You are landing an A-6 on a carrier

[Nickodell]

OK, you are landing on a carrier in an A-6, and you are the copilot with a video camera. (My first impression, when the carrier deck looked like a postage stamp, was: We're going to land on that?)

Look at the left as you land, for the orange "meat ball" between the green lights, telling the pilot that he is is on the correct heading and glideslope, and listen to the changing engine speeds to stay on the said glideslope, plus the full throttle on touchdown in case you need to "bolter," having missed the arrestor wire.

And then think that these guys do it again and again, not like this one with steady wind and a calm sea, but in gusty conditions, on a deck pitching up and down 20 ft., and at night! One of the most dangerous jobs there is.

http://good-times.webshots.com/video/3019558010051644870MRJPvV

 

[Series6]

Astute Class Sub

Nick,

What do you know about the Astute Class Sub launched from the UK? Is it fr real?

 

[Nickodell]

This one?

This is the British Royal Navy's newest class of submarine, the Astute. And this is what the nuclear-powered behemoth can do: generate its own air and water; sit in the English Channel and fire cruise missiles at North Africa; but perhaps the most extraordinary feature of the British-built sub is that it will never need to be refuelled throughout its 25-year lifespan, meaning it can sail round the world 40 times without surfacing.

The Brits have put in an initial order for three of the subs—a bargain at $2.33 billion each—and each one is expected to enter into service in 2009, 2010 and 2011. The contractor, BAE Systems, in Barrow, says it learned a lot from US sub builder Electric Boat, namely to build sections of the sub vertically (hence the 12-story construction towers at the plant) which saved on manpower.

Weight: 7,800 tons
Length: 97m
Time to build: 6 years, 4 months
Power: pressurized water reactor, fueled for life
Crew: 98
Astute Combat Management System (ACMS) receives data from the sonars and other sensors and, through advanced algorithms and data handling, displays real time images on the command consoles.
Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile from Raytheon fired from 533mm torpedo tubes (range 1,000 miles, flies at 533mph)
I-band navigation radars
Thales Underwater Systems Sonar 2076
Atlas Hydrographic echosounder, the DESO 25, is capable of precise depth measurements down to 10,000m.
Rolls Royce PWR 2 pressurized water reactor
2 Alsthom turbines
Rolls Royce pump jet propulsor
Lucas lights I'm kidding!!!!!!

 

[Series6]

Astute

Thanks Nick. I heard it made about the same amount of noise as a dolphin... Hard to imagine...

 

[MikeH]

Nick,
I believe the aircraft in the video is an S-3 Viking. In an A-6, the refueling probe should be visible through the windshield.

 

[MikeH]

Also compare the cockpit view from inside the S3. There is also the distictive "Hoover" sound of the S3's turbofan engines.

 

[Nickodell]

I bow to your superior knowledge. Whatever, it still looks impossible to me.

Trivia 1: Did you know that four of the most important developments in carriers were all British [Note to Bill; this is not anti-American, it's just stating facts!] - 1) the angled flight deck, without which operating jet takeoffs and landings every few seconds would be impossible; 2) the steam catapult (earlier US attempts used powder charges) without which operating jets would be quite impossible; 3) The optical (light) landing system; 4) the armored steel flight deck ( Brit. carriers of Task Force 58 were repeatedly struck by kaikazi attacks, without serious damamge.) The big, big American one, of course, was nuclear power, allowing a carrier to be on station for six months or more.

Trivia 2. Why do they call the part just under the round-down at the aft end of the flight deck the "spud locker?"

 

[MikeH]

The newest class of American Aircraft Carrier, USS Gerald R Ford (CVN-78), will use electo-magnetic catapults and new smaller more efficient reactors will generate about three times the electrical power that the current reactor used on the Nimitz class carrier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_R._Ford_class_aircraft_carrier

 

[MikeH]

Trivia 2. Why do they call the part just under the round-down at the aft end of the flight deck the "spud locker?"

It's where fresh vegetables were stored on the fantail. So if the pilot was coming in low he was headed for the "Spud Locker".

 

[Nickodell]

Top marks, Mike. I should add that Britain, for an unknown reason, surprisingly never developed a worthwhile carrier torpedo or bombing plane in WWII. The Swordfish biplane, nicknamed the "stringbag," was of course a 1930s design, but was all the RN had until Britain received F4F Wildcats (named Martlet by the RN) and F4U Corsairs under lend-lease. Prior to that they had the Seafire version of the Spit., but not enough, and it was a pure fighter, not a fighter-bomber, and with its narrow-track undercarriage, tricky to land on the moving deck of a carrier.

The F4F was being replaced by the F6F and F4U, so surplus ones were readily available, but the RN were very lucky to get the Corsair. It had been rejected by the USN as too difficult to land on carriers, with its long nose obscuring the view, and taken up as a land-plane by the Marines instead. The RN developed a long, curving approach where the pilot could keep the carrier deck in view until seconds before touchdown, where he would simply obey the signals of the LSO's paddles. This was explained to the USN, which took up the same practice, after which the F4U became the second-highest scorer in the Pacific war and the RN didn't get many more. (Should have kept their mouth shut!)

The Swordfish's takeoff speed was about 65 kts., and taking off from a carrier headed at 25 kts into a 30 kt headwind resulted in its leaving the deck almost like a VTO plane, in a few yards, and relative landing speed was equally low. Withall, they fatally crippled the Bimarck, one of whose lifeboats weighed more than a stringbag, and sank or damaged a large proportion of the Italian fleet at Taranto, the year before Pearl Harbor, showing what could happen to a fleet at anchor, which lesson was not, unfortunately, noted in the US.

Most British antishipping strikes other than the Bismarck and Taranto, then, were conducted by land-based aircraft like the Beaufighter and the torpedo-carrying version, the Beaufort, plus the Mosquito. Both the Beau and the Mossie carried four 20mm cannon (in addition, four machineguns in the Mossie, and six in the Beau), plus 6" rockets. A salvo of eight rockets from either of these planes was equivalent to the broadside of a light cruiser. There were a few fitted with large-caliber guns, like the 47mm one fitted to a few Mossies. One of these had what can be called an artillery duel with a German cruiser off the Skaggerack, flying round just out of AA range and riddling the ship's boilers and turbines with sold shot, leaving it wallowing for the Beauforts to finish with torpedoes later.