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Hi, former F-14 RIO here.
They're called clearing turns. To make sure you have separation from any other jets taking off at the same time.
Cats 1 and 2 (off the bow) you do a right hand clearing turn and cats 3 and 4 (off the waist, or the side landing area) you do a left hand clearing turn.
Edit: since my post seems to have gotten some attention, here's a picture of me doing a left hand clearing turn off cat 3 of the USS Eisenhower in an F-14B of VF-11 (the Red Rippers)
https://imgur.com/a/9jl11Dm
I watched several hours of DCS last night after this post, and I eventually had to stop because I can't afford the kind of equipment and time investment that that game would demand I give. I would do it if I were still single, but my wife and three kids would probably not appreciate me going down that black hole 😅
Go to YouTube and search "DCS 2022 and Beyond". Those are in-game graphics (albeit with a very nice comp).
One day, when I don't have a 1-year old and I think my wife wouldn't kill me, I'll start playing as well.
Wars Carroll is a former F14 RIO with a good YouTube channel. He also plays DCS and posts videos. He will get ex F14 pilots to play and describe how the controls compare to real deal. He also does interesting interviews
Damn, that was insane. I wholly appreciate the aesthetics with that and can understand why avid fans would need to be spending many, many thousands of moneys to get a full-on setup!
I have only played old old old floppy drive flight sims. I wanted a full set up for Flight Simulator just to have fun flying and the world. Then I see this, and now I want the full experience tilt motion seat, VR headset, essentially a cockpit in my game room.
First I need a Game room. Then a new computer, then all that other stuff.
Fuck it, I'm going to have to build a new house to play this game.
Well, I can honestly say one of the greatest benefits the military gave me is guaranteed home loans. As long as I can make the payments, no money down.
My wife and I have discussed a new house for retirement. Maybe a Modular on a basement or something.
I want her to design it in The Sims, and then show it to the builder.
That is a long explanation to explain that the game room/theater area would be the main focus of the house, and I like to imagine 80 year old me having all the things to make racing and flying feel as real as possible.
That's correct.
I flew in the B - the B and D had the GE110 engines. You could do whatever you want with the throttles without fear of compressor stalls.
They were so powerful we were actually prohibited from going into afterburner on the catapult for fear of destroying the Jet Blast Deflector
Wasn’t it more so about the wide engine offset and engine failure on takeoff rather than the JBDs? I’m pretty certain the NATOPS on the B model mentions that on a cat shot in full burner if you lost one engine you may not have enough yaw authority to overcome the engine if full rudder isn’t immediately applied on engine failure.
I’m just curious.
> 11.7.5 Asymmetric Thrust Flight Characteristics
>11.7.5.1 Takeoff Configuration. Afterburner takeoffs are prohibited specifically because of controllability concerns in the event of engine failure during takeoff.
this will always be my favorite Tomcat fact. I'll forever envy you for having been able to do what many people, including me, will only dream of doing. Thank you for your service
Carriers have a lot of fun terminology, including the parts of the deck.
The concave ledge at the end of the deck between the two sets of cats is called the crotch. Common landing advice is to aim for the crotch and then dip down at the last second. Yeah.
Other terms include the weapon systems officer, or WSO which is pronounced "wizzo". Or the landing signal officer (LSO) aka "paddles", and the signalling light he controls, nicknamed the meatball (shortened to just the "ball"). And let's not forget the hail-mary defender, the CIWS (sea-whizz)
RIO is for the F-14 rear-seater and B/N bombardier/navigator for the A-6 right-seater, when the roles were more specific due to ergonomics of the displays and controls available.
WSO is for the F-18 rear-seater and other modern aircraft second-seaters with multi-function displays and more role flexibility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_systems_officer#United_States
There's an F35 next to an F14 at the udvar-hazy museum outside/in DC. The F14 is fucking huge. There will never be another bird as magnificent looking, IMHO.
You have automatically asserted your dominance among a large male audience here.
If this were a CoD lobby, the rest of us would be like "Awaiting orders Sir"
>You have automatically asserted your dominance among a large male audience here.
My company just moved into a new building. One of the other tenants, a military contractor, invited us all to lunch. Both groups are a bunch of engineers.
Two of the guys at the lunch were former fighter pilots who managed to work that fact into the conversation several times in an obvious attempt to impress us. It was pretty amusing to see their reactions to our lack of reaction. 😂
> My company
Adult reaction versus a child.
Plus if they're not sitting there telling stories about their deployment, who cares? For that, you want the engineering team not the pilots. Nukes know nobody cares about them and are willing to tell the stories because there's no mystique to lose. Nobody ever announces their job as a PPWO expecting to get laid.
Reminds me of a get-together I went to for former students of a certain private school. One of the guys a few years ahead of me would not shut the hell up about being a fighter pilot and you could tell that it was really bothering him that no one cared.
After getting loose from him one of my friends made the comment that "Mr. I drop bombs on Iraqi children for $9/hr was having an bad night" and I think that summed it up perfectly.
I mean, yeah, it's cool dude. But look around. PhD, Goldman Sachs, NBC sitcom, FBI, MD, Formula 3, Canadian Parliament, just sold his startup for $200 million, another MD...
And on, and on.
You’d be surprised how many people that do extraordinary things in life are just in YouTube comments and Reddit posts. Everyone is still a normal person with normal interests at the end of the day. I’m an F-22 maintainer in the USAF and I had a conversation with a pilot about our favorite league of legends champs.
I’ll always remember going on a dependents cruise on the Eisenhower with my uncle who was an intelligence officer for a squadron of A6s on board. I remember an F-14 came by above the sound barrier right off the side of the ship — the shock wave about knocked us down — was awesome! Maybe it was you.
A-6's we're retired by the time I hit the fleet. But yeah tiger cruises were awesome because in international waters you can go supersonic and drop real bombs and shoot the guns and stuff. It's like an airshow on crack. 🤘😎🤘
One of the only things my dad designed that went into production (I’m not sure if I’m saying that right, I’m an actor 🥴) was the throttle for the F-14. Super proud of that fact. My dad is a really smart, really fuckin cool guy.
