibly if this was not correctly secured they could have made a bid for freedom. :ok:
Lucky that none went down the engine!!

That would indeed have been a spanner (or two) in the works.

Ok, let me re phrase my question: over how many years have these things been dumped into the oggin and by what air arms?

The steam catapult has been around since the early 1950s.

List of aircraft carriers

It would be naïve in the extreme to think that cat-strops (or indeed musical instruments) are the most polluting/expensive/wasteful things to be casually discarded at sea by the world's navies.