Best Fighter

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It's hard to say American carriers or British carriers were better. Granted, British carriers possessed a great weight of armor, but it cost them about 20-30 planes when compared to the American carriers.
 
It wasn't going on about which was better, it was talking about 'building the ultimate' (That's the shows title) aircraft carrier, and it tells you all the needs for the best aircraft carrier. One of those things was an angle runway, on the flight deck, Americans took it,
The ski-jump on British carriers allowing them to be smaller, British idea. It was just going on about them, and it was always praising the 'great' American carriers.
 
It wasn't going on about which was better, it was talking about 'building the ultimate' (That's the shows title) aircraft carrier, and it tells you all the needs for the best aircraft carrier. One of those things was an angle runway, on the flight deck, Americans took it,
The ski-jump on British carriers allowing them to be smaller, British idea. It was just going on about them, and it was always praising the 'great' American carriers.

It had some good footage of World War 2 aircraft crashing, and falling apart when trying to land. Mostly Hellcats...yes, I know they were designed to, it was still some good footage.
 
Ski-jump does have it's uses. I don't think America would place them on its fleet carriers since the catapults are still doing a fine job. Using a ski-jump on the LHDs and LHAs of the amphibious assault groups would make good sense since they are already equipped with Harriers.
 
The Harrier equipped Carriers are what the ski-jump is for, it lets the carriers be smaller. The catapult on the American carriers, another British invention, is perfectly good enough for their design of carrier.
 
the americnas have bigger carriers which allows them to have more aircraft and the angled flight deck but it also means they need the steam catpult................
 
Actually, the heavier aircraft means they need the steem catapult. But there are some design studies being done about being able to eliminate them.
 
I don't remember how they were looking to do it, and I don't think they were eliminating it completely. The heaviest plane they opperate right now is the F-14D. The new F-35 is considerably lighter and proportionally more powerful so that helps. They might be considering a slight upward angle to the flight deck, a mini-ski-jump, but I don't have access to the book I read that in right now so I'm not sure.
 
American carriers being bigger doesn't mean they can have an angled flight deck, we just gave them that idea, and they put it on their already huge carriers.
They'll probably use the ski-jump, or just not bother and carry on using the steam catapult.

Funny thing about the Sea Harrier when we showed it off to the Americans; In 1969 when a Harrier took off vertically from the aft platform of the USS Coronado, a US Admiral remarked 'You Brits gave us the angled deck, the mirror sight and the steam catapult. And now, you've taken them all away!'
 
That is a funny quote, but not entirely accurate in that most aircraft still use the catapult and angled deck. Vertical take-offs are very inefficeint and both the Brits and the USMC hardly ever use that ability (though I must admit it's not a bad one to have).
 
He wasn't fully aware of how the Harrier worked, but just witnessing it made him believe that they would no longer need all that equipment. The hover time of a Harrier is 90 seconds because that's how much water it has to cool the fans. So, Harriers use their capability to land on carriers, not take off. But we had to do it, to show off.
 
Well, the vertical take-off is also very inefficeint in that is uses a load of fuel and limits the Harrier to a weapons load of about 5,000lbs (any more than that and it's too heavy for a vertical TO).
 
Yes, yes it is. Especially after some of their stupid V/STOL projects.
 
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