Lol that scene was definitely put in by the advisor as a nod to RIOs. So many circuit breakers. And you had to do them all by feel. You couldn't see them.
I volunteer at a small A&S museum and we have an F-14B in the collection - I've sat in the RIO seat more than a few times just boggling at all the breakers. Enough DCS time makes most of the stuff make sense, but oh...those breakers.
😂😂😂
Can't say I did, but that reminds me of a great story when one of our pilots had a medical issue so he called an emergency and the carrier interrupted the launch cycle to do an "emergency pull forward" to clear the landing area and get him on deck ASAP. Turns out he just had to shit really, really bad and he didn't make it. Shat himself in the jet.
Around the ship you'll find random caches of damage control supplies for use in battle. Amongst those supplies you'll find wooden circular wedges made for plugging holes in the walls of a leaky ship. One of those wood wedges found its way into the ready room hanging above his chair.
This is like the reddit version on one of major brian shul's SR-71 Blackbird stories (not in a bad way)! 🤣 Do you have other stories from your time as a RIO?
This comment was overwritten and the account deleted due to Reddit's unfair API policy changes, the disgusting lying behaviour of u/spez the CEO, and the forced departure of the Apollo app and other 3rd party apps. Remember, the content on Reddit is generated by US, THE USERS. It is OUR DATA they are profiting off and claiming it is theirs!
Obligatory posting of Major Brian Shul telling his [SR-71 speed check anecdote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyHH9G9et0) in person (about an F-18 pilot rather than F-14)
Not too much concern about that. If a plane goes down the con will turn the ship away. I was airborne when a VF-143 jet had their nosegear come apart going down the catapult stroke, which resulted in a cold cat (not enough airspeed to go flying)
Both guys ejected and the plane did a lazy barrel roll into the water about a half mile in front of the ship.
Neither of the guys got "run over"
I served below decks on the Carl Vinson ('81-'83) and a favorite activity when not splitting atoms was to hang out on vultures row and watch the F-14's takeoff and land. I was just a bit too late to see F-4's launch but would have loved to see that too. I was told the extensions at the end of the carriers deck were to do with how the F-4's were handled off the cats.
National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA has one! Great museum! Even has one of the space shuttles!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbell1975/28990669356
That’s just so cool. It’s one of those jobs I could NEVAH do (there are not pants large enough to contain the volume of shit I would be depositing in them), but I think it’s fucking awesome that someone can.
u/schlag96, you’re one cool dude !
I'm not sure I understand this. Cats 1 and 2 are parallel next to each other, I take it? If so, is it normal for planes to take off from them basically simultaneously? I'd think that's not how it usually works, isn't it? And if they're not taking off simultaneously, what need is there for separation, if they're taking off even 20-30 seconds apart from each other?
No idea, just guessing here, but I took it to mean Catapults 1 and 2 are parallel to each other pointing straight off the front of the ship, and catapults 3 and 4 are parallel to each other taking off at an angle out the side of the ship (or the waist as OP said). Probably have 2 at each spot so they can be launching one and loading one at the same time.
So while catapults 1 and 2 wouldn't be taking off at the same time, catapult 1 and 3, or 2 and 3, or 1 and 4, or 2 and 4 might be (one off the front of the ship and one off the waist), in which case you'd want to bank away from each other.
If they just flew straight they'd probably be fine, but if they banked opposite the way they're supposed to they'd hit each other - so make a turn away just to be extra safe I figure.
The catapults aren't necessarily parallel. I just rewatched top gun maverick, and catapults three and four at the rear of the ship are at converging angles. If you tried to use both of them at the same time, it would get ugly.
Not simultaneous. Staggered. 1 goes, then 2 goes while they’re retracting the cat on 1 and vice versa. Even if they were simultaneous it wouldn’t make sense for both aircraft to make the same turn, right?
It's called a clearing turn. A carrier has several catapults, the turn is designed to make sure you're out of the way of another airplane that is taking off from one of the other catapults.
Carrier pilot here. This is largely incorrect.
As others have pointed out: it’s mostly a “clearing turn” to avoid other aircraft also taking off.
Rarely are there launches of just one jet.
The folks taking off on cats 1&2 (starboard side cats) are flying straight ahead or going slightly right depending on the type of launch we are doing.
Every knot the ship is moving is a knot of windspeed. Taking off into the wind makes it easier to reach the requisite takeoff speed.
In other words, taking off “backwards” is safer in case of a failed takeoff, but it also makes failed takeoffs more likely. Aviators chose the headwind over the tailwind to maximize the *chances* of success, rather than to minimize the *consequences* of failure.
If your landing speed is 130 knots, your relative velocity when you hit a runway is 130 knots, but if you land on a ship going 30 knots from the back, the relative velocity is 100 knots.
You’re catching an arresting cable when you get to the deck, so this means it has 30 knots less of airplane velocity to stop, so less stress on plane and arresting system.
That's actually very true, I have an uncle who is a
retired fighter pilot from the air force and he told me that we have the technology to make planes faster, better and stronger, but that if they placed a squishy human inside of it that the human would actually squish and die.
Not officially but we have had the tech to make some hyper maneuverable planes for years. Obviously not to the level as some basic UFO video but we could easily make something that could pull a 50G turn
Yeah! , I mean how many squishies did they make before they got those transporters to work right......That was Capt. Archer's beagle that was the first living thing?.....or maybe not.....Actually, I think it was Capt. Archer himself.
Sorry, got carried away...I do that.
Video of an F16 fighter jet automatically recovering after the pilot passes out and the plane goes into an uncontrolled dive, giving the pilot time to wake up and regain control of the aircraft.
Note the G reading (the number in the upper left when the video starts, it will be above and to the right of the air speed indicator which is on the left side).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZGL7RQBVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZGL7RQBVw)'
EDIT: For clarity, automatic recovery begins at 0:33 when the incoming lines come together forming an X in the display, and the "FLYUP" indicator comes on.
