"Mike" wrote in message
om...
Remember the famous World War 2 raid when those B-24 bombers were
placed on the USS Hornet and sent to bomb Japan ?

I just got done reading that in 1965 the United States landed C-130
Herculees planes on a US aircraft carrier.

So that got me thinking. I'm not a Navy man or Air Force man, so this
question may sound crazy to some of you, but please at least address
it.

Let's talk hypothetically here. What if, at some point late in the
cold war the United States decided to stage a " Doolittle " type raid
on some country by having a small number of F-111 bombers take off
from a giant Nimitz class carrier. Could it have been done ?

Presumably so as the F-111 was going to be used as a carrier aircraft. Note
that F-111's have tail hooks. Australian air aircraft still have them
although the pilots aren't trained for it.

To quote an un-named F-111 expert "Yes, you could land an (Australian) F-111
on a carrier *ONCE* as the stresses would probably ground the aircraft
forever more". Of course, until it is done we'd never know..........

Remember the 1986 raid on Libya ? Our F-111 bombers had to fly about
4,000 miles from their bases in Great Britain.

Could simply do air-to-air refueling.

Or would the F-111 have been too big ? I'm not talking about storing
the planes below the carrier deck, or about having them return to the
carrier and land on it.

The idea was to use them as carrier aircraft...

But would it have been possible to have a special mission and have
F-111's take off from a carrier ?

Probably in a "Doolittle" situation. I'm sure you could fit some JATO/RATO
equivalents if need be, remember the Doolittle raid was essentially a one
way trip.

--
The Raven
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** since August 15th 2000.