That's how fast a F-18 Super Hornet is launched off the deck of one of our Navy Carriers. Just saw it on The Military Channel. Must be something!
I just spent a week last October with my 8 year old son transiting from Pearl Harbor to San Diego on the USS Ronald Reagan CVN 76. Having been previously in the US NAVY on a nuclear submarine I can say that I was still impressed with these fine warriors. Youtube has a few incredible videos posted by fellow riders and shipmates from that run. check out these: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4UEszZQV0k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBOrvT3A94 Youtube all the f18 launch and recovery stuff... Incredible!
holy crap!! that first video is amazing. One second the plane isn't there, the next it is, the next it isn't. I can't imagine how loud that was on the flight deck.
Always wanted to fly fighter jets unfortunately my height and eyesight aren't quite what the military look for. Those planes and the people that fly them are extraordinary.
And they do it with no hands. They don't touch the stick until they are airborne. The pilot's right hand must be seen on the grab handle before they will launch.
I think landing on an aircraft carrier is probably the most nerve wracking thing I have seen. A friend of mine used to fly off a carrier and told me you are suppesed to cut the power when you touch down but if you miss the hooks and cable you can run off the front of the ship so they land at near full power.
The steam catapolt has someting like 200,000 HP behind it. And the launch opperator has to adjust the amont of pressure for each air plane type or it could rip the landing gear off the plane!
Russell- Actually, as soon as you touch down, you go to mil power in case you miss the cables (wires) so you can take off again. This is commonly referred to as a bolter, and will cost you drinks the next time you are someplace where you can drink. As soon as you feel the cable decelerating you (and they do feel it, big-time), the engines are yanked to idle to allow rollback and cable disengagement. Never tried it myself, but, aside from night landings, it sounds like a lot of fun. No thanks on the night landings. Did make an illegal approach to a carrier in the Med once. They were not happy, but my bosses thought it was funny, thankfully. Taz Terry Phillips
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I have several friends who were carrier pilots. They all tell me that a night landing on a carrier with the ship pitching and trying to hit the cable is the one thing that scared the crap out of them. That and forgetting to tighten all the safety harnesses so that when you stop, your helmet comes forward and you crack it on the compass. Only do that one time.
I have always wondered what kind of approaches they have to carriers.... I suppose they could just have an ILS or a TACAN like anywhere else, just the direction changes with the boat?
Mark- They do have a VORTAC type of radio aid (not sure if the Navy uses VHF, UHF, or both) and they have both radio and visual ILS aids to landing. Most of the late model USAF fighters have air-to-air TACAN installed, and both aircraft are obviously moving, just like the ship. The one saving grace of carrier landings is very little crosswind and a free 30-35 knot headwind. This really slows down the approaches. What they also have on occasion, though, is a pitching and rolling runway, which must be really scary at night. At most naval bases, they have an outline of a carrier deck painted on the end of their runways. It is amazing how small that outline looks in a fighter approaching at 140 knots or so. To pick up one of the three wires requires a real precision touchdown. Taz Terry Phillips
The night traps really s*cked....about all I can say. Truly didn't enjoy them with cloud cover or absent a moon. Didn't have any peripheral visual cues to help you out...like a horizon! I don't think anyone I know got used to them. Including me The only thing worse was a night cat shot with no moon. From a dull glow on deck to a 4 G shove to get you up to about 160 kts which left you 45 feet off the water (that you can't see) with 15 knots excess....in pitch black. The reason the night shot was worse....you are totally along for the ride. That and you had an hour and half to think about "that night trap" at the end of every night cat shot. The angle deck on the Midway was 13 degrees....the new big ones are about 7 or 8 degrees. Your "runway" is moving sideways to the right at a pretty good clip. Constantly "right for lineup". The flight control computers (FCC's) would rotate the jet after the cat shot. You "chose" an AOA with the trim setting when the flaps were half or full....so the airplane always went to that AOA if you let the stick go. With the flaps up the trim setting was "chosing" where 1G was. We were in old F/A-18A models, on the ship from 1988-1991. I went to China Lake after that...then Kuwait, but that's another story I'll answer any specific questions if needed...hope this helped some. Bill.....Dogdish
Bill, you and your ilk are my idea of reaching the epitome in real flying. Landing on "boat" that's jumping around is tough enough but to do it at night is absolutely insane and has to take the ultimate in training, skill, and guts. I have achieved next to nothing in my flying when I compare it to the Thud drivers, F14, F15, A-10, B-17, B-24, P-51, etc.and all the rest who have really laid it on the line. My hat is off to all of you.