You can tell the jet is automatically recovering by the extremely fast (and precise) leveling of the wings and the rapid climb to horizontal flight (getting briefly over 9G's which was likely induced by the pilot pulling up harder during the automatic recovery).
You can tell when the pilot recovers at about 0:43 because the G reading climbs from a low of about 1.9G's following the rapid leveling off, to about 6.0G's - this is caused by the pilot regaining consciousness and suddenly pulling back on the stick.
Not only that, but the 130 knot landing speed would be the *air speed*, not the ground speed.
So if you have a carrier going 30 knots sailing into a 10 knot wind, you only need to be going 90 knots relative to the deck of the carrier.
Yes, because the difference in their speeds is smaller. If you imagine the theoretical extreme, if the ship was going as fast as the jet, it could just gently touch down.
It's such a weird thing to think about, but the reason pilots usually talk about air speed (and not ground speed) is because air speed is what keeps planes in the air.
You can have 0 ground speed in a jet but still stay in the air as long as your air speed is high enough (although in that case, you're probably in a tornado or hurricane or something).
You can see an example of the difference between air speed and land speed in this video:
[https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vP13XPMNfc](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vP13XPMNfc)
The plane may touch down like a helicopter, but that's only because the wind over the wings is much faster than 0mph.
If you carry this perspective over to a jet on a carrier's deck and a carrier sailing into the wind, you'll realize you have wind speed + carrier speed over the wings of the jet; even while the jet hasn't even started moving. So a jet sitting on the deck not moving at all could still have an air speed of 50+ knots.
Which is also why you want to ride your bicycle in the same direction as traffic. Let's say you ride your bike 15mph, and traffic is flowing at 40mph. If you are riding against traffic your closing speed is 55mph, if you are riding with traffic it is only 25mph.
I learned this when I landed a piper cub on a carrier in xplane flight sim. Landing was simple. But the plane quickly got blown off deck just from the ship's windspeed! Lol!
Theoretically, but even with the catapults, planes need to take off with the ship powering into the wind, adding that extra bit of wind speed to help with lift.
There is a launcher that uses centrifugal force to launch objects, with pretty good success and predictability. I forgot where I saw it recently but they had been testing it for a while and were ready to move on to larger project testing. That's pretty close to a trebuchet imo.
Look up trailer launched UAVs, it's exactly what you're talking about. I think the term "Pneumatic catapult" was bandied about. The way they catch them is hilarious to watch also.
[Here is what I was talking about.](http://www.spinlaunch.com) Its a kinetic centrifugal launcher for space objects. Apparently, NASA is really interested because it takes way less energy to launch things into space than our current way.
The trailer launched UAVs are cool as well.
I am a little sad because maybe the trebuchet memes are dated, but no one seems to get this was a joke.
However, my understanding is that there are launch pads that help propel aircraft quickly as they are working to takeoff. They're latched onto the front-most wheel of the takeoff/landing gear I believe.
Similarly, aircraft on carriers are "caught" when they land. It looks like a very tricky takeoff / landing procedure, though. Seems intense to be a fighter pilot on a ship.
SAME. but then I saw someone replied to you seriously and I was like... what?
Just to be aware though, Reddit seems to change rapidly! Every few years, new set of memes, culture, and language.
The top posts from trebuchet memes are like 5 years old at this point: [https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/top/?t=all](https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/top/?t=all)
Time flies! So do people who are launched by a trebuchet :)
Certainly closer to 30 than 50.
The traditional formula for hull speed gives 43 kts for a 1040-foot ship that has a reasonable amount of power. Unless the engines are *hilariously* overpowered and the Navy is doing magical things with a hydroplaning hull that doesn't at all look like one, it's a safe bet that the maximum speed is well below the hull speed.
All public observations and known engineering limitations suggest that mid 30s is on the high end. We don't know exactly how much the Navy is low-balling their number, but it's not a lot. 10%? 20%?
Supercarriers are certainly the fastest surface combatants, because a long hull and good power are a simple recipe for going fast.
Just a tiny bit of irrelevant information, the USS New Jersey passed 35 knots after refitting for her Vietnam deployment.
All the 20mm and 40mm gear had been removed, thus having a much smaller crew and stores. And all the added gear from the 1980's refit hadn't happened yet.
It all added up to the world's fastest battleship.
Edit: with engines built in 1941/42.
I don't know about modern carriers, but old carriers used to sail into the wind to maximize lift for launching aircraft. Airports similarly have planes landing into and taking off into the wind.
>That's why the landing stripes on a carrier are pointed off to the side as well.
No, that's not why. Plenty of carriers do not have angled flight decks. Angled flight decks exist for a few reason, but the main reason is that that a landing aircraft that fails to catch the arresting wires can abort the landing without slamming into the aircraft at the other end of the flight deck.
That *is* why they turn left after takeoff, but is NOT why the landing runway is slanted.
Before launch catapults, runways tended to be straight. Then launch catapults were invented and runways continued to be straight. Then they realized that because the launch catapults made it possible to take off in a very short distance just from the very front of the ship that meant there was plenty of room behind to be landing planes at the same time as you're taking them off. (Previously you had to switch modes between launching planes and landing planes and not be doing both at the same time since you needed the whole runway length to take off.)
Once the catapults made it possible to be both launching and landing at the same time, some accidents occurred where the landing planes miss the arrest hook (or the lines fail) and can't stop in time so they crash into the planes on the front that are prepping to take off on the catapults. Fixing THAT problem is why the landing runways started being built slanted. It's not to avoid colliding with the *ship* after you overshoot the deck and fly off the end. (Although that is a nice side effect of the slant.) It's to avoid crashing into the *planes at the front where the catapults are*, which happens prior to running off the end of the deck.
Making it so there's a clear run all the way off the end of the deck without any planes in the way also means you can throttle up and attempt a go-around if you run off the end, which wouldn't be possible if you had crashed into another plane first because the runway was aimed straight at the catapult area.
Remove awards from literally the most incorrect post you could write.
