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Crowded deck question


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Hi all,

 

I have a question. We all like crowded carrier decks because hey, they look cool. Also, on most photos of carriers the deck is packed with aircraft, but we don't know the context. Are they just sailing somewhere peacefully?

 

So, how crowded would a carrier deck be in a wartime situation? I imagine they wouldn't put all the planes on deck where they are most vulnerable. Can anyone with USN experience shed some light on a realistic configuration?

 

Thanks!

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The beauty sailed past us the other day going east towards Sicily. Packed full of aircraft

 

 

CVN-69-USS-Dwight-D-Eisenhower

CVN-69-USS-Dwight-D-Eisenhower-091.thumb.jpg.df00a7b06b1777eb2488baced25278c0.jpg


Edited by dave-uk

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VERY crowded, and VERY busy, limited hangar space, time required to get aircraft up to the deck to launch them, all factors to be planned for. The Royal Navy did it by a small shuffle board in the Flight Deck Office where they had a scale plan of the deck and scale models of the aircraft which they moved around on the board before they moved them on deck, and it worked well, usually.

 

All you needed was somebody with a logical brain and a good idea of the flight plan. So yes, VERY crowded. Bloody dangerous place to work - On the deck I mean, not in the office !!!

 

I have not seen how the USN do it but something similar I imagine.

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Many people use social media platforms to showcase their photos to the 'world'.....the military version of social media is called 'satellites' which most countries have. If the USN is traversing the panama canal or the straight of Homuz or any of the oceans peacefully....well they have crowded decks and use satellites as their 'social media platform'. Not a public platform like Instagram but a military platform called 'Satellites'.....it's the bikini model platform in the military world.

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I imagine they wouldn't put all the planes on deck where they are most vulnerable.

If they are vulnerable on the deck they failed to defend the fleet.

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The Royal Navy did it by a small shuffle board in the Flight Deck Office where they had a scale plan of the deck and scale models of the aircraft which they moved around on the board before they moved them on deck, and it worked well, usually.

 

Yep, the Ouija board! US Navy do it the same way too.

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Thats the thing, in MP DCS there is Launch and recovery happening at the same time.

 

In RL I belive this would not overlap, there wuold be a Luanch time, then an expected recovery time, then a new cycle. with the exception of Alert 15 and Alert 5 aircrafts of course.

 

Bare in mind that the sip must point into teh wind for this operations also...

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Indeed it is. I am retired US Navy Aviation Boatswain's Mate ABE (Catapults & Arresting Gear). And for 20 years the flight deck was my home. I retired back in 1999 so I've handled so many different aircraft. From the F-4 and A-4 which used cables called Bridles to launch, to the A-7, A-6, et al, using the launch bar/holdback bar with the color coded tension bar (T-Bar) designed to snap after aircraft was in final tension at that time the Shooter giving the signal (their personal kneel, touch deck, and point signature) to Deck Edge Operator to push the Fire Push button.

 

Sorry, got a little carried away. It happens when I start talking about it. Gets me all excited. I still think I had the best jib in the world, and you can imagine how excited I am about the new Supercarrier MOD. I bet I was the 1st one o the list. Then watching the trailers I couldn't believe that it isn't real. And after watching it 200 times, you know, there is only one tiny little screenshot that IS real!! The folks at ED/DCS are geniuses. The created a pure masterpiece.

 

I was supposed to answer you question. Again my apologies, Baco, you and others are 100% correct. Flight ops daily. Launching mostly off the bow alternating with the waist cats (3 & 4) giving just enough time to "Wrap the Waist and make a Ready deck,", green shirts rushing to stow the deck ensuring a FOD free deck because that area has just turned into a landing area and the first Tomcat is approaching the '90'. Shooter sprinting back to the Gear grabbing his pickle switch to give the LSO's a 'Green or Ready deck." Then the cycle has begun because as the last bird traps and the Air Boss says 'Recovery Complete", the cat crew re-emerges to ready their Cats for event 3, A normal daily flight plan is roughly 16-18 hours long non-stop. So when I said earlier that carriers were my home, I truly meant it, It's where we worked, ate, and slept. Yes slept. Catwalks, LSO escape net. Anywhere to be close for an 'Alert' launch if needed.

 

Ok, my apologizes for the lengthy reply, but it just gives me a rush of certain feelings I have for the love of my 'brothers' on deck and to the beautiful 'ladies' that I called home for my career.

 

If there are any questions you may have about the flight deck, it's operations' or even the mechanics of the machinery below decks that puts them in the air, or brings them to a (sometimes) not so smooth landing...but a safe one, please post me a question or two. As you can see, I'd be happy to.