Bob, Thanks for the kind words...coming from you means alot. After about a month out there, you kinda change your mind. We went from trying to make a name for ourselves, to just wanting to live to tell about it. I was humbled just about every day out there. Flying nice boring 737's now Bill
Dogdish (have to explain how you got that one)- Welcome and nice to hear from someone with real experience. Always wanted to try a carrier cat launch and trap landing. In the daytime, of course. The EA-6B AF pilots seemed to enjoy it, too. I would have just been along for the ride unless someone was really brave. Except none of your two seaters were dual control in the old days. Not sure about the F/A-18F. I dropped a bunch of PGMs from F-111Fs on China Lake's ranges. GBU-15s and GBU-24s mostly. Very nice range with tons of airspace. Really out in the sticks, which made it perfect. Taz Terry Phillips
Taz, The carrier Stennis is back in port here Bremerton. Why don't we disguise ourselves as young navy aviators and sneak aboard and go on a cat shot and trap? The only thing that I would want to do more than that is to go up in the shuttle and cruise around the earth for a couple of days. That has to be the greatest ride of all but I would dearly love to experience a cat shot and a carrier landing. Who knows what kind of wings I'm supposed to get sometime. I'll bet they will be out of rig and fail the punch test. Switches
Bob and Taz, Dogdish.....hmmm, I think I got that somewhere in flight training, after a looong hard night of drinking Going through flt training, we would practice on the painted portion of the runway you had mentioned at the end of every flight. When it came to our first real carrier traps and cats, there wasn't an instructor brave enough (or dumb enough!) to be in ANY student's back seat. So our very first trap was alone.....and very afraid! I think "colorful" comes to mind when refering to what the LSO's saw behind the boat. I felt sorry for the men up on the deck of the training carrier Lexington when we came around. I can only imagine what the 18 year old Deck Ape thought....something like, "here comes another j*ckass with 8000 pounds of JP5 gonna crash into this deck and spread it all around then light the whole mess off". If you can get on a Tiger Cruise like Mark did, I highly recommend it. As one wife said, "It's all so violent out here". We did have an ILS, we called it an ICLS...same thing, different frequencies. Completely incompatible with the rest of the world's ILS freqs...smart, huh. We also had ACLS...Automated Carrier Landing System. Radar on the ship locked on to an antenna on the bottom of the A/C. It sent commands to the FCC's and autothrottles and could actually land the airplane on the carrier.....in theory. Never had the guts to autoland.....don't know anyone who did. Taz, China Lake was a great place to fly also the best job I ever had. It was the equivalent the Air Force's 422 test sqaudron at Nellis. Too bad it was out in the middle of nowhere. Was there from 91 to 95, playing with bombs, missiles and black boxes....a child trapped in a man's body Hope this entertained....Bill
Bill- You were at China Lake after my tour with the 422nd's sister 57 FWW unit, the 431 TES, from 1983-86 at McClellan. We used China Lake, Nellis, and Fallon as our primary ranges and flew TDY from Eglin near Pensacola for some weapons OT&E. With an F-111, you could go just about anywhere. We flew unrefueled to Eglin from McClellan (Sacramento) and usually had 8000 lbs on arrival. Had to stop on the way back, though, due to prevailing winds. My call sign was attached to me after I ripped an instructor crew for fouling up while at Fighter Weapons School, our Top Gun. Autoland does not sound like a good deal to me. Lots of airliners have it now, but do not think it is used too often there, either. I flew enough auto TFR, though, to know automatic systems could do some things better than hand flying. Plus the computer never gets distracted. F/A-18s were scary to AF pilots in dogfights because of their nose authority. Never saw an aircraft that could swivel on its CG like a Hornet. Got one ride in a CF-18 in Europe in the 80s, but never in a US version. Fun to fly and completely different feel from an F-16, more like an F-15 with some weight removed. Bob- Good thoughts. I still dream about flying in both the right, back and left seat of multiple aircraft, but have not graduated to the Shuttle yet. I work with a bunch of astronauts and former AF astronaut trainees before the AF Shuttle program came apart after Challenger. ~$10B down the drain. Taz Terry Phillips
thats ridiculous.... i thought my 0-180 time of 17 seconds was impressive. I had no clue they were this fast.