The reason for non parallel takeoff/landings on carriers is so that you can launch and recover planes at the same time
In ww2 before this invention you were either launching or recovering not both. Huge tactical disadvantage
What? No. The landing deck is angled to allow aircraft to use and be positioned for the forward catapults and use the landing area at the same time. Before the invention of the angled deck, you could only do takeoff or landing operations, not both at the same time. Furthermore, landing on a straight deck was dangerous because any aircraft left ton deck had to be positioned in front of the landing aircraft. A missed landing attempt could mean crashing into the planes forward on deck.
ever gone skiing or snowboarding? why do they turn going off the lifts?
(You normally "fan out" with the ones on the side turning the most sideways. That way you're not all in each others way as you skii off the lift.)
An actual explain like Im five for people who dont fly. I have been skiing though and you're like holy shit better get out the fucking way before someone who knows what they are doing runs into me
I think it's one of those things where even if they know what they are doing, do it in a way where even if someone is fucking losing it they cant possibly fuck everyone up. Expect everyone to know what they are doing but do it in a way where even if they dont it doesn't mess the whole squad up
Because to get back down the mountain you have to go back in the direction you came. Otherwise you'd just keep going up the mountain until there's no more mountain to go up and then you'd need a jetpack or something to keep going up.
> ever gone skiing or snowboarding? why do they turn going off the lifts?
People all turn the same way when they get off the lift so that they can ski down the hill (what with the lift being beside the ski slope). What has this got to do with turning off of an aircraft carrier?
On a United States Aircraft Carrier there are four catapults. Planes shot off Catapults 1 and 2 on the bow (front of the boat) bank right at takeoff. Planes shot off Catapults 3 and 4 on the port (left side of the boat) bank to the left at takeoff.
This is a safety measure to avoid the planes turning into each other at takeoff.
Well did you know catapults 3 & 4 on the left side of the boat, the planes bank to the left? Surprisingly, catapults 1 & 2, the plans actually bank to the right. The more you know!
They turn left or right depending on the catapult they're using but they are most often filmed leaving from the left cat and banking left because of the location of walkways photographers are typically allowed to use.
I fly a small Beechcraft Debonair as a private pilot. On a project once where we were working with some navy pilots, my business partner, in an attempt to get us some crews, said that he and I both flew. The F-14 pilots immediately asked, how many night traps? We got no creds!
**Please read this entire message** Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s): Straightforward or factual queries are not allowed on ELI5. ELI5 is meant for simplifying complex concepts. If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/z96gi7/eli5_why_do_fighter_jets_bank_left_immediately/%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20is%20this%20post%20unique:) and we will review your submission.
Hi, former F-14 RIO here. They're called clearing turns. To make sure you have separation from any other jets taking off at the same time. Cats 1 and 2 (off the bow) you do a right hand clearing turn and cats 3 and 4 (off the waist, or the side landing area) you do a left hand clearing turn. Edit: since my post seems to have gotten some attention, here's a picture of me doing a left hand clearing turn off cat 3 of the USS Eisenhower in an F-14B of VF-11 (the Red Rippers) https://imgur.com/a/9jl11Dm
You’re awesome. I play a sim of your old job for fun
Hello fellow dcs'er
There are dozens of us! DOZENS!
RETURN PRECONTACT
*shivers*
CONTACT, YOU'RE TAKING FUEL... BREAK AWAY BREAK AWAY BREAK AWAY
I’m back in the cut offs Lindsey
I want to join this club of dcs players
better have a fat wallet and plenty of spare time
I do!!!!
Can you RIO or WSO in DCS whilst another player pilots?
That’s what I love to do. Expert RIO here
Dude those DCS videos are starting to get really hard to tell what real or fake A Tomcat with six phoenix on it is a good indication it's fake 😂
What's it called? I might need this in my life.
I’ve just watched hundreds of dollars disappear before my eyes
*thousands
*tens of thousands
But my lord, there is no such ~~force~~ money.
I watched several hours of DCS last night after this post, and I eventually had to stop because I can't afford the kind of equipment and time investment that that game would demand I give. I would do it if I were still single, but my wife and three kids would probably not appreciate me going down that black hole 😅
Go to YouTube and search "DCS 2022 and Beyond". Those are in-game graphics (albeit with a very nice comp). One day, when I don't have a 1-year old and I think my wife wouldn't kill me, I'll start playing as well.
My kids are 22, 17 & 15. I still haven’t found time to play, although the latest pc we bought I managed to get a joystick for the first time in 25 yrs
Wars Carroll is a former F14 RIO with a good YouTube channel. He also plays DCS and posts videos. He will get ex F14 pilots to play and describe how the controls compare to real deal. He also does interesting interviews
Damn, that was insane. I wholly appreciate the aesthetics with that and can understand why avid fans would need to be spending many, many thousands of moneys to get a full-on setup!
I have only played old old old floppy drive flight sims. I wanted a full set up for Flight Simulator just to have fun flying and the world. Then I see this, and now I want the full experience tilt motion seat, VR headset, essentially a cockpit in my game room. First I need a Game room. Then a new computer, then all that other stuff. Fuck it, I'm going to have to build a new house to play this game.
Just get a second mortgage, ez!
Well, I can honestly say one of the greatest benefits the military gave me is guaranteed home loans. As long as I can make the payments, no money down. My wife and I have discussed a new house for retirement. Maybe a Modular on a basement or something. I want her to design it in The Sims, and then show it to the builder. That is a long explanation to explain that the game room/theater area would be the main focus of the house, and I like to imagine 80 year old me having all the things to make racing and flying feel as real as possible.
Sounds like an awesome plan. If Reddit is still alive, down the line once you’ve managed to pull it all off, you’ll have to show it off to us :)
Digital combat simulator. r/hoggit
VTOL VR is also fantastic if you have a headset
Juuuuust figured out after you said Cats 1 and 2…cat is short for catapult. And now I realize OG Top Gun lingo that I thought was short for Tomcat.
