One of the major challenges in the final stage of a carrier approach is mastering the so called rooster tail, the turbulent air that is the carrier equivalent of the ground effect encountered when an aircraft crosses the approach end of a runway.
Even the engineers stopping coming out to watch us practice," Flatley recalled. A side trip to the Naval Air Rework Facility in Norfolk, Virginia, was made so engineers there could figure out how to get the Hercules off the ship if, for some reason, it got stranded aboard the ship during the trials. It was determined that the most practical solution would be to run a steel I-beam through the crew door and punch a hole on the other side of the fuselage and run another I-beam through the paratroop doors in the back.
Those two I beams would then be connected to a third I-beam suspended over the fuselage and a crane would be used to lift the aircraft off the deck if the carrier could make port conveniently. An arresting hook, a normal piece of equipment for a carrier landing, wouldn't have helped either because the Forrestal's flight deck had been cleared—the arresting wires had been removed to save wear and tear on the tires of the Hercules.
The deck was completely empty as the air wing's aircraft were either flown ashore or parked on the hangar deck. The deck was heaving twenty feet up and down," Flatley recalls. Every two and one-half minutes or so, no matter what the sea state, the ship will steady out. Because of the excessive wind and sea state, we did forty-two approaches to ship just to get nineteen touch-and-go landings.
The Hercules crew first made touch-and-goes on the ship's foot-long angled deck and then went down the 1,foot-long axial deck, where, on the next trip, the actual landings would be made. The first flight lasted five and one-half hours, two of which were spent in the Forrestal's landing pattern.
Cameras placed all around the flight deck recorded the touch-and-goes from every angle. A broad dotted white line painted down the middle of the axial deck greeted them on their first approach. The Forresta l's skipper put the carrier into the wind and added ten knots, which gave the flight crew a forty- to fifty-knot headwind over the bow.
After making the three warm-up touch-and-go landings, Flatley was cleared for the first full stop landing. The first approach was made at seventy-nine knots indicated airspeed. The Forrestal's landing signal officer gave Flatley the traditional "cut" signal as the aircraft crossed the rounddown at ten to fifteen feet in the air.
Flatley lifted the throttles over the gate and put the propellers into reverse pitch as he settled down on the deck. It stopped in feet, actually short of where the number four arresting cable would have been lying. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the deck hands. Because the aircraft was a tanker, simply adding additional fuel increased the gross weight of the aircraft.
There were only fifteen feet clearance between the KC's wingtip and the island. The only restriction placed on the crew during takeoff was not to rotate the aircraft until the wingtip passed the forward end of the ship's island. Three more full stop landings were made the first day, followed by ten landings on 21 November and seven more the next day. Stovall made three of the landings on the last day. A total of twenty-nine touch-and-goes were made on the four trips to the carrier.
The KC weighed 85, pounds on the first landing. Thereafter, landings were made in progression up to a gross weight of , pounds. At maximum weight, which set the record for the largest and heaviest aircraft landing on a US Navy aircraft carrier, Flatley and Stovall used only feet for takeoff and feet for landing.
One landing at a weight of , pounds required feet to stop and that was in a heavy squall. On the last takeoffs, the crew didn't even back up — they simply took off from the point on the deck where the aircraft stopped. The crew completed the carrier qualification tests around noon on 22 November. We wrote the recommended procedures so anyone else wanting to land on a carrier had the information available. We went about our business and were told not to talk about it," noted Flatley.
The project remained classified officially for a year, although word got out quickly to the flying community. The feasibility of landing a C with a useful payload on a carrier was clearly demonstrated, but in the end, it simply was not practical.
He went on to command a carrier fighter unit during Vietnam and attained the rank of captain. He died of leukemia in Brennan was also awarded the Air Medal. He went on to become a flight engineer on P-3 Orions, accumulating nearly 7, hours flight time. He retired in as a chief petty officer after twenty-two years in the Navy. Four hours after his retirement ceremony, he was on a plane to Iran to work as a Lockheed field service representative on the P-3F program.
He retired in and passed away a short time later. Sieve shipped out immediately after the program concluded to fly Lockheed WV-1s—a. A crew from VMGR flew to the ceremony. Flatley was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, a difficult award to earn anytime but especially in peacetime.
He spent the rest of his Navy career in fighters. Even though he didn't have a tail hook on the KCF, he counts his eighteen landings in a Hercules among his 1, traps, which puts him in the top ten of the Navy's all-time carrier landing list. He retired as a rear admiral in Only minor modifications were made to the aircraft: the wing refueling pods were removed, a precision airspeed indicator was installed in the cockpit, and the antiskid system was replaced with the type used on commercial s.