 

My avatar is actually my Aviation Boatswain's Mate insignia. Take care and maybe we'll cross paths on the new carrier

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Thank you so much for all the replies and for sharing your experience. Looks like I'll have to make that deck pretty darn crowded :)

 

As Baco said, it's going to be a problem to make it suitable for launch AND recovery at the same time. I hope the AI will be able to taxi, take off, land and taxi back much more efficiently than currently on the Stennis. This is what I'm most looknig forward to about the Supercarrier. Being able to design complex missions.

 

Thanks again, everyone!

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Interesting. Would be nice if this came as either built in functionality (ideal scenario) or be available to customize via additional coding. So the mission makers would set the launch and recovery schedule and the carrier would alter deck accordingly.

Danger zone!

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The Royal Navy did it by a small shuffle board in the Flight Deck Office where they had a scale plan of the deck and scale models of the aircraft which they moved around on the board before they moved them on deck, and it worked well, usually.

 

On a Discovery type documentary the US Navy had a table where they moved around painted nuts and bolts representing different planes. Mentioned was that an attempt with an electronic system had failed or at least was vastly inferior to a person doing it by hand.

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I don't have USN experience, but I know this, the hangar bay holds a limitid nr of ac. With a CVW of 70-90 aircraft, most of them will have to be stored on deck, even in war. I would assume the internal deck is mostly maintanance and repair.

 

 

Hmmm. Really (rhetorical)? Whenever 10-12 planes is landed on Stennis in DCS it seems extremely crowded, even if a number is smallish warbirds. I would have figured every plane could be stored in hangars. I also thought they put planes below going into heavy storms. How can they operate at all with like 50 planes on deck? I don't doubt you (much), just surprised. The catapults, the angled deck and the lifts all take up space where planes "shouldn't" be parked.

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There has been research for a while now looking into replacing the Ouija Boards with an electronic device, but they can't get one to work as yet. The 2 new UK Carriers are packed with modern technology but they were both issued with the good old ouija board.

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You'll notice there's almost always at least one or two cats still open for launching. Sometimes the waist cats, sometimes one of the two on the bow. Anything happens they'll quickly be clearly a path for recovery on the angled deck while still leaving at least one cat open for more launching.

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So, how crowded would a carrier deck be in a wartime situation? I imagine they wouldn't put all the planes on deck where they are most vulnerable. Can anyone with USN experience shed some light on a realistic configuration?

 

Thanks!

 

The answer to this is extremely involved and complicated, and it's always changing with the mission or situation. There are a lot of factors that affect the number of aircraft on the deck at any particular time, but that's not as important as how many sorties the carrier can generate on a given day. There have been numerous studies done to break it all down.

 

SOME of the stuff to consider: The carrier is operating most efficiently when the flying day is about 18 out of 24 hours. Each flight crew is limited to a fifteen hour flying day, which includes several hours of mission planning and preparation prior to most flights, and about 90 minutes of debrief at the end of each flight. Rearming and refueling each aircraft takes time, so each jet can only fly 4 - 7 sorties per day. To maximize sortie generation, a jet is usually going to be armed with only the ordnance it can safely bring back aboard, eliminating the need to rearm for the jet's next launch.

 

To give flight deck crews time to turn aircraft around, the launch and recovery cycles tend to be at least an hour and fifteen minutes long (known as 1+15) measured from first launch to first launch. Using this scheme, recovery starts five minutes or so after all aircraft in the current cycle have been launched.

 

Another big consideration: An FA-18C can generally only fly a 1+20 flight cycle without AAR. That doesn't mean they can only fly for an hour and twenty minutes -- the amount of time an aircraft is in the air for a given cycle will be longer than the cycle time.

 

Say, for example, that the air wing has the following number of mission capable aircraft:

16 Tomcats

20 Hornets

3 E-2s

7 S-3As

 

(I'm ignoring helicopters and aircraft we don't have in DCS.)

 

The next two cycles are 1+15 (0700 and 0815). There are two Tomcats, four Hornets, and an E-2 already airborne from the previous cycle. The Tomcats and the E-2 are double-cycled, so they won't recover until the end of their second cycle aloft, after all aircraft in the 0815 cycle have launched. Assuming that only mission capable aircraft are on the roof, there are 14 Tomcats, 16 Hornets, 2 E-2s, and 7 S-3As on the flight deck.

 

You're in a Hornet tasked with a CAS mission 175 NM out from Mother. You and your wingman each have 2 AIM-9X, 2 AIM-120C, 2 GBU-38s, and 2 tanks. First launch for the cycle is scheduled for 0700. You're fourth on the launch sequence plan, behind an S-3A tanker and 2 other Hornets, so you launch at 0701.