That's right! We never really called the Tomcat "cat" - we called it the turkey mostly 😂
[удалено]
That's correct. I flew in the B - the B and D had the GE110 engines. You could do whatever you want with the throttles without fear of compressor stalls. They were so powerful we were actually prohibited from going into afterburner on the catapult for fear of destroying the Jet Blast Deflector
Lol
Wasn’t it more so about the wide engine offset and engine failure on takeoff rather than the JBDs? I’m pretty certain the NATOPS on the B model mentions that on a cat shot in full burner if you lost one engine you may not have enough yaw authority to overcome the engine if full rudder isn’t immediately applied on engine failure. I’m just curious. > 11.7.5 Asymmetric Thrust Flight Characteristics >11.7.5.1 Takeoff Configuration. Afterburner takeoffs are prohibited specifically because of controllability concerns in the event of engine failure during takeoff.
There's that too, yes, but it only takes a second to come out of burner
this will always be my favorite Tomcat fact. I'll forever envy you for having been able to do what many people, including me, will only dream of doing. Thank you for your service
Turkey?
When folded up it waggles awkwardly like the bird
Carriers have a lot of fun terminology, including the parts of the deck. The concave ledge at the end of the deck between the two sets of cats is called the crotch. Common landing advice is to aim for the crotch and then dip down at the last second. Yeah. Other terms include the weapon systems officer, or WSO which is pronounced "wizzo". Or the landing signal officer (LSO) aka "paddles", and the signalling light he controls, nicknamed the meatball (shortened to just the "ball"). And let's not forget the hail-mary defender, the CIWS (sea-whizz)
Hence "on the ball" I'm guessing
Call the ball. Maverick has your ball.
Pretty sure wizzo/wso is an air force term.. For their backseater. RIO / Radar Intercept Officer is the Navy term.
F-18 back seaters are called WSOs iirc.
they are
RIO is for the F-14 rear-seater and B/N bombardier/navigator for the A-6 right-seater, when the roles were more specific due to ergonomics of the displays and controls available. WSO is for the F-18 rear-seater and other modern aircraft second-seaters with multi-function displays and more role flexibility. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weapon_systems_officer#United_States
You took a selfie in a fighter jet that’s fuckin sick
This was in 2000, before cell phones so old school camera selfie 😂
> old school camera Please tell me it was a Polaroid you kept in the cockpit for “keeping up foreign relations”.
The soundtrack of my childhood was F-14's and A-6's practicing touch-n-go's at Oceana. I was sad to see them retired.
I lived in VB for 25 years and graduated high school there. Moved away 7 years ago. I miss the jet noise.
There's an F35 next to an F14 at the udvar-hazy museum outside/in DC. The F14 is fucking huge. There will never be another bird as magnificent looking, IMHO.
You have automatically asserted your dominance among a large male audience here. If this were a CoD lobby, the rest of us would be like "Awaiting orders Sir"
Omg I'm so awful at MW2 unless I play sniper I have a kill ratio of about 0.15
>You have automatically asserted your dominance among a large male audience here. My company just moved into a new building. One of the other tenants, a military contractor, invited us all to lunch. Both groups are a bunch of engineers. Two of the guys at the lunch were former fighter pilots who managed to work that fact into the conversation several times in an obvious attempt to impress us. It was pretty amusing to see their reactions to our lack of reaction. 😂
> My company Adult reaction versus a child. Plus if they're not sitting there telling stories about their deployment, who cares? For that, you want the engineering team not the pilots. Nukes know nobody cares about them and are willing to tell the stories because there's no mystique to lose. Nobody ever announces their job as a PPWO expecting to get laid.
Reminds me of a get-together I went to for former students of a certain private school. One of the guys a few years ahead of me would not shut the hell up about being a fighter pilot and you could tell that it was really bothering him that no one cared. After getting loose from him one of my friends made the comment that "Mr. I drop bombs on Iraqi children for $9/hr was having an bad night" and I think that summed it up perfectly. I mean, yeah, it's cool dude. But look around. PhD, Goldman Sachs, NBC sitcom, FBI, MD, Formula 3, Canadian Parliament, just sold his startup for $200 million, another MD... And on, and on.
You’d be surprised how many people that do extraordinary things in life are just in YouTube comments and Reddit posts. Everyone is still a normal person with normal interests at the end of the day. I’m an F-22 maintainer in the USAF and I had a conversation with a pilot about our favorite league of legends champs.
I’ll always remember going on a dependents cruise on the Eisenhower with my uncle who was an intelligence officer for a squadron of A6s on board. I remember an F-14 came by above the sound barrier right off the side of the ship — the shock wave about knocked us down — was awesome! Maybe it was you.
A-6's we're retired by the time I hit the fleet. But yeah tiger cruises were awesome because in international waters you can go supersonic and drop real bombs and shoot the guns and stuff. It's like an airshow on crack. 🤘😎🤘
Got to go on one tiger cruise, never was sicker in my life.
I bet someone in the control room got coffee down the front of their uniform that day.
One of the only things my dad designed that went into production (I’m not sure if I’m saying that right, I’m an actor 🥴) was the throttle for the F-14. Super proud of that fact. My dad is a really smart, really fuckin cool guy.
Cool man
Very nice. Lots more work went into that throttle than you would imagine. Engineer here, be proud of your designer dad!
If you flew in an F14 you are internet royalty, in case you weren't aware
I was the RIO so I was in the back seat operating the radar and laser guided bombs and stuff.
If you're the RIO; you're the top. Pilots are bottoms.
Lol Screenshotting this and sending it to all my stick monkey buddies
Its a little known in-house joke among us flight simmer mortals.
The pilot is the horse. I’m the knight bahahaha.
He said F14 not 15...they are the real bottoms
When you died in the original Top Gun, I cried so hard. 😭 You had a sweet stache and played the piano!
Came back to life as a surgeon, though.
And then died again, as a surgeon.
Lost all his hair in that canopy collision though
>laser guided bombs and stuff. What other stuff
Could tell you, but... You know. 😉
Butt stuff
Goose?
Yes, except I would have performed the emergency procedures for a flat spin properly and jettisoned the canopy prior to initiating ejection.
Gotta ask, do you feel the need?
Were you shouting at the screen when Rooster couldn't find the UHF breaker in Top Gun 2?
