Fokker F28 on an Aircraft Carrier?

[FlyTexas]

Found this drawing today and it peaked my curiosity.


Thought I'd give it a try in FSX. I guess the idea would work if Fokker beefed up the airframe and added all the carrier bits.


Brian -obviously with too much free time on his hands.

[Kevin Farnell]

I wanna see it do a catapult take off.

Kevin

[FlyTexas]

That would be a sight.

Brian

[RJP]

I used to work for a mob that for quite a while chartered an F-28 (cracking little aeroplane!!). I was on the jumpseat one day when we landed on rwy 30 at Islamabad:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ben ... 73.0961992

We made the 1st left turn to the ramp area. According to the measuring tool on google maps that's about 1,700ft (from the start of the piano keys).

Not sure what the 64 punters in the back thought but I'm pretty sure they weren't expecting it to stop quite so suddenly

[Archer]

I asked a colleague of mine, who used to work for Fokker, about this and he confirmed that it was a serious proposal. Unfortunately the US Navy selected the Grumman Greyhound but Fokker did its best to beat them. The conversion would have encountered a few challenges (where to store the beefed up nose gear for example) but it might have worked. They did organise some trials in which they flew approaches to a US carrier and one of the test pilots claimed that he had done a touch and go on the USS Forrestal.

Edit: https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive ... 03133.html

[blanston12]

Interesting that they were serious about the F28 on a carrier, I would have thought the biggest problem would be that very high tail on it. The height of a F28 is 8.5m while all other USN aircraft are under 5m.

[TobyV]

A bit more info here:
http://www.airlinereporter.com/2014/05/ ... er-oh-yes/

[SkippyBing]

Interesting that they were serious about the F28 on a carrier, I would have thought the biggest problem would be that very high tail on it. The height of a F28 is 8.5m while all other USN aircraft are under 5m.

As I understand it historically the Greyhounds haven't been part of the air group but were based at various shore stations around the world so at the time it probably wasn't seen as an issue. Certainly it would have been less of a problem than the C-130 idea!

[FlyTexas]

Thanks for all the additional info, fellas.

Brian

[Archer]

The article that Toby linked to shows that the nosegear could be extended. This served two purposes: 1. The tail could clear the roof of the hangar, 2. It would create the correct angle of attack for the wing during a catapult launch. The illustration below is supposed to be from a Bill Gunston book and shows that second situation. (It also shows the proposed buddy refuelling pods under the wings.)