How to land on an aircraft carrier ?
 

Hello everybody,

following a discussion with a fellow pilot, I was wondering if any of you think if it would be possible to land a small SEP airplane, for example a C172 on a (military) aircraft carrier.

If you check the length (+- 300m) in combination with a speed of 30kts and a little headwind, I would say this shouldn't be a problem, even without grappling hook. However, it's a ship that goes up and down, so wouldn't the probability of bouncing be very high ?

And on a totally unrelated note: is there a location somewhere where you could train/learn/do this as a civilian ? :8

Kind regards,
Digits

Why the bloody hell do you want to do this? Just out of curiosity? Sorry pal but military ships are not a playground for your spamcan and curiosity!!!

Dont worry, bose and guppy will be along shortly and will gladly tell you how they've done it in various aircraft ranging from Sopwith Camels to the venerable F14 Tomcat...;)

P.s or you could take a flying holiday in San Diego, call up So Cal Approach and ask for some approaches onto the USS Midway or the other carriers of the Pacific fleet moored in the bay!

Well if a Hercules can do it why not!!

YouTube - C-130 Hercules on an Aircraft Carrier!!

With the speed of an aircraft carrier and the sort of windspeeds you can expect at sea the problem would not be landing..................it would be stopping the aircraft being blown off the deck.

Don't forget the PPR...

30 knots over the deck sounds like it might just blow a C172 off of the carrier once the aircraft had lost its forward energy. I seem to remember a humorous article in a flying mag where the author – a GA pilot - was offered a tour of a carrier and a go in the flight sim they trained their pilots on. He got his aircraft up off the deck flew a circuit and landed OK but had forgotten to put the brakes on so he got blown off of the back of the ship.

I must admit a fly in onto a carrier sounds a bit of hoot. I can imagine quite a few people would want to get that one into their log books if it can be done. It would prob make a great way to get people in for some safety training about integration of recreational GA and military flying as well building relationships with the community.

So what exactly are they for these days anyway? :rolleyes:

In his excellent book Think Like a Bird the author Alex Kimbell (an AAC pilot) describes dropping in on an aircraft carrier in an AAC Beaver. Well worth a read

I seem to remember that the Navy landed a Tiger Moth on the Ark sometime just before they were both decommissioned?

Thank you all for your comments soo far.

Why do I want to do it ? Let me use a famous quote here: "If you have to ask why, you'll never understand" ;)

Anyway, since there are companies in the USA that let you simulate air to air combat with some laser tag equipment, I didn't think it would be so farfetched that there would be companies that could let you land on an aircraft carrier. So please, keep replying and bouncing of ideas :ok:

Found this on UK Microlight and Paramotor records

If a flexwing can do it, with the turbulence of a ski jump in front of it, then a Cessna should be able to.

The same webpage mentions a powered parachute trike which took of from USS Midway in San Diego harbour and flew across the USA with the intention of landing on USS Yorktown on the East coast. The latter was cancelled due to weather and the pilot landed in a carpark instead.

There was also a South Vietnamese pilot who landed his Cessna Bird Dog with his wife and five:eek: children on board, on a US carrier (also Midway) off Vietnam. The pilot had allegedly never seen a carrier before...

There's an old microlighting video called "The Dream" which has got some good footage of those flexwing landings on Illustrious.

I think that they must have had absolutely still conditions - if you read the literature on ship landings, the turbulence within the burble (technical term for wake over the deck) would just blat most smaller aeroplanes out of the way - even helicopters regularly struggle.

G

How would this be different from land ? If we assume the ship always stears right into the wind, how would the turbulence on the ship be different from a runway with for example trees nearby ?

Did it as a passenger in a C150 in Pensacola Harbor [sic] in 1986, as a guest of the local flying club, who in turn were invited by the US Navy (possibly the Marines? It was a while ago).

Still wind, with the ship moored, and each of the four civilian aircraft had to be lowered onto the hangar deck before the next could land.

We were given the escorted tour and dinner in the Officer's Mess, then one-by-one raised to the main deck for individual take-off.

I'm led to believe that this was one of the last occasions.

i would think in your average flexwing you might struggle to actually catch the carrier...:}

Check 2:35 for a light aircraft landing on a carrier - desperate times, obviously. The sight of a Chinny being pushed of the deck hurts me badly!

If you know any private companies that have their own aircraft carriers then the British government would like to hear from you!

TT (with a handful of carrier landings to my name albeit in helos).

If a Swordfish can do it Shirley anything can? I remember Ark Royal doing 5knots astern to allow some French Fougas to catch us up & land!

Laminar flow (which is what you get normally over sea), striking firstly the leading edge of the flight deck, then being interrupted by the enormous amount protuberances over the structure of the ship, then finally downwash on the back of the flight deck as it drops down towards the sea.

A quick google shows very little in the public domain I'm afraid, but this paper give a reasonable introduction to the problem without too much maths.

G

to quote your original statement, assuming the ship steams at 30kts and has a slight headwind (lets say 10kts) then you could easily approach at 70 kts and have a "deck speed" of 30 kts. This would give you speed in hand to deal with the turbulence and more than enough stopping distance. That said with a 300 meter deck to aim at then you could land a 172 on it at anchor with no wind assuming you were light and landed nice and early. Just not too early mind!
I never get Prune, someone asks a simple question out of curiosity and gets told of for it. Keep asking 'Pal'!:)

Didn't Flight International do it with an Auster Autocrat sometime in the Forties/Fifties? Seem to recall having seen a photographs of it....

A couple of the Auster books have pictures on at least one carrier.

Given the forthcoming budget cuts the Navy might even welcome some practice! Mind you given the difficulties they present to flying into an ordinary runway I suspect it could never happen these days - but no reason why it couldn't given less 'elfin safety nonsense.