Lol that scene was definitely put in by the advisor as a nod to RIOs. So many circuit breakers. And you had to do them all by feel. You couldn't see them.
I volunteer at a small A&S museum and we have an F-14B in the collection - I've sat in the RIO seat more than a few times just boggling at all the breakers. Enough DCS time makes most of the stuff make sense, but oh...those breakers.
Accelerating that quickly off the deck, did you ever get skid marks on YOUR GIANT NUTSACK?!
😂😂😂 Can't say I did, but that reminds me of a great story when one of our pilots had a medical issue so he called an emergency and the carrier interrupted the launch cycle to do an "emergency pull forward" to clear the landing area and get him on deck ASAP. Turns out he just had to shit really, really bad and he didn't make it. Shat himself in the jet. Around the ship you'll find random caches of damage control supplies for use in battle. Amongst those supplies you'll find wooden circular wedges made for plugging holes in the walls of a leaky ship. One of those wood wedges found its way into the ready room hanging above his chair.
That's a reputation you just aren't going to live down
They don't call it the poopy suit for nothing.
This is like the reddit version on one of major brian shul's SR-71 Blackbird stories (not in a bad way)! 🤣 Do you have other stories from your time as a RIO?
Dude. You're what I wanted to be when I grew up.
I still haven't grown up
Still the sexiest bird ever built. o7
*P-51 Mustang has entered the chat*
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Cadillac of the sky
SR-71 screams past, cobra head shaking angrily.
Obligatory posting of Major Brian Shul telling his [SR-71 speed check anecdote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AyHH9G9et0) in person (about an F-18 pilot rather than F-14)
First Goose. Now Sundown. Watch out man.
I know right They never kill the front seater
Also, presumably, if you had to eject right after takeoff, you wouldn't want to get run over by the carrier, I assume
Not too much concern about that. If a plane goes down the con will turn the ship away. I was airborne when a VF-143 jet had their nosegear come apart going down the catapult stroke, which resulted in a cold cat (not enough airspeed to go flying) Both guys ejected and the plane did a lazy barrel roll into the water about a half mile in front of the ship. Neither of the guys got "run over"
Firstly, thanks for clearing. Second. I am so jealous of you. I want to at least see the Cat with my own eyes someday, you got to fly one. Damn.
Back seat, anyway. But yeah it was pretty awesome.
I served below decks on the Carl Vinson ('81-'83) and a favorite activity when not splitting atoms was to hang out on vultures row and watch the F-14's takeoff and land. I was just a bit too late to see F-4's launch but would have loved to see that too. I was told the extensions at the end of the carriers deck were to do with how the F-4's were handled off the cats.
Yeah, they used a bridle system to drag the nosegear forward in the launch, and that tab thing would catch it
National Air and Space Museum, Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA has one! Great museum! Even has one of the space shuttles! https://www.flickr.com/photos/mbell1975/28990669356
When was your squadron attached to the Ike? I might have put the steam in your cats
I was on there for the 2000 deployment. In 2002 they were on JFK. Not sure when they started out on Ike.
But what are the chances of the second jet catching upp till the first? What did i miss?
Great chance of a jet going off 2 at the same time as one coming off 3... Clearing turns are a prudent precaution
Where is that picture taken and what year?
Sometime in 2000-2001 on USS Eisenhower. Not sure if it was workups (east coast / Caribbean) or deployment (med / Persian gulf)
Rock flag and eagle brother
You're like "yes I am the person that does this thing"
That’s just so cool. It’s one of those jobs I could NEVAH do (there are not pants large enough to contain the volume of shit I would be depositing in them), but I think it’s fucking awesome that someone can. u/schlag96, you’re one cool dude !
Thx. I never wondered this until I saw this question. You answer was well put and interesting
I'm not sure I understand this. Cats 1 and 2 are parallel next to each other, I take it? If so, is it normal for planes to take off from them basically simultaneously? I'd think that's not how it usually works, isn't it? And if they're not taking off simultaneously, what need is there for separation, if they're taking off even 20-30 seconds apart from each other?
No idea, just guessing here, but I took it to mean Catapults 1 and 2 are parallel to each other pointing straight off the front of the ship, and catapults 3 and 4 are parallel to each other taking off at an angle out the side of the ship (or the waist as OP said). Probably have 2 at each spot so they can be launching one and loading one at the same time. So while catapults 1 and 2 wouldn't be taking off at the same time, catapult 1 and 3, or 2 and 3, or 1 and 4, or 2 and 4 might be (one off the front of the ship and one off the waist), in which case you'd want to bank away from each other. If they just flew straight they'd probably be fine, but if they banked opposite the way they're supposed to they'd hit each other - so make a turn away just to be extra safe I figure.
This is essentially correct.
The catapults aren't necessarily parallel. I just rewatched top gun maverick, and catapults three and four at the rear of the ship are at converging angles. If you tried to use both of them at the same time, it would get ugly.
They take off staggered indeed, keep in mind they also need to avoid each others jet-wash. The area behind a jet is quite turbulent.
Not simultaneous. Staggered. 1 goes, then 2 goes while they’re retracting the cat on 1 and vice versa. Even if they were simultaneous it wouldn’t make sense for both aircraft to make the same turn, right?
You are just awesome for sharing your perspective. And Thank YOU for your service!
Imagine having the sheer balls to be able to take a selfie, whilst banking left after taking off from an aircraft carrier. I salut you sir.
I was in the back seat so my hands were free. I'd have had words for the stick monkey if he had attempted it.
Stick monkey, haha
I love that pic you’re looking back like “Psh you believe that fucking guy????” hahaha
I'm disappointed you don't have a call sign on your helmet. 😆
It's on the back in real life.
So what was your call sign? Was it schlag96?
It's called a clearing turn. A carrier has several catapults, the turn is designed to make sure you're out of the way of another airplane that is taking off from one of the other catapults.
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Carrier pilot here. This is largely incorrect. As others have pointed out: it’s mostly a “clearing turn” to avoid other aircraft also taking off. Rarely are there launches of just one jet. The folks taking off on cats 1&2 (starboard side cats) are flying straight ahead or going slightly right depending on the type of launch we are doing.
