stunthanger.com
Speed,Combat,Scale,Racing => Carrier => Topic started by: Dennis Holler on September 06, 2015, 04:09:47 PM
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uM5AI3YSV3M&feature=youtu.be %^@
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As it says on the nose, "No Hook". it does not qualify as the must make an arrested landing. It is spectacular to watch and remember it was designed for short take off and landing.
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The MO-1 and the OS2U Kingfisher didn't have hooks either but we still fly them in carrier event.
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The MO-1 had hooks on the landing gear from what I could see in the pictures. Don't know about the Kingfisher.
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The Kingfisher was tested with a hook. The tests took place in Alaska during WW II! Go figure. By the way another oddity is the OV-10. According to an article in AAM back in the 70's the AMA approved it for carrier although it never had a hook. And the P-39 which the British tested and it actually landed once on a carrier. But the P-39 did have a hook
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Another unusual subject is the Lockheed U-2. It successfully passed carrier trials during the Vietnam era. Mid fuselage hook like the Brits use. With the sorta-pointy nose it would be a natural for electric power. 8)
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The one and only Kingfisher tailhook story. I guess it makes it carrier legal!
The strategists feared that we would need fighter facilities should Japan take a jab at North America through southeast Alaska as many thought they would. Engineers and workmen were moved in, and they built a short runway complete with catapult and arresting gear. The floats were taken off an OS2U, and the plane was equipped with its fixed land-plane wheels and a welded tailhook for the purpose of testing the land carrier. The catapult takeoff went well, but the trap was a disaster. The tailhook worked. It grabbed the cable, but it was far too taut. All the gear in the plane that was not nailed down flew out the front end, scattering navigation books, rubber rafts, thermos bottles and even the loop direction-finder antenna down the runway. The pilot and radioman received a few stitches and a week in sick bay, but they recovered. (The vegetation-overgrown runway is still in place against the hill at Sitka, but to this day that Kingfisher test is the only takeoff and landing ever made there.)
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No landing gear hooks seen here
http://www.airplanesandrockets.com/airplanes/images2/martin-mo-1-august-1969-american-aircraft-modeler-5.jpg
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Before he died, Bill Skelton of OR showed a photo he had taken aboard the Carrier he served on, of the "Kingfisher" making an arrested landing. He also had a photo of the plane siting on deck on its' wheels. Bill was a stickler of things being legal. For a while, an annual award was given to the NW Carrier pilot that did the most for Carrier in the NW. Bill has been gone for over 20 years. I still miss him.
Joe