For aircraft enthusiasts: US built carrier planes used on non US Navy Carriers

[Weird Harold]

It's been a long time and I was going from memory. It didn't matter which version was up there, everyone was happy to see them. Solid red lines of tracers were a good way to aim also.

You mean everyone except Victor Charlie.

They added the imaging IR and Low Light systems so that they could tell who was down below without sending that cone of tracers down first.

 

[PayDay]

So here's something that was totally overlooked thanks to Ben Affleck and bad film makers:

The Doolittle Raid of April 18, 1942 was the first U.S. air raid to strike the Japanese home islands during WWII. The mission is notable in that it was the only operation in which U.S. Army Air Forces bombers were launched from an aircraft carrier into combat.

http://www.uss-hornet.org/history/wwii/picts-DLR/USAF93003.jpg

Subsequent calculations by Doolittle indicated that the twin-engine B-25 could be launched from a carrier 500 nautical miles from Tokyo with a 2,000lb bomb load, hit key industrial and military targets on Honshu Island, and fly on to China to land at airfields there and be used again for future raids.

The full article is here: http://www.uss-hornet.org/history/wwii/doolittle.shtml

5 pages, very good reading, and a good place to start on the topic.

 

[Saiyaman]

That's not true -- at least not without some modifications to make a plane suitable for dry-land basing.

Take the F-4 Phantom: The Navy versions use smaller tires and thinner brake stacks; that means they need more runway to stop on and suffer more hot brake incidents that Air Force models. Much of the carrier specific features were eliminated or modified in land based versions of the Phantom. Things like the extendible nose strut and small main tire/brake stack were changed with the F4C. Things like the hydraulic wing-fold actuators were dropped in later versions.

Speaking of folding wings, they nothing but a pain in the butt for land based aircraft. They add unnecessary weight and add maintenance hours for a feature that is seldom used and wouldn't be missed.

The Tailhook on the Air Force F4s was another anachronism that caused more trouble than it was worth. Almost all Air Force fighter do have a tail-hook for emergency landings, but the F4 tail hook is hydraulically actuated and about ten times as heavy as the hook on something like the F15 or F16. The F4 tailhook requires daily maintenance checks and nearly four hours worth of time added to periodic maintenance.

After 21 years working on F4 Phantoms, I can't recall a single "good thing" that was a hold-over from the carrier-based origins of the basic design.

Well here in Europe where countries are smaller and air fields more cramped up, saving space is always a good thing and the F-18 Hornet which is a widely used plane with us, retains its folding wings and arrester hook.
http://cencio4.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/495314913.jpg?w=460&h=306
A Finnish Hornet landing, it's hook making the sparks fly.

http://danielrychcik.com/airpower05/f-18_hornet_swiss_airpower_zeltweg_1.jpg
A Swiss airforce Hornet.

Speaking of the Swiss, they apparently use their Hornets from Carriers as well...
http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/medium/41459176.jpg
I wonder if this one is nuclear powered.

 

[Weird Harold]

Well here in Europe where countries are smaller and air fields more cramped up, saving space is always a good thing and the F-18 Hornet which is a widely used plane with us, retains its folding wings and arrester hook.

Most USAF fighters have arresting hooks, whether they started as Navy Fighters or not. They are for emergency landings only, using something like a BAK-12 arresting cable. They just don't have hydraulically actuated hooks with actuators the size of eighteen-wheeler shock-absorbers.

I served two tours in Europe (England and Germany) and the runways were pretty much the same as stateside bases. Just because the Hornet retains its wingfolds, doesn't mean that they're advantageous in a land-based plane -- note the lack of other aircraft crowding that Swiss Hornet.

Speaking of the Swiss, they apparently use their Hornets from Carriers as well...

Snerk.