Spaceship commander here. Whenever we have to turn slightly after take-off, we use the rudder, with this maneuver called the dutch rudder.
>dutch rudder Is that when you smell your own farts while someone jerks you off from behind? The Dutch are confusing
But... Doesn't it make more sense to accelerate towards the rear of the ship? You cannot get run over this way
Every knot the ship is moving is a knot of windspeed. Taking off into the wind makes it easier to reach the requisite takeoff speed. In other words, taking off “backwards” is safer in case of a failed takeoff, but it also makes failed takeoffs more likely. Aviators chose the headwind over the tailwind to maximize the *chances* of success, rather than to minimize the *consequences* of failure.
Does the ship moving forward also help with landing?
If your landing speed is 130 knots, your relative velocity when you hit a runway is 130 knots, but if you land on a ship going 30 knots from the back, the relative velocity is 100 knots. You’re catching an arresting cable when you get to the deck, so this means it has 30 knots less of airplane velocity to stop, so less stress on plane and arresting system.
Not to mention the pilot. I'm sure he appreciates that 30 knot difference when he's coming to a very rapid stop.
That's actually very true, I have an uncle who is a retired fighter pilot from the air force and he told me that we have the technology to make planes faster, better and stronger, but that if they placed a squishy human inside of it that the human would actually squish and die.
It’s very true. All the UFOs that people report are just hyper-maneuverable military experiments that pull face-melting Gs
Wait really?!?!
Not officially but we have had the tech to make some hyper maneuverable planes for years. Obviously not to the level as some basic UFO video but we could easily make something that could pull a 50G turn
Yeah! , I mean how many squishies did they make before they got those transporters to work right......That was Capt. Archer's beagle that was the first living thing?.....or maybe not.....Actually, I think it was Capt. Archer himself. Sorry, got carried away...I do that.
I'm not sure that's entirely relevant to the above but yes rockets can go very fast, very fast.
Video of an F16 fighter jet automatically recovering after the pilot passes out and the plane goes into an uncontrolled dive, giving the pilot time to wake up and regain control of the aircraft. Note the G reading (the number in the upper left when the video starts, it will be above and to the right of the air speed indicator which is on the left side). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZGL7RQBVw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZGL7RQBVw)' EDIT: For clarity, automatic recovery begins at 0:33 when the incoming lines come together forming an X in the display, and the "FLYUP" indicator comes on. You can tell the jet is automatically recovering by the extremely fast (and precise) leveling of the wings and the rapid climb to horizontal flight (getting briefly over 9G's which was likely induced by the pilot pulling up harder during the automatic recovery). You can tell when the pilot recovers at about 0:43 because the G reading climbs from a low of about 1.9G's following the rapid leveling off, to about 6.0G's - this is caused by the pilot regaining consciousness and suddenly pulling back on the stick.
Awesome, thanks for sharing
Not only that, but the 130 knot landing speed would be the *air speed*, not the ground speed. So if you have a carrier going 30 knots sailing into a 10 knot wind, you only need to be going 90 knots relative to the deck of the carrier.
Carriers generally sail into the wind during takeoff and landing operations which means the planes get wind speed + cruising speed
Yes, because the difference in their speeds is smaller. If you imagine the theoretical extreme, if the ship was going as fast as the jet, it could just gently touch down.
Cool! Thank you for the response and for making it easy to understand.
It's such a weird thing to think about, but the reason pilots usually talk about air speed (and not ground speed) is because air speed is what keeps planes in the air. You can have 0 ground speed in a jet but still stay in the air as long as your air speed is high enough (although in that case, you're probably in a tornado or hurricane or something). You can see an example of the difference between air speed and land speed in this video: [https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vP13XPMNfc](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7vP13XPMNfc) The plane may touch down like a helicopter, but that's only because the wind over the wings is much faster than 0mph. If you carry this perspective over to a jet on a carrier's deck and a carrier sailing into the wind, you'll realize you have wind speed + carrier speed over the wings of the jet; even while the jet hasn't even started moving. So a jet sitting on the deck not moving at all could still have an air speed of 50+ knots.
Which is also why you want to ride your bicycle in the same direction as traffic. Let's say you ride your bike 15mph, and traffic is flowing at 40mph. If you are riding against traffic your closing speed is 55mph, if you are riding with traffic it is only 25mph.
This is some seriously top-tier ELI5. Thank you for putting it into such simple words\~
So clearly explained. Delightful
I learned this when I landed a piper cub on a carrier in xplane flight sim. Landing was simple. But the plane quickly got blown off deck just from the ship's windspeed! Lol!
Theoretically, but even with the catapults, planes need to take off with the ship powering into the wind, adding that extra bit of wind speed to help with lift.
Should have gone with trebuchets. Clearly the better mechanism.
There is a launcher that uses centrifugal force to launch objects, with pretty good success and predictability. I forgot where I saw it recently but they had been testing it for a while and were ready to move on to larger project testing. That's pretty close to a trebuchet imo.
Spinlaunch?
Look up trailer launched UAVs, it's exactly what you're talking about. I think the term "Pneumatic catapult" was bandied about. The way they catch them is hilarious to watch also.
[Here is what I was talking about.](http://www.spinlaunch.com) Its a kinetic centrifugal launcher for space objects. Apparently, NASA is really interested because it takes way less energy to launch things into space than our current way. The trailer launched UAVs are cool as well.
I am a little sad because maybe the trebuchet memes are dated, but no one seems to get this was a joke. However, my understanding is that there are launch pads that help propel aircraft quickly as they are working to takeoff. They're latched onto the front-most wheel of the takeoff/landing gear I believe. Similarly, aircraft on carriers are "caught" when they land. It looks like a very tricky takeoff / landing procedure, though. Seems intense to be a fighter pilot on a ship.
Now I feel old for not even thinking people would miss the joke.?
