If It Can Fly, It Can Float!!! (3 Viewers)

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Some context to the photo of USS Los Angeles doing tricks at the mooring mast at NAS Lakehurst: the wind shifted and got under the tail of the airship, causing it to rise.
Since the mooring mast and airship's attachment were deaigned to allow movement (like a giant weathervane), the airship just rose up and then rotated, coming down even-keel, facing the other direction, suffering very little damage in the process.
 
GrauGeist said:
That LeO H-46 never got far in development: French military policy changes and the onset of WWII derailed it's continued development, but it did look like it had potential.

It also looked sort of like a water bug
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Wow I had never seen this beast. Very interesting design. It does look like a water bug. Also looks pretty modern. A couple of pics.










Here is one with 'slave pajamas' so I guess the Vichy were still flying it, or is thisjust a fanciful concept drawing?

 
Interestingly, it was the random turbulence of the ship's prop wash at the surface behind the ship that helped break up periodic (non-random) waves and make the landing easier. The surface wash (in a not too stormy sea) was like "random noise" with less severe peaks and troughs as opposed to open water. The bubbles and frothing at the surface of the ship's wash was (usually) safer to land in than open water, assuming the overall waves weren't too nasty to damage the floats. The pilots of these planes were still a special, skillful breed, though, and it was a job I would never want!

For the Normandy landing, they designed a huge system to pump compressed air below the surface over a long line to help protect the craft from the waves in the landing area. It was a "bubble breakwater." The device was too huge and the air requirements too great to be practical, so it was never built.

Excerpt from "The U.S. Army in WWII", "Chapter VII - The OVERLORD Logistical Plan"

"One of the more novel solutions suggested was the creation of an "air breakwater." By the use of pipes on the ocean floor this scheme proposed to maintain a curtain of air bubbles which theoretically would interrupt the wave action and thus provide smooth waters inshore of the pipe. This idea was actually not new either. Studies along this line had been carried out in the United States forty years before, and both Russian and U.S. engineers had conducted model experiments since 1933, although without conclusive results. The bubble breakwater would have required such large power and compressor installations that it was impractical for breakwaters on the scale envisaged, and the idea was discarded as infeasible early in September 1943."
 
GrauGeist said:
I believe that several remained in service with the Vichy French in Tunisia and later in the Indian Ocean part of Africa.
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That's very interesting! The English language Wiki says they only built one. Do you know of any good sources on this aircraft? I am a seaplane / flying boat fanatic and love learning about them.
 

Yikes. I thought it was impossible to make a seaplane or floatplane that was ugly…until I saw this monstrosity. Even the Supermarine Walrus looks good compared to this thing.
 
buffnut453 said:
Yikes. I thought it was impossible to make a seaplane or floatplane that was ugly…until I saw this monstrosity. Even the Supermarine Walrus looks good compared to this thing.
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Like the man said, it's a water bug. Which to me implies it's well adapted to it's environment (for both air and water), which might be good. Not every dame can be Sofia Loren but we do manage to reproduce the species anyway...

 
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