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This is fairly naval aviation specific, but I'm curious if what requirements existed in terms of the following for operation off of the various carrier classes used by the US, UK, and Japan during the war.
It might sound strange but, I've never heard discussed before on this forum before.
- Maximum allowable aircraft dimensions
- Maximum takeoff & landing weights
- Maximum catapult end-speeds, and arrester hook engagement speeds
That must only be because you don't read threads on naval aircraft. Aircraft dimensions were dictated by the lifts, hanger height and general space available. British hangers were lower than USA so they couldnt always operate the same aircraft. The Corsair F4U was too high with folded wings for British ships so it had a shorter wingspan in the RN which gave a higher sink rate and less "float" over the deck. The huge number of take offs and landings by Eric Brown were in part doing research into arrester cables and catchment systems. Maximum take off weight wasnt a constant even on the same mission on the same carrier. On a mission with planes parked on a deck the planes at the front cant take off with the same weight as those at the back, because they have less take off run up (I read here). In short, its all complicated.This is fairly naval aviation specific, but I'm curious if what requirements existed in terms of the following for operation off of the various carrier classes used by the US, UK, and Japan during the war.
It might sound strange but, I've never heard discussed before on this forum before.
- Maximum allowable aircraft dimensions
- Maximum takeoff & landing weights
- Maximum catapult end-speeds, and arrester hook engagement speeds
In short, its all complicated.
There are some very learned posters here, it never occurred to me that fighter bombers on a carriers deck would have a different load front to back but when you see that those at the front have a much shorter take off run, its obvious. My background is in metal testing, I presume if enough airplanes come in too fast and too heavy it will be the poor pilot who makes the textbook landing that eventually snaps an arrester wire. From another forum by a poster named Bigglesworth about Winkle Brown and carrier landings "For an idea of the amount of flying he was doing, there's a section in his autobiography Wings on my Sleeve about carrying out trials with a Seafire; he did a batch of ten landings with progressively lower wind-speed, pitching forward and fracturing the prop on the last one, at which point he popped back ashore for the next aircraft and did a second batch of landings with different arrestor cable settings. Another time, carrying out trials with a Mosquito, he carried out five landings one day, the following day they progressively increased the landing weight, on the third attempt the claw of the arrestor hook sheared off bringing a temporary halt to proceedings. Later on in 1945 he notes that he was averaging four or five flights per day, sometimes seven or eight, and that was after a second pilot had taken over working up the Sea Fury. There's an example of one of his busier days, flying eight different aircraft, taking off from 0810 to 2010 for flights of 30-60 minutes (though no carrier landings that day, just dummy deck landings with a Sea Hornet). Brown was also something of a workaholic, seldom taking leave.Immensely, by the sound of it!
I was just thinking about this very question as I looked at this image of what must be near the limits of what a British carrier can spot on the deck. HMS Formidable in Far East 1944. THE FLEET AIR ARM AT SEA, JULY 1944This is fairly naval aviation specific, but I'm curious if what requirements existed in terms of the following for operation off of the various carrier classes used by the US, UK, and Japan during the war.
It might sound strange but, I've never heard discussed before on this forum before.
- Maximum allowable aircraft dimensions
- Maximum takeoff & landing weights
- Maximum catapult end-speeds, and arrester hook engagement speeds
The Japanese suffered badly for space by neglecting to have folding wing fighters and dive bombers. They could have set lower limits for maximum allowable aircraft dimensions when stored. They also suffered from terribly designed hangars, with inconsistent hangar widths - imagine how many aircraft Akagi could have carried had her hangar looked like HMS Indefatigable at bottom below in 1944 when the latter was operating 81, all folding aircraft.Maximum allowable aircraft dimensions.
No, this is a 1950's invention. Flight deck - Wikipediarelated, were there any studies of angled decks during the War?
Yes, but that didn't force the Courageous or Lexington class to have such a hangar layout. While it's generous to refer to her as a BC, here's the former battlecruiser Furious' hangar. Followed by USS Lexington's hangar. The Japanese could have made rectangular hangars if they'd wanted to, but it entails tearing the original battlecruiser structure down a lot more.The view of the Akagi clearly shows its original design as a battle cruiser and how that impacted the capacity of the hanger deck.
In June 1944, Illustrious ranged 39 aircraft; 15 barracudas and 24 F4Us, with the first 5 being catapulted and the remainder flown offI was just thinking about this very question as I looked at this image of what must be near the limits of what a British carrier can spot on the deck. HMS Formidable in Far East 1944. THE FLEET AIR ARM AT SEA, JULY 1944
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I was just thinking about this very question as I looked at this image of what must be near the limits of what a British carrier can spot on the deck. HMS Formidable in Far East 1944. THE FLEET AIR ARM AT SEA, JULY 1944
View attachment 582777
They RN had come a long way from small air groups.
In June 1944, Illustrious ranged 39 aircraft; 15 barracudas and 24 F4Us, with the first 5 being catapulted and the remainder flown off
I have to give the Illustrious class credit and points for luck, the only class of fleet carrier in service from start to finish of WW2 to never lose a ship in combat, notwithstanding bomb and torpedo hits, collisions, a grounding, Kamikaze strikes, etc. fighting from Norway to Malta, Ceylon and Sumatra. Yorktown and Outrageous classes both lost 2/3 of their number, while pretty much every class of IJN carrier took losses, plus all the one-off RN carriers spare Argus, but the Illustrious class soldiers on.Illustrious class could carry 54-58 aircraft in 1943-1945 and frequently did.
4/1944 Illustrious42 Corsair15 Barracuda---
8/1944 Formidable 30 Corsair 24 Barracuda---
11/1944 Victorious36 Corsair 19 Avenger 2 Walrus
12/1944 Illustrious 36 Corsair 21 Avenger---
3/1945 Formidable - 36 Corsair18 Avenger---
7/1945 Formidable - 36 Corsair, 6 Hellcat 12 Avenger---
8/1945 Victorious- 37 Corsair 16 Avenger 2 Walrus
The most interesting thing to me about IJN lifts are the double deckers that rise above the flight deck, allowing aircraft from both the lower and upper hangars to be moved to the flight deck in one lift rotation. HMS Ark Royal had double decker lifts, but the upper lift did not rise above the flight deck, meaning any aircraft from the lower hangar had to be shuffled onto the upper hangar and then put back onto the lift.The elevators were generally fairly large especially compared to the RN carriers because many IJN aircraft only had folding wing tips. Soryu had three elevators 16m by 11.5m, 12m by 11.5m, and 10m by 11.5m. Hiryu's three elevators were 16m by 13m, 12m by 13m, and 13m by 11.8m. Shokaku also had three elevators which were 13m long and 16m wide and the other two measured 13 by 12 meters.
The later designs, Taiho and Unryu, went to two roughly pentagonal elevators. Taiho's were 13.6m by 14m (forward) and 14m by 14m (aft) whilst Unryu's were the same sizes but reversed with the forward slightly larger.
The later elevators were stressed to take heavier aircraft with Taiho's taking 7500 kg aircraft. Some of the earlier carriers were only stressed for 4500 kg but I don't know what could be lifted by the Shokaku Class.