Wildcat on the Ronald Reagan

"ANDREW ROBERT BREEN" wrote in message ...
In article ,
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?

Given the much lower take off and landing speeds of WW2 aircraft, I'd not
think there'd be a problem. At the extreme of low take off and landing
speeds, ISTR the fleet Air Arm museum's Swordfish landing on and taking
off from Illustrious a year or so ago as part of the commemoration of the
60th anniversary of the Taranto raid - which of course would not present
any problem to a Stringbag as Illustrious, while smaller than US carriers,
is a lot bigger than many of the ships Swordfish operated from.

Sure there could be problems. Maybe the arresting cables have grown in
diameter and no longer can be reliably caught by the F4's hook. Maybe
the catapult cannot be dialed down low enough for the light weight
plane, or the connection between them has changed shape
and size. Things become incompatable over time.

If things were still compatable 60 years later that would be
amazing. Things have changed so much since then. Note how
the fuel is different, the O2 systems are different, the ammo is
different, etc.

Of course someone said similar planes have flown off modern
carriers. The question becomes

Did they use the arrresting gear?
Did they use the catapult?

-Thanks

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 01:35:32 -0400, "Charles Talleyrand"
wrote:

the catapult cannot be dialed down low enough for the light weight
plane, or the connection between them has changed shape
and size.

Many WWII carriers did not have catapults, and the planes operated just fine
without them. What makes you think a catapult is necessary now?

--
Andrew Toppan --- --- "I speak only for myself"
"Haze Gray & Underway" - Naval History, DANFS, World Navies Today,
Photo Features, Military FAQs, and more - http://www.hazegray.org/

Many WWII carriers did not have catapults, and the planes operated just fine
without them. What makes you think a catapult is necessary now?


In the Prowler flight simulator we used to do a deck run after a trap. We would
just taxi back to the round down and spin around and cob the power. It was
really not to difficult I would think that any moderen Jet aircraft F-14,
F/a-18, EA-6B, S-3, E-2 could do a deck run the full length of the deck and get
airborne at max landing weight. If you cranked up the wind you might make it at
max T/O weight as well but I'm not sure about that.
Sparky