Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Project ‘Whale Tale’[sic](U-2 Aircraft Carrier Operation) escapades told in this 1Mb PDF: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB184/FR24.pdf
what were their landing grades?
I’d suspect this was a pass-fail operation.
OK 17 Wire.
Amazing they could hit an aim point with a 30:1 glide.
Back in 1964 the U-2s flying out of Eielson AFB, Alaska, used a 720 degree overhead approach. Nowadays fellow U-2 pilots race long behind the bird in a car and talk the pilot down the last 20 or 30 feet to touchdown.
We were quite fortunate in that my local EAA Chapter 1220 had an individual that had been in the U-2 program almost from it’s inception and regaled us at one of our Spring meetings with stories of the U-2 and it’s myriad missions and capabilities, including the carrier ops. Fascinating stuff!
His name wouldn’t be Dave Kerzie, would it?
Dave Kerzie is my Dad. Great guy, great pilot.
The U-2 guys weren’t likely able to brag about it back-in-the-day, and we all know that is a key attribute of most/all good flyboys….present company excluded of course.
Imagine if you will an SR-71 carrier shot… (grin)
so full afterburner and using both catapults?
They launched a KC off the Forrestal? Unladen, I assume.
That or they had a really long flight deck.
yuppers! take a look here
http://youtu.be/BjNyQvhsQE8
Jiminny cricket! Seems like there is not much between the end of the right wing and the island on a couple of those passes. The railing hides the end of the wing! Just a little right of the centerline and ouch.
Different video here… Several passes in 4 minutes.
http://defensetech.org/2011/11/09/pic-of-the-day-c-130-flies-off-a-carrier/
3 feet, IIRC. The pilot earned a DFC for the test program.
James H Flatley III Is the guy that landed the 130 on the FID. He was Rocket 1 when I was on the Saratoga. He was the first U.S. pilot over 1500 traps, got 1500 as C.O. CV60 in a VF31 F4 (with Jimmy 4 as a middie in the backseat). Flatley was in carrier suitability at Pax River when the brains that be were looking for a larger COD and saw a 130 on the ramp. If I remember the story right, they painted a centerline about 4-6 ft left of the actual hull centerline as the line up for the approach. It seems he did about 35 – 40 touch an go’s and I think he had 26 full stop landings. I believe they started out with a minimal load on the 130 and added weight to see how far they could go. here is where the pucker comes in, he said he had to go to reverse pitch on the props between 1/4 and 1/2 mile, in order to get it whoa’d up. The final decision was a 130 would work BUT the deck would need to be cleared and it would take a very skilled aviator to pull it off.
…and the U-2 was also air refuelable. I don’t know which experiment came first, but U-2s were deployed into the “western Pacific” with the help of the KC-135A. The tanker provided fuel to the U-2, as needed, and also provided the navigation to get the U-2 from base to base going across the Pacific. The tactic was that the U-2 would take on fuel and then go up to its operational altitude (whatever that was) and keep track of the tanker with the optica navigation system and the occasional DF steer.
I had a U2 pilot work for me at EUCOM. Good guy, he loved my carrier stories as much as I enjoyed his semi-spaceship stories. As far as AAR went, the post 90s U2Ss, with an more efficient engine, never needed air refueling. The old saying “run out of *ss before you ran out of gas” applies.
Looking at those videos of the U-2 landings and takeoffs from the Ranger and America, I’d have to guess that the tail hook addition took some special attention to get right. USAF jets could tear the tail off if they got a touchdown end engagement. Their tail hooks were for rollout end only.
CV-66 was the America, yet they are referencing the Ranger (CV-64). Remember the old saying don’t land anywhere you wouldn’t want to send the weekend?
How about a DHC-5 Buffalo modified with four turbofans doing no-wire, full-stop carrier landings?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_eDutgh4IU
Another vid of the QSRA aircraft performing at an airshow in the 80s – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4QiW-ROJtg
Gotta love the Ranger. Seems like they did a lot of cool stuff on that ship.