Charles Talleyrand wrote:

:On May 20, 12:23 am, Fred J. McCall wrote:
: Charles Talleyrand wrote:
:
: id the change from F-14s to F-18s increase or decrease the total
: :number of planes per ship? Overly simple math suggests that the
: :amount of room needed to hold 22 F-14s could also hold 30 F-18s.
: :
: :If the number of planes did not increase, what happened to the extra
: :space?
: :
: :-Curious
: :-Charles Talleyrand
: :
: :
: :F-18a Length: 17.10 m
: :F-18a Wing Span: 9.3 m folded
: :Area of bounding box: 159 sq m
: :
: :F-14 Length: 18.6 meters
: :F-14 Wingspan: 11.4 meters swept
: :Area of bounding box: 211 sq m
:
: You're looking at the wrong airplanes. The Navy only operates a
: handful of F/A-18A+ aircraft. The remainder of the 'legacy' Hornets
: are C/D aircraft. The F-14 aircraft were replaced by F/A-18E/F
: aircraft, which are physically about the same size as an F-14. There
: is no real 'extra space'.
:
: F-18E/F Length: 18.31 meters
: F-18E/F Wing Span: 9.32 meters folded
:
:
:I thought the F-14s were replaced by the F-18a, and the F-18e came
:along much later. I'm willing to be corrected.
:

Consider yourself corrected.

:
:Using the F-18e data, the bounding box uses 171 sq meters, which is
:still only 80% of the space needed by an F-14. Therefore one might
:imagine though this simplistic analysis that 5 F-18s used as much
:space as 4 F-14s.
:
:Suppose we were only concerned about wingspan, and did not care about
:length. This might be a model of a flightline. We still might guess
:that 5 F-18s fit into the space needed by 4 F-14s, since the F-18
:folded wingspan is 80% that of the F-14s.
:
:So what happened to that extra space on the carrier?
:
:-Still Curious
:-Charles Talleyrand

Hint: They didn't used to be able to get all the airplanes in the
hangar deck at the same time.


--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw