"Ogden Johnson III" wrote in message
...
"Charles Talleyrand" wrote:

Suppose someone tried to land an F4F Wildcat on a modern American
aircraft carrier. We'll give the carrier a few hours to prepare, and
lets assume
the carrier is at sea and moving.

Can a WWII fighter land on a modern carrier? Can it get back in the air?

As others have pointed out, certainly. If a C-130 can do it, albeit
gingerly, an F4F certainly could.

_Safely_ landing would be the question. The pilot would have to be
conversant with the present optical systems, and some LSOs would have
to be trained for the F4F's [or other WWII aircraft you're
postulating] characteristics and landing profiles. My only question
would be can modern arresting gear be set to handle the, generally,
much lower weights of WWII carrier aircraft compared to those
operating today? [e.g., F4F ~7,500 lbs, A4M ~25,000 lbs]

OJ III

I don't think you would need arresting gear. Getting forty knots + of wind
across the deck would be no problem. You might have a little truouble
holding the F4F onto the deck. Between the high drag and low speed of the
F4F its brakes shouldn't have any problem stopping.

Speaking of the high drag,

If the F4F is "dirty", gear, flaps, etc.down, with 20 knots headwind and the
CVN making 40 knots, can the F4F catch it? What was the landing speed on an
F4F. What about the take-off speed. Can the F4F fly off the bow, or will it
be like a chopper, and have to go off to the side. (There is a reason that
most of the time a chopper lands and takes off from the stern of a ship). I
can see it now, the F4F takes off, climbs to 250 feet, the CVN sails out
from under it, the CVN slows down, and the F4F catches up and lands. I can
see it now, ROTFLMAO.