The aircraft was also fitted with a smaller nose landing gear orifice, which allowed for slower metering of the hydraulic fluid and made for smoother touchdowns.
Limmer then gave the Navy pilots their check ride on the way back to Pax River. The crew began practicing landings at Pax River almost immediately. Engineers from the Carrier Suitability Branch set up multiple cameras and came out to observe the first practices and take extensive measurements. High on the list of things to be accomplished during the practice landings was to determine the optimum carrier approach speed for the C While the normal approach speed for a Hercules is to knots, a determination was made to fly the carrier approaches at five to six knots above stall speed for the planned landing gross weight.
Even though the test data collected during the field trials indicated that sink rate was not going to be a problem, the pilots would not be convinced until they actually made the test flights to the carrier.
One of the major challenges in the final stage of a carrier approach is mastering the so called rooster tail, the turbulent air that is the carrier equivalent of the ground effect encountered when an aircraft crosses the approach end of a runway.
Even the engineers stopping coming out to watch us practice," Flatley recalled. A side trip to the Naval Air Rework Facility in Norfolk, Virginia, was made so engineers there could figure out how to get the Hercules off the ship if, for some reason, it got stranded aboard the ship during the trials. It was determined that the most practical solution would be to run a steel I-beam through the crew door and punch a hole on the other side of the fuselage and run another I-beam through the paratroop doors in the back.
Those two I beams would then be connected to a third I-beam suspended over the fuselage and a crane would be used to lift the aircraft off the deck if the carrier could make port conveniently. An arresting hook, a normal piece of equipment for a carrier landing, wouldn't have helped either because the Forrestal's flight deck had been cleared—the arresting wires had been removed to save wear and tear on the tires of the Hercules. The deck was completely empty as the air wing's aircraft were either flown ashore or parked on the hangar deck.
The deck was heaving twenty feet up and down," Flatley recalls. Every two and one-half minutes or so, no matter what the sea state, the ship will steady out. Because of the excessive wind and sea state, we did forty-two approaches to ship just to get nineteen touch-and-go landings. The Hercules crew first made touch-and-goes on the ship's foot-long angled deck and then went down the 1,foot-long axial deck, where, on the next trip, the actual landings would be made.
The first flight lasted five and one-half hours, two of which were spent in the Forrestal's landing pattern. Cameras placed all around the flight deck recorded the touch-and-goes from every angle. A broad dotted white line painted down the middle of the axial deck greeted them on their first approach. The Forresta l's skipper put the carrier into the wind and added ten knots, which gave the flight crew a forty- to fifty-knot headwind over the bow.
After making the three warm-up touch-and-go landings, Flatley was cleared for the first full stop landing. The first approach was made at seventy-nine knots indicated airspeed. The Forrestal's landing signal officer gave Flatley the traditional "cut" signal as the aircraft crossed the rounddown at ten to fifteen feet in the air. Flatley lifted the throttles over the gate and put the propellers into reverse pitch as he settled down on the deck.
It stopped in feet, actually short of where the number four arresting cable would have been lying. You should have seen the looks on the faces of the deck hands. Because the aircraft was a tanker, simply adding additional fuel increased the gross weight of the aircraft.
There were only fifteen feet clearance between the KC's wingtip and the island. The only restriction placed on the crew during takeoff was not to rotate the aircraft until the wingtip passed the forward end of the ship's island. Three more full stop landings were made the first day, followed by ten landings on 21 November and seven more the next day. Stovall made three of the landings on the last day. A total of twenty-nine touch-and-goes were made on the four trips to the carrier.
The KC weighed 85, pounds on the first landing. Thereafter, landings were made in progression up to a gross weight of , pounds. At maximum weight, which set the record for the largest and heaviest aircraft landing on a US Navy aircraft carrier, Flatley and Stovall used only feet for takeoff and feet for landing.
One landing at a weight of , pounds required feet to stop and that was in a heavy squall. On the last takeoffs, the crew didn't even back up — they simply took off from the point on the deck where the aircraft stopped. The crew completed the carrier qualification tests around noon on 22 November. We wrote the recommended procedures so anyone else wanting to land on a carrier had the information available.
We went about our business and were told not to talk about it," noted Flatley. The project remained classified officially for a year, although word got out quickly to the flying community. The feasibility of landing a C with a useful payload on a carrier was clearly demonstrated, but in the end, it simply was not practical. He went on to command a carrier fighter unit during Vietnam and attained the rank of captain. He died of leukemia in Brennan was also awarded the Air Medal.
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