Puma deck-landings on small ships?
 

I was interested to see on CNN coverage of the USS John McCain collision that some injured survivors were being bought ashore with a Singapore Air Force Puma.

I thought Puma was considered too wobbly (for want of a better word) to land on small ships? Or are such restrictions waived in these circumstances?

Possibly it picked the injured up from somewhere else - but that seems an odd logistic.

They could have used a winchman and hoist, notwithstanding that if its life and limb I am sure most crews would use the RTS as guidance vs a hard and fast rule.

Interesting that the USN appears to be making a habit of bending ships. I wonder if they are waving the 'due regard' flag a bit too hard.

10 US Navy sailors missing after destroyer collides with merchant ship - CNN

At least the damage occurred on port-side, suggesting they may not be entirely to blame. Nevertheless, begs the question how they ever let a fast and manoeuvrable vessel get anywhere near a potential collision with a slow, difficult to manoeuvre well lit oil tanker beaning out Class A AIS. Interesting that it seems they were running with their AIS off (last signal was received some five hours or so before the collision) which is perfectly legal for a warship, but you wonder also why they would do that in an extremely busy shipping lane at night unless they were running some sort of exercise - in which case even more strange that they got into a collision scenario.

Seems like some went overboard rather than trapped below as in the Fitzgerald. Possibly from the flight deck, given that is most exposed to and near collision.

Does it not depend on the variant? I was under the impression some have a wider track undercarriage which would reduce the propensity to fall over.

I should have googled first - found this:

Super Puma landing on red deck | UPTIME

Still, as heights good suggests, they were probably winched up.

The Singapore Air Force use 332Ms. The have the single wheel undercarriage which is stressed for a 5 m/sec (980/ft./min) landing. As I know, apart from a visual inspection, there is no further action required up to 7 m/s.

The 330 Puma is a different ball game but I have landed the 330J on high deck working boats in the casevac roll across the deck with 8 degrees pitch and 12 degrees roll without frightening myself too much.

The Super Puma, in comparison, is a gentle lady even if you really thump it in, and I know, being a world authority on heavy landings, the two stage undercarriage turns a disaster into a, for the passengers, normal arrival.

Why the RAF didn't fit the single wheel undercarriage to the Puma Mk2 I will never understand.

Prima false economy.

Cos it doesn't look anywhere near as cool as an Pooooma with 3 pairs of wheels!

The French land Puma on carriers. The simple answer was that the RAF were not prepared to pay for the trials to release to service. We ended up having to winch to decks.
Nothing to do with aircraft limitation

I str that the pitch limit for the Puma on board ship was only one or two degrees.... Was this because the seaborne trials hadn't been carried out, I wonder?

Some RAF Pumas were recalled to Fleetlands to be fitted with some modifications in '81/'82 and we were told to expect to go to the FI. Then it all went quiet again and we never went.

IIRC the pitch & roll limit for offshore operations were 5 degrees pitch & roll with 10 metres heave. The problem with being at the pitch/roll and heave limits was a 60 knot airstream getting under the disc at the top of the pitch/heave. You could only put on so much cyclic to counteract it tendency to get airborne.

To guard against this the procedure was to unload five of the rig pax and take on five homeward bound and so on. This kept the aircraft heavy and reasonably stable. In these conditions you would not plan to refuel offshore.

When we evacuated the Hermod it was fully afloat with a 55 knot wind and 35 metre heave. One had descend vertically between the crane Jibs to get on to the helipad. No problem for an empty Puma when the deck started rising but the poor old S61s were having heavy landings with full power on because they couldn't climb fast enough.