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Intresting Photo.....the TBM is landing over the bow and the ship (USS Yorktown CV-10) is full astern.......

Is that doctored?  Pretty cool shot!  [8D]

No...actual photo taken in 1943....

Hi all,

ORIGINAL: USS America

Is that doctored?  Pretty cool shot!  [8D]

No... I think this was actual reverse test (look at the waves!)...


Leo "Apollo11"

I know they were designed to go in reverse as fast as forward to allow for launching and retrieving planes in both directions. But from what I know it was never done in combat or non-safe settings, and that the forward arrestor wires were removed fairly quickly when in  fleet service.

Reminds me of a line from Kellys Heros:

"Man, we like to think we can get out of trouble faster than we got into it"

Oddball to Kelly talking about the reverse speed of their Shermans.

Partially alleviates the need for an angled flight deck, but you still can't do both things at once.

*Japanese pilot observing from a scout plane and shaking his head while muttering, "Those crazy Americans"* [:D]

ORIGINAL: Coach Z

I know they were designed to go in reverse as fast as forward to allow for launching and retrieving planes in both directions. But from what I know it was never done in combat or non-safe settings, and that the forward arrestor wires were removed fairly quickly when in  fleet service.

Not sure I buy that they could do the same speeds...would like to see a resource on that one.

I know the CVN I was on would almost shake you out of your rack when you made that thing go backwards...and we certainly couldn't run up to flank speed in reverse. Come to think of it...you could probably hear us clear across the Atlantic when we did that...I have been told you could when we were doing a Flank bell going forwards. [:D]

This was an actual battle concept in the case of damage to the landing area, a carrier could still recover the air group even if the planes had to be pushed over teh side. Remember the Yorktown, Wasp and Early Essex's also were equiped with hanger deck level catapults.

Checking my resources at home I found THE ILLUSTRATED DIRECTORY OF WARSHIPS: From 1860 to the Present. Salamander Books 2001  (A wannabe low budget JANES).
While I could not find any details on the ESSEX Class Carriers, it did mention something about CV-5 the YORKTOWN Class on pages 60.
"One curiuos feature was that the ship was designed to operate almost as fast astern as ahead and there were sets of arrester wires at both ends of the flight deck, the idea being that aircraft could land in either direction; although tested in peacetime this was never used operationally."

ORIGINAL: bigjoe96912
Remember the Yorktown, Wasp and Early Essex's also were equiped with hanger deck level catapults.

Any pictures? Especially of an actual test launch?

From the design of the CV-2 Lex class up until the Essex class it was standard requirement for all USN CVs to be capable of 2/3 backing speed, that is at least 22 knots, that was the minimum wind over deck to conduct flight ops. The idea behind this was that with this setting one bomb hit would not cease flight ops as planes could fly off and recover over the bow as well. There was even an LSO platform for this.

This requirement was easily met by the old Lex and Sara thanks to their TE drive, but required special backing turbines in later GT classes.

And yes, the above shot is not doctored and there are actually some other shots showing other CVs on back down trials at high speed (There is one for CV-10 without a landing plane as well, also I have one for Wasp and IIRC on for one of the orig. Yorktowns

Knavey, full power is really not true but these CVs had a muchg finer hull form aft then today's CVNs, thnx to this requirement. Also I think that this is the reason (apart from size issues) that the Midway class was the very first with tandem rudders, all earlier CVs had only a single large rudder (somewhat screwing manuverability and redundancy).

Any pictures? Especially of an actual test launch?

Actaully, yes I -do- have one. Knavey sent it to me a while ago for the mystery list. It's a Hellcat getting shot out of the hanger. If it were me, and I was used to getting to use the filght deck, I'd need a new change of underwear.

It's a cool pic tho.

Unfortunately, it's on my PC at home.

Knavey, re-send me that pic to the office, and I'll post it as a mystery ship.

-F-

Hm. Kinda surprised it let me remote link an image.

This is an avenger off of Hornet.



-F-

Cool pic!

Enterprise trials:

Isn't that a TBF using the hanger catapault?

Looks like a TBF to me.

BTW, for anyone who is having problems orienting himself, the cat shot is out the side of the ship, not over the bow.

An "athwartships hanger catapault".
 
removed in the long hull redesign to allow the weight of a second flight deck catapault.
 
Interestingly the Essexes had a full deck between the flight deck and the hanger, housing ready rooms, and later the CIC was moved there out of the island. Made it easier to upgrade them to jets, unilke the RN carriers which were all retired, except for Victorious which got a complete rebuild from the hanger deck up.