Fixed-Wing Aircraft's Night Landings on a Aircraft Carrier

choi

(1) Carrier. PBS, 2008
www.pbs.org/weta/carrier/
(The Film (name of a tag on the top horizontal bar): "The 10-hour series CARRIER was filmed aboard the USS Nimitz during the aircraft carrier’s six-month deployment to the Gulf in support of the Iraq War. The project itself took over three years to complete as 17 filmmakers shot 1,600 hours of film as the ship departed Coronado, California on May 7, 2005 and docked at various ports of call like Pearl Harbor, Hong Kong, Guam, Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain and Perth, Australia before returning to Coronado November 8, 2005")

two trailers:
(a) PBS: Carrier - Landing on a Pitching Deck Pt 1. YouTube.com, uploaded on Jun 15, 2008 (10 minutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gGMI8d3vLs
(b) PBS: Carrier - Landing on a Pitching Deck Pt 2. YouTube.com, uploaded on Jun 17, 2008 (10 minutes).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0yj70QbBzg

The entire Part II is about a training session of night landing.

choi

(2) George Frank, Night Landings on Carrier Test Pilots to Limit. Los Angeles Times, Oct 5, 1991.
http://articles.latimes.com/1991 ... 6_1_carrier-landing

Note:
(a) "ABOARD THE USS NIMITZ — Eleven pilots from the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station * * * They had trained for years to make their first nighttime landings on an aircraft carrier & & & Every fighter and attack pilot flying for the Navy or Marine Corps has qualified at night on a carrier"
(i) Marine Corps Air Station El Toro
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Corps_Air_Station_El_Toro
(near Irvine, California; In use 1943–1999 (later auctioned off to civilian developers); The name El Toro came from the nearby small community which in 1940 only had a population of 130 people
(ii) Spanish-English dictionary:
* toro (noun masculine; from Latin [noun masculine] taurus bull): "bull" (also spelled "toro" in Italian)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/toro

(b) "Working in darkness, the pilot has to bring in a jet at speeds that can top 150 mph and hook an arresting cable 4 inches off the deck in a space that is roughly 20 feet [6.1m] wide and 100 feet [30.5m] long."  (Read further at (d). )

(c) "That final approach [to an aircraft carrier for landing] 'is the moment of truth' * * * the 3-year-old El Toro training group--known as VMFAT 101--has had only one fatal accident."
(i) moment of truth

(ii) VMFAT 101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMFAT-101
(Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 "is a United States Marine Corps F/A-18 Hornet training squadron. The squadron is based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California [located in Miramar, a neighborhood of San Diego]")
(iii) Reader Mail : What Does V Stand For In VMFA? Flying with Fish (name of the website, apparently run by flyingfish, whose answer is quoted here, Sept 24, 2010
http://flyingwithfish.boardingar ... -stand-for-in-vmfa/

three consecutive paragraphs:

"Originally, back when the US Navy began creating aircraft squadron designations, the letter 'V' denoted an aircraft that was 'heavier than air' while the letter 'Z' was used for dirigibles that were 'lighter than air.'

"As the Navy and Marine aviation divisions grew and lighter than air aircraft were removed from service, the letter 'V' was changes [sic] to denote a 'Fixed Wing' aircraft.

"With the implementation of helicopters, the Navy and Marines added the letter designation 'H' for helicopters, to denote a 'rotary wing' aircraft.
(d) "Pilots say the trick to landing aboard a carrier--day or night--is to keep the nose of the plane up eight degrees [from glideslope] and snag one of the four cables that run across the deck with a small hook that hangs under the tail of the airplane.  On the night approach, the pilots use instruments until they reach a point about three-quarters of a mile from the carrier. Then they shift their eyes from the glowing green panel and lock onto a bright ray of light beamed from the carrier deck.  The light, called a 'meatball' because of its shape, warns the aviator if he is too high or low.  As they drop to the deck, they have only a split-second to calculate, since the four cables, one of which they must snag, are only 40 feet [12.2 m] apart. As soon as the plane hits the deck, the pilot pushes it to full throttle. That gives the pilot the power he needs to become airborne again and avoid plunging into the water if he misses the cable."
(i) The 'meatball' will be explained in the next posting.
(ii) "As soon as the plane hits the deck, the pilot pushes it to full throttle."

Wiki says the same:

modern United States Navy carrier air operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo ... rier_air_operations

section 10 Landing (paragraph 1 only): "The pilot aims for the middle arresting wire, which is either the second or third depending on the configuration of the carrier. Immediately upon touchdown, the pilot advances the throttles to full power so that a touch and go (known as a "Bolter") can be executed in the event that all trap wires have been missed. Ideally, the tailhook catches the target wire (or cross deck pendant), which abruptly slows the aircraft from approach speed to a full stop in about two seconds. As the aircraft's forward motion stops, the throttles are reduced to idle, and the hook is raised on the aircraft director's signal.

(e) During takeoff from a carrier, "it [fixed-wing aircraft] is hurled from the deck by a steam catapult, going from motionless to 170 mph in less than three seconds.

choi

There is no need to read either (3) or (4), especially (4).

(3) Sam LaGrone, Several Reasons Why Aircraft Carriers Are Super Dangerous, Popular Science, Feb 3, 2014 (blog).
www.popsci.com/blog-network/ship ... are-super-dangerous

Quote:

(A) "Flying jets off and on ships has historically been a high peril endeavor. Especially on.

"The number of US sailors and Marines that have died in and around aircraft carriers is shocking — 8,500 from 1948 to 1988 (when it was just as safe to fly off a US carrier as a US Air Force tarmac).

"More than 12,000 aircraft were lost (both figures were dug up from the Navy Safety Center in an essay on the Navy's transition to jet aviation included in the US Naval Institute's One Hundred Years of US Navy Air Power (DISCLAIMER [personally I think 'full disclosure' is more apt]: My day job is working for the Naval Institute).

(B) "During flight operations an aircraft carrier has to keep about 30 kts (34 mph) of wind across the deck to help provide a boost to the aircraft taking off. (That's one of the reason the largest carriers are nuclear powered, to move the ships to generate the wind).

"A giant steam catapult under the deck launches planes up to about 170 mph to provide the rest of the go for the aircraft.

"So that means landing pilots have to take in to account 100,000 ton ship moving at a speed that will get you a ticket on some residential street.

(c) "As large as a carrier is (the patriotic like to say a Nimitz-class carrier is four acres of sovereign US real estate anywhere in the world) the area to land is very small. * * *

"The target wires (four on older US carriers three on newer ships) exist in an area a little larger than a football field (317 feet [96.6m]) but you really only want to catch the third wire (second on newer ships). * * * For some of the larger aircraft — like the Navy's E2 Hawkeye — the width margin for error can only be a foot.

(4) Ed Rush, Into The Darkness And Back Again: The Business Lessons I Learned from Landing On An Aircraft Carrier at Night. EdRush.com, undated
edrush.com/into-the-darkness-and-back-again-the-business-lessons-i-learned-from-landing-on-an-aircraft-carrier-at-night/
(on USS John Stennis)

Quote:

"as a [former] carrier pilot in the United States Marine Corps, I am proud to be a citizen in the only country that lands its aircraft on a carrier at night — crazy as it may be.

"You see, starting at 700 feet above the water and ending at about 1,200 feet, there was a very thick cloud layer.