Mind you Genghis has a point - and actually this link http://www.afrl.hpc.mil/aboutus/success/ShipAirwake.pdf gives a good visualisation of the wake aspects - made me very interested in landing on a carrier as well!

Unless there is a really good PR opportunity or some possible benefit of a demonstration to, for instance, special forces, of something that hasn't been done before, I would have thought the chances of getting permission for a landing on an in-service carrier are very slim. If you can find a carrier that has been withdrawn from service and you can satisfy the owner that you won't sue him when it all goes horribly wrong, then you might have a bit more chance.

I can remember seeing either Bulwark or Ark Royal moored in a Scottish Loch awaiting the scrapman's torch some years ago, so after the SDSR there might be one or two becoming available for your plans. A recce first would be a good idea, as FOD on the deck or a lift a few inches lower than it should be, could mess up your day.

The Americans have at least one carrier (Forrestal) waiting to become an artificial reef, but getting permission would be a case of hard work, patience and knowing the right people, and that's if its even got a complete, unobstructed deck.

With a moored carrier you have the added fun of wind direction, which could be from anywhere. Try doing some approaches to a hilltop airfield (e.g. Compton Abbas or Nympsfield) in turbulent conditions and see if you still want to have a go at it. I've seen a glider doing a 70 knot approach which dropped a wing 45° on the way in to the latter. Fortunately the pilot recovered it.

There are some basic simulators on the Midway (San Diego) that are supposed to simulate an F4 landing on a carrier - quite fun.

Otherwise, if you know the dimensions of the carrier deck, there's nothing to stop you from landing within that space and letting your imagination take care of the rest (at least the imaginary damage will be easier to fix).

Some airfields have 'dummy landing decks' designed to simulate landing on a confined deck. RM Condor for one. Not quite the same without a pitching and rolling deck, at night in lashing rain though!

Why not use the dummy landing deck at Henstrage? The harrier pilots used it for training.

Rod1

Back in the 70s, a US aviation mag had an article written by a spamcan driver doing a touch and go on a decommissioned carrier that was under tow several miles offshore.

In the late 60's, when HMS Eagle was moored in Plymouth awaiting conversion into razor blades, the Chipmunks from Roborough could occasionally be seen carrying out touch-and-goes. It was not long before Britannia Flight were made aware of Flag Officer Plymouth's displeasure and wires were strung across Eagle's flight deck to prevent the practice. Of course this is all hearsay, I never tried it myself;)

Have to say it's one of my favourite things to do in a flight sim. Most fun has been the WW2 simulator IL-2 Pacific Fighters. Obviously not real, but the challenges are there, especially if you do it properly; it's almost blind as you bring your Corsair or Wildcat on a curving final approach with the nose high and obscuring your view of the deck.

I think that landing at Elstree (as I remember it), or Spanhoe, and by aiming to stop in between the boulders, is a reasonable approximation to the Ark Royal.

757-200 on a U.S. size carrier in the sim. Come in right above stall speed. Sometimes you can stop, sometimes you do a touch and go. Yeah....the engine spool time is scary on the touch and go. :eek:

More here:
USS Midway Air Boss Remembers Heroic Bird Dog Airplane Rescue | KPBS.org

It was largely his patience as an instructor which allowed me to gain my PPL "D".
IIRC there was a picture of himself and microlight on the deck of HMS Illustrious, hanging on his office wall.

Apologies for bumping this old thread again. The past years I've been busy trying to realise some other crazy dream (http://www.pprune.org/private-flying...th-pole-4.html) , which brought me back to this one.

I don't seem to make any progress in getting permission to do this. Except for getting a negative reply from a US Navy Commander (yes yes, they did respond to my inquiry :D), I don't seem to get any more information.

Hence my shameless bump. Maybe there are some new people active on Pprune that might be able to help...

In his book "Think like a bird", Alex Kimbell describes a couple of visits to an aircraft carrier in his Beaver. Military protocols being what they are, no official records of these landings apparently exist. In one instance, he had difficulty getting in because of some kit on the flight deck.

Yes there is somewhere where one can practice such landings - a runway - OK it's not pitching but if it was in the 172 it would smash the thing to bits assuming a short field landing technique of a firm landing, then heavy on the brakes as the flaps come up. It the deck chose to rise just as one was executing the firm landing the result would be pretty bad.

There's nothing to stop one practicing to land in ever shorter distances - the only thing is it is a bit fake - so try some very short farm strips (imagine the the usual trees near the runway are the ship's superstructure!)

In the UK a good place if one want the land then full power experience would be Nayland - I remember twenty years ago watching those who thought full power meant some power stopping and rolling down the hill - there was a tractor or a Land Rover to tow those planes to the top. Always up the slope to land and down the slope (or for some with more power off the flat section at the top over the void - a la "ski jump".

spitfire
 

during the early, dark days of WW2, when england was about to lose MALTA. USS Wasp ferried a group of spitfires, they took off with drop tanks and went towards malta...one fellow dropped his tank early on and couldn't reach anywhere, so he came back and landed using virtually every foot of the deck (no hook). but he made it.

...

there are some third and 4th rate navies out there that might be looking for something to do with their marginal carriers...maybe you should try argentina or brazil.

about 25 years ago I landed on a simulator's carrier, in a metroliner...

BUT IN THE MEANTIME...go rent ''the bridges at toko ri''.

Does it still count as a trap without the hook?

And now that Tailhook is defunct, what's the ultimate motivation?

Looking at National Debt, if you approach the UK government, they might be willing to pre-sell landings on their new super-carrier. Pay now, land later.
Or the US might consider this as a fund raiser - say 5 carrier landings for sponsoring one ATC guy for a day.

Contact the RNAS at Culdrose. They have a mockup aircraft carrier. Why not ask them.