It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't culture war, or go to the Naval Gazing discord (link in the sidebar) if you want to converse in real time.
A non-naval recommendation this time. Netflix just released Cunk on Earth, a mockumentary on world history that is the funniest thing I have seen in quite a long time.
Overhauls are Basics of Naval Strategy, Carrier Doom Part 4, The Mk 23 Katie, Operation Crossroads, SYWTBABB - Leftovers Part 3 and from 2022, The Pre-Battlecruisers and Norway Part 9.
Comments
What should we use to shoot down the balloon?
I believe the X-3 is the aircraft best suited to attacking balloons.
Hit it with the minimum needed to puncture the balloon, so that gas leaks out and it slowly drifts down rather than crashing into the ground in a bunch of little pieces that are much harder to reverse-engineer.
This is where even a mediocre laser weapon would be quite handy, if we had such a thing. Otherwise we'd probably have to use a very expensive missile, with the attendant risk of a missile falling on someone. Patriot or AMRAAM; I expect the balloon is too high for guns and too cold for Sidewinders.
Over at ACOUP: fantasy ships not making sense.
I hope there is a team at Edwards or China Lake right now that’s reenacting the scene from Apollo 13: going through a pile of all the stuff that could possibly be released from an F-15 pylon to bring the balloon down in one piece. Would love to see them roll out something crazy like a dummy laser SDB with some grappling hooks welded on.
I also hope (and assume) that we have some EW aircraft tailing it to capture any EM emissions.
I wonder whether the hams underneath are picking anything up. Whether coming from the craft itself or bouncing down off it from American radars. Of course it gets to watch itself getting shot down so maybe you'd not want to use anything that shows off too much capability.
They got it! Early reports are that they used a Sidewinder launched from an F-22: https://twitter.com/DanLamothe/status/1621989127909408770
I second the recommendation for Cunk on Earth. What a brilliant send up. How she kept a straight face doing that is remarkable.
Lets suppose I want to operate a WWII naval fighter from a modern carrier. I bring aboard fuel, parts, and crew. Would there be any problems? Is a WWII hook compatible with modern arresting gear? Would I get a catapult launch that attaches to my Corsair/F-6 and doesn't rip off the landing gear? (Actually, I don't think I would even need a catapult launch on such a large deck.)
Heck, can I operate a DC-3? I know a C-130 can be made to work!
There's no obvious reason why a WW2-era tail hook would fail to snag a modern arrestor cable. Unless the modern cables are significantly larger in diameter, I guess, but that sounds like the sort of thing any competent machine shop should be able to take care of in short order.
I suspect a WW2-era aircraft would not work with modern steam (or EMALS) catapults - not so much because the landing gear wouldn't take it, as modern catapults can be set to deliver more or less push depending on the weight of the aircraft being launched, but because the aircraft of that day were all tail-draggers and so you'd get a wildly asymmetric impulse from the cat shot. Fortunately you could, as you say, very easily launch WW2-era naval aircraft without catapults at all.
Operating a DC-3... Only for a very loose definition of "operate." You wouldn't be able to move it to the hangar, ever, nor could you to do a lot else while the DC-3 was on deck. But if by "operate" you just mean "land it one time, as a last resort in an emergency, and then immediately either fly it off or push it over the side," then that should be all right.
By operate a DC-3 from a carrier I mean launch it from land and have it work as a COD aircraft. It lands, reloads real quick because the no one else can land, and ferries stuff back to land.
Just hope to $DIETY that nothing breaks between the landing and the takeoff, because push-off-the-deck might be what happens.
I believe that was the C-130 plan.
Obviously this is silly, but I like silly.
I guess you could maybe do that if you were really desperate, possibly with some structural reinforcement of the DC-3's aft fuselage. But the C-2 beats the DC-3 in speed, range, and payload, has better cargo loading and unloading arrangements, and is already carrier-capable, so I'm not sure why you'd bother. Even if you don't have access to C-2s as such, possession of a large CATOBAR aircraft carrier (big enough to theoretically land and launch a DC-3, even in the most limited capacity) suggests access to a sufficiently advanced aerospace industry to at least replicate the performance of a 60 year old cargo aircraft.
I don't think it would be quite compatible with modern carrier gear. I know one of the main drivers behind AAG and EMALS was the need to deal with lighter UAVs, which the current gear just wasn't set up to handle. I suspect that you can't turn the arresting gear on the Nimitz down far enough to snag a WWII plane.
@Philistine: tailwheel airplanes did have centerline catapult attachment points, using wire rope. (This system remained in use until the 1980s.)
But yes, propeller fighters had slow enough stall speeds and high enough unaided acceleration that they mostly didn't use the catapult even on the (shorter) CVs of their own time. Connecting up to it took time, and when launching a large strike, that was time the already-launched planes were burning fuel.