In times of conflict when an air arm is forced to expand it isn't uncommon for that said air arm to look towards other military arms to find solutions for this sudden need for expansion. And that has resulted in several air forces buying planes which were meant for use on aircraft carriers and using them from land bases.
The F-4 Phantom is a stellar example of that, the USAF bought it because it fitted their specs for a fighter bomber so much better than any contemporary purpose built plane did. Its navy heritage can be seen in the fact that it still has folding wings and a heavy duty arrester hook. The USAF could land their phantoms on a carrier if the need for them doing so would ever arise.
But it also happened the other way round, that a Naval air arm looked at land based planes to use on carriers because of there not being purpose built planes around which fit the bill. And I figured it to be fun to start a thread about those instances that happened.
I'll start off with the planes developed for an aircraft carrier which never went into service, the Graf Zeppelin of the German Kriegsmarine.
One of the many mistakes made by the German high command was failing to see the merits of having carriers in their fleet, both Marshall Hermann Goering and Admiral Karl Dönitz had no intention of having a naval air arm around and believed that planes should be for the Luftwaffe and ships for the admiralty.
Regardless Admiral Raeder had succeeded into having the build for the Zeppelin commence and she was launched in 1938 but never put into service. After the war, she was taken by the Russians as war bounty and used for target practice.
Read more about the Graf Zeppelin here.
http://acepilots.com/ships/graf-zeppelin.html
But with having no purposely designed naval planes, the admiralty had to look at land based planes to use from the Zeppelin and had she ever be put in service her deck would have had many familiar looking wings there.
The fighter force of the Zeppelin would have comprised of Messerschmitt 109-T (T for "Träger", carrier) which were based on the 109-E model but fitted with folding wings and an arrester hook which is seen clearly in this picture. There weren't many 109-T models built and the ones which saw action did so from small airfields where their naval equipment came in use.
Having said that, the 109, thanks to its narrow undercarriage was notorious for its landing qualities, in fact more 109's were lost in landing accidents than in combat. God knows how many would have been lost at seas where the conditions are far rougher. In my opinion the Focke-Wulf 190 would have made a better carrier fighter.
So if the fighter force of the Zeppelin was familiar looking, the same could also be said about the bomber force.
The Junkers 87 Stuka (Which stood for Sturtz Kampfflugzeug which means dive bomber) had proven its use during the blitz krieg as a precision bomber and thus would be perfect to use against shipping, in addition its sturdy fixed undercarriage meant that it could handle the rough landing conditions at sea perfectly. So Junkers developed the Ju-87E which had folding wings and arrester hook.
The use of Stukas against ships during the course of the war had indeed proven that that plane was indeed perfectly suited in anti-shipping actions. And the fact that much of the Japanese imperial navy was sunk by American carrier operated dive bombers such as the Douglas SBD Dauntless and the Curtiss S2BC Helldiver we can all let out a big sigh of relief that the Germans never put the Graf Zeppelin and further carriers which were in the planning into action.
Across the channel the Brits were having different problems, their resources were stretched to the limit when they were asked to protect the vital convoy supply lines which were being pushed to the breaking point by German submarine attacks and attacks by long range patrol aircraft such as the Focke-Wulf 200 Condor. So they fitted several ships with a special ramp from which they could launch a Hawker hurricane fighter which would ditch itself into the water after having done whatever action it was send out to do.
But this very wasteful way of dealing with that problem in an era where every resourse was already pushed to the limit a far better solution was to convert several of those ships into light carriers and supply them with a few planes which could ward off the condors or tell destroyers where a submarine could be found.
The HMS Nairana.
The F-4 Phantom is a stellar example of that, the USAF bought it because it fitted their specs for a fighter bomber so much better than any contemporary purpose built plane did. Its navy heritage can be seen in the fact that it still has folding wings and a heavy duty arrester hook. The USAF could land their phantoms on a carrier if the need for them doing so would ever arise.
But it also happened the other way round, that a Naval air arm looked at land based planes to use on carriers because of there not being purpose built planes around which fit the bill. And I figured it to be fun to start a thread about those instances that happened.
I'll start off with the planes developed for an aircraft carrier which never went into service, the Graf Zeppelin of the German Kriegsmarine.
One of the many mistakes made by the German high command was failing to see the merits of having carriers in their fleet, both Marshall Hermann Goering and Admiral Karl Dönitz had no intention of having a naval air arm around and believed that planes should be for the Luftwaffe and ships for the admiralty.
Regardless Admiral Raeder had succeeded into having the build for the Zeppelin commence and she was launched in 1938 but never put into service. After the war, she was taken by the Russians as war bounty and used for target practice.
Read more about the Graf Zeppelin here.
http://acepilots.com/ships/graf-zeppelin.html
But with having no purposely designed naval planes, the admiralty had to look at land based planes to use from the Zeppelin and had she ever be put in service her deck would have had many familiar looking wings there.
The fighter force of the Zeppelin would have comprised of Messerschmitt 109-T (T for "Träger", carrier) which were based on the 109-E model but fitted with folding wings and an arrester hook which is seen clearly in this picture. There weren't many 109-T models built and the ones which saw action did so from small airfields where their naval equipment came in use.
Having said that, the 109, thanks to its narrow undercarriage was notorious for its landing qualities, in fact more 109's were lost in landing accidents than in combat. God knows how many would have been lost at seas where the conditions are far rougher. In my opinion the Focke-Wulf 190 would have made a better carrier fighter.
So if the fighter force of the Zeppelin was familiar looking, the same could also be said about the bomber force.
The Junkers 87 Stuka (Which stood for Sturtz Kampfflugzeug which means dive bomber) had proven its use during the blitz krieg as a precision bomber and thus would be perfect to use against shipping, in addition its sturdy fixed undercarriage meant that it could handle the rough landing conditions at sea perfectly. So Junkers developed the Ju-87E which had folding wings and arrester hook.
The use of Stukas against ships during the course of the war had indeed proven that that plane was indeed perfectly suited in anti-shipping actions. And the fact that much of the Japanese imperial navy was sunk by American carrier operated dive bombers such as the Douglas SBD Dauntless and the Curtiss S2BC Helldiver we can all let out a big sigh of relief that the Germans never put the Graf Zeppelin and further carriers which were in the planning into action.
Across the channel the Brits were having different problems, their resources were stretched to the limit when they were asked to protect the vital convoy supply lines which were being pushed to the breaking point by German submarine attacks and attacks by long range patrol aircraft such as the Focke-Wulf 200 Condor. So they fitted several ships with a special ramp from which they could launch a Hawker hurricane fighter which would ditch itself into the water after having done whatever action it was send out to do.
But this very wasteful way of dealing with that problem in an era where every resourse was already pushed to the limit a far better solution was to convert several of those ships into light carriers and supply them with a few planes which could ward off the condors or tell destroyers where a submarine could be found.
The HMS Nairana.
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