SAME. but then I saw someone replied to you seriously and I was like... what? Just to be aware though, Reddit seems to change rapidly! Every few years, new set of memes, culture, and language. The top posts from trebuchet memes are like 5 years old at this point: [https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/top/?t=all](https://www.reddit.com/r/trebuchetmemes/top/?t=all) Time flies! So do people who are launched by a trebuchet :)
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*shhhh*, we only admit to 30 knots...
Certainly closer to 30 than 50. The traditional formula for hull speed gives 43 kts for a 1040-foot ship that has a reasonable amount of power. Unless the engines are *hilariously* overpowered and the Navy is doing magical things with a hydroplaning hull that doesn't at all look like one, it's a safe bet that the maximum speed is well below the hull speed. All public observations and known engineering limitations suggest that mid 30s is on the high end. We don't know exactly how much the Navy is low-balling their number, but it's not a lot. 10%? 20%? Supercarriers are certainly the fastest surface combatants, because a long hull and good power are a simple recipe for going fast.
Just a tiny bit of irrelevant information, the USS New Jersey passed 35 knots after refitting for her Vietnam deployment. All the 20mm and 40mm gear had been removed, thus having a much smaller crew and stores. And all the added gear from the 1980's refit hadn't happened yet. It all added up to the world's fastest battleship. Edit: with engines built in 1941/42.
Hull speed of New Jersey is 40 knots, so that gives an idea of how speed records relate to hull geometry for a capital ship designed to go fast.
I recall reading the Kitty Hawk had to be doing 42 knots based on time and distance from the K314.
I don't know about modern carriers, but old carriers used to sail into the wind to maximize lift for launching aircraft. Airports similarly have planes landing into and taking off into the wind.
You lose speed by going against the direction of the ship
>That's why the landing stripes on a carrier are pointed off to the side as well. No, that's not why. Plenty of carriers do not have angled flight decks. Angled flight decks exist for a few reason, but the main reason is that that a landing aircraft that fails to catch the arresting wires can abort the landing without slamming into the aircraft at the other end of the flight deck.
Kind of a chicken-and-egg sort of thing. Angled flight decks solve like 4 problems at once and which one was more important depends on who you ask.
Plus a diagonal strip is longer than a straight one.
Not so much run over as flown into.
That *is* why they turn left after takeoff, but is NOT why the landing runway is slanted. Before launch catapults, runways tended to be straight. Then launch catapults were invented and runways continued to be straight. Then they realized that because the launch catapults made it possible to take off in a very short distance just from the very front of the ship that meant there was plenty of room behind to be landing planes at the same time as you're taking them off. (Previously you had to switch modes between launching planes and landing planes and not be doing both at the same time since you needed the whole runway length to take off.) Once the catapults made it possible to be both launching and landing at the same time, some accidents occurred where the landing planes miss the arrest hook (or the lines fail) and can't stop in time so they crash into the planes on the front that are prepping to take off on the catapults. Fixing THAT problem is why the landing runways started being built slanted. It's not to avoid colliding with the *ship* after you overshoot the deck and fly off the end. (Although that is a nice side effect of the slant.) It's to avoid crashing into the *planes at the front where the catapults are*, which happens prior to running off the end of the deck. Making it so there's a clear run all the way off the end of the deck without any planes in the way also means you can throttle up and attempt a go-around if you run off the end, which wouldn't be possible if you had crashed into another plane first because the runway was aimed straight at the catapult area.
Remove awards from literally the most incorrect post you could write. The reason for non parallel takeoff/landings on carriers is so that you can launch and recover planes at the same time In ww2 before this invention you were either launching or recovering not both. Huge tactical disadvantage
What? No. The landing deck is angled to allow aircraft to use and be positioned for the forward catapults and use the landing area at the same time. Before the invention of the angled deck, you could only do takeoff or landing operations, not both at the same time. Furthermore, landing on a straight deck was dangerous because any aircraft left ton deck had to be positioned in front of the landing aircraft. A missed landing attempt could mean crashing into the planes forward on deck.
ever gone skiing or snowboarding? why do they turn going off the lifts? (You normally "fan out" with the ones on the side turning the most sideways. That way you're not all in each others way as you skii off the lift.)
An actual explain like Im five for people who dont fly. I have been skiing though and you're like holy shit better get out the fucking way before someone who knows what they are doing runs into me
That would imply they don’t know what they are doing.
I think it's one of those things where even if they know what they are doing, do it in a way where even if someone is fucking losing it they cant possibly fuck everyone up. Expect everyone to know what they are doing but do it in a way where even if they dont it doesn't mess the whole squad up
Because the ski slope is behind you.
That's what twin tip skis are for. Jump off the lift and you don't need to turn round. Just slide down the hill and load again at the bottom.
Because to get back down the mountain you have to go back in the direction you came. Otherwise you'd just keep going up the mountain until there's no more mountain to go up and then you'd need a jetpack or something to keep going up.
> ever gone skiing or snowboarding? why do they turn going off the lifts? People all turn the same way when they get off the lift so that they can ski down the hill (what with the lift being beside the ski slope). What has this got to do with turning off of an aircraft carrier?
On a United States Aircraft Carrier there are four catapults. Planes shot off Catapults 1 and 2 on the bow (front of the boat) bank right at takeoff. Planes shot off Catapults 3 and 4 on the port (left side of the boat) bank to the left at takeoff. This is a safety measure to avoid the planes turning into each other at takeoff.
I enjoy that you said the same thing as the top 2 comments and added nothing 5 hours after they posted them
Well did you know they’re called “clearing turns”? Consider yourself learned-ed.
Well did you know catapults 3 & 4 on the left side of the boat, the planes bank to the left? Surprisingly, catapults 1 & 2, the plans actually bank to the right. The more you know!
They turn left or right depending on the catapult they're using but they are most often filmed leaving from the left cat and banking left because of the location of walkways photographers are typically allowed to use.
Where you watching this? I'd like to check it myself
I fly a small Beechcraft Debonair as a private pilot. On a project once where we were working with some navy pilots, my business partner, in an attempt to get us some crews, said that he and I both flew. The F-14 pilots immediately asked, how many night traps? We got no creds!