Classic British Flight Sim

Dear All,

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I found this great colour video of the Royal Navy in the 1960's with HMS Hermes and I think Victorious judging by the tail codes of the Scimitars, and thought it would be of interest here. It has some great footage of Scimitars, Sea Vixens, Whirlwind's and Gannets.

It is about 9 minutes long and edited to some great music from Vangelis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFzRtOuj ... r_embedded

Cheers,

Sketchy

Cheers Sketch

Never noticed the rollers on deck before Enjoyed that

ATB

DaveB

Never noticed the rollers on deck before

I think the Ark was the only conventional carrier not to get them, quite a neat way of making sure the aircraft was centred on the catapult. Plus the covers folded up to make chocks so all the pilot had to do was taxi up to them which would stop him in the correct place before the rollers shuffled the aircraft to the right spot to hook on.

Hi Skip

Yeh.. impressed me no end. You see it work with one of the Scimitars which arrives at the cat out of line then in 2 ticks.. he's straight Who actually controlled that mate?? I didn't see anyone pushing or shoving so I presume it was mechanical. Perhaps either the bloke in the little poke-hole in the deck or from Flyco?

ATB

DaveB

Dave,

I'm fairly sure it was controlled from the little poke hole in the deck, you set the undercarriage track width of the aircraft and then all the rollers outboard of that turned inwards and the rest just free-wheeled. I'm surprised it was never adopted more widely as it must massively speed up deck ops.

Skippy

Cheers Skip

Yup.. concur with that. You can have the front RH of the Fdeck a lot more populated too as it cuts down the requirement for the pilot to have a straight run onto the cat. I was on Hermes in '74 but of course by that time, all her fixed wing gear had been removed and she'd become a RM taxi Still.. she looked the part and was still a 'flat' flat top.. no ugly growth on the LH side

ATB

DaveB

Nice Video.

Hadn't realised until I saw the Sea Vixens onboard *just* how cramped the flightdeck was.

Its a shame that the powers that be at the time didn't see much future in fixed wing capable carriers, what we have in service now somehow doesn't seem to match the capabilites of what we had then.

I think I've seen a similar video before of HMS Eagle Flightdeck Ops (It might have been a cutdown version of this one) but well worth the watch, thanks for sharing the link.

Just today, the papers are running the story about how the MoD is seeing, again, if they can cancel one or both of the new carriers being built at the moment

That would be a true shame.

Its not that the current class are bad, just very old.

I suppose they could retrofit HMS Ocean to accept STOL aircraft below deck but why? They should be considering the replacements for these ageing ships.

Plus it would continue to Provide Employment to many people throughout the North of England.

Theres a bit in Phoenix Sqn by Rowland White which comes to mind. Its in the Epilogue and documents a bit towards the beginning of the Falklands War where Thatcher, remembering HMS Ark Royal IV and her involvement in British Honduras, asks if that could be sent down south. Shame it had already become Razor Blades by then!

None the Less, as I said before, its a great video.

Thanks for the link. I really enjoyed the video and found it very interesting.

--WH