Round trip to the target area is about 50 minutes, and the next cycle begins at 0815, so you need to be in the marshall stack by that time. You'll fly to the target area, report to the JTAC that you have 20 minutes of playtime, then RTB to enter the marshall stack at 0815. You're first in the stack at 2,500 feet and you orbit the carrier, watching the next launch.

 

Meanwhile, the carrier is readying the aircraft launching for the 0815 cycle: 2 Tomcats, 4 Hornets, an E-2, and an S-3A. The launch goes smoothly, taking about 4 minutes to launch 8 aircraft, and you get the "charlie" call, indicating that you should head to the overhead for recovery at 0824. At this point there will be 12 Tomcats, 12 Hornets, 1 E-2, and either 5 or 6 S-3As (depending on whether the one launched ahead of you at 0700 is still airborne, since a "yo-yo" tanker would recover shortly after it launched, at the tail end of the 0700 cycle recoveries). Your total airborne time would be in the neighborhood of 85 minutes, assuming you don't bolter.

 

See what I mean by complicated?

 

It is possible to launch and recover simultaneously, launching from the bow cats while recovering, but it's extremely taxing on the flight deck crew, and not often done for very long.

Very Respectfully,

Kurt "Yoda" Kalbfleisch

London

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if you have a look at:

 

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a432176.pdf

 

 

This has some interesting diagrams showing how the aircraft are stowed in the hanger.

 

As a general rule in naval architecture, you need a 1000 tons of displacement for each aircraft you want to operate from a carrier, and this gives about enough hanger space for a third of the total complement

 

 

MMBWwYD.jpg

 

lGUv6Ii.jpg

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I found two pics for the deck-operations, one for launch, the other for recovery. I don't know the owner, nor if it's confirmed. Yet seems to be practical.

Launching on cats 3+4 additiona/backupl cat 1. Shifting holding/parking area back and forth between cycles.

DeckOperationsCarrierLaunch.JPG.e7ae859960251732a827556b38586115.JPG

DeckOperationsCarrierRecovery.jpg.79b99aa199a0c5d9f141c5c5b9893386.jpg

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I don't have USN experience, but I know this, the hangar bay holds a limitid nr of ac. With a CVW of 70-90 aircraft, most of them will have to be stored on deck, even in war. I would assume the internal deck is mostly maintanance and repair.

 

Precisely. The lower decks are built for long term storage and maintenance. During a storm, the aircraft are moved aft of the island to keep the front of the deck clear and the jets are anchored.

 

No USN experience or background, just using logic but hey, see what the google machine comes up with lol

 

Edit: Let's face facts. US carriers have not been attacked since WW2 and carry a full support team of destroyers along with one sub. That said, I can't imagine the Americans being 100% ready if their carrier was attacked.


Edited by Akula
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Indeed it is. I am retired US Navy Aviation Boatswain's Mate ABE (Catapults & Arresting Gear).

Sorry, got a little carried away.

 

My avatar is actually my Aviation Boatswain's Mate insignia. Take care and maybe we'll cross paths on the new carrier

 

Thank you so much.

carried away? no I enjoy what you wrote

 

 

in reply #3 , dave-UK show us a photo, deck is full of aircrafts. There are many more photos show even more aircrafts on deck.

 

my question:

Under what circumstance, deck will be full of aircraft?

 

is that true? at most of times? when there is no launching and recovery job, deck will be full of aircraft?

 

after launching and recovery finished, crew will move most aircrafts from hangar to deck?

only a few aircrafts under maintenance would be left in hangar deck?

 

before launching start, aircrafts without mission will be move down to maitenance hangar?

 

an aircraft after recovery will be moved down to hangar? to wait other aircafts recovery

and after all recovery finished, if there is no more launch and recovery job in coming hours, it will be moved again? back to deck and park there?

 

Ok , for instance, whole air-carrier has no launching and recovery plan for considerable long time, (lets say, whole day ) aircrafts will be parked where?

 

thank you for answer my questions

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Edit: Let's face facts. US carriers have not been attacked since WW2

 

 

The good news is someone recognizes this as a problem, and a large part of the reason 66 was deep sixed the way it was.

 

 

Any time some admiral proudly points out how long it's been since <this class> of ship was attacked it's time to get nervous. That's exactly what the battleship boys said in 1940.

 

 

Every new idea has a shelf life.

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The good news is someone recognizes this as a problem, and a large part of the reason 66 was deep sixed the way it was.

 

 

Any time some admiral proudly points out how long it's been since <this class> of ship was attacked it's time to get nervous. That's exactly what the battleship boys said in 1940.

 

 

Every new idea has a shelf life.

 

Yup,

 

If an armor piercing bomb actually hit the middle of a US carrier deck oh the chaos and disorganization that would erupt as a result of the complacency. I'm from Canada and we are the kings of complacency.

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