USS Oriskany SCB-27C/125A

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Willy said:
Lexington (my old ship) was the last Essex class in commission having left the service in 1992.
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Thanks Willy for the information , i was prity sure but to confirm .. great!:cool: , funny .. i can't swim full stop , i'm a bird not a fish but yet have this intense fassination with aircraft carriers , i check the net .. good to see she was also saved .
 
All the former straight-deck carriers gave the Navy a very good return on whatever investment they made, but I'd definitely have to single out the Lexington for its long service as the Training Command carrier. :salute:
 
No F4's on Essex carriers

OK... a couple of things need correcting in this thread.

The reason the Essex class carriers never operated F-4 Phantoms had NOTHING to do with hangar height... they had a 17' 6" clear height*... which is also the clear hangar height of the 3 Midway class carriers and HMS Ark Royal... all of which DID operate F-4s for many years!

The 150' stroke length C-11-2 catapults were one reason... the Midway class had the longer and more powerful 215' stroke length C-11-1 catapults, and Ark Royal had the 199' stroke length BS5A catapult.

Another reason was the wood deck forward... the two afterburner nozzles of the F-4's engines sat closer to the deck than the single one of the F-8, creating far more heating issues for the wood flight deck.


The primary reasons, however, were landing impacts and wire pull-out.

While the A-3 was heavier than the F-4, it landed at a far lower speed (mass times velocity, remember?), thus the impact force on the aluminum-re-enforced landing area was less overall, and less pull-out of the arresting wires was needed to stop it.

The F-4 pulled the wires out far enough that they were dangerously close to the end of the angle, too close for acceptable safety margins.

The F-4 also hit the deck with enough force to require a complete replacement and re-enforcement of the flight deck in the landing area.


It was the combination of these factors, and the amount of work (and thus money) needed to correct these issues, that led to the decision to only operate F-4s from the Midway class and the new "supercarriers".


(I found this info on the USS Bon Homme Richard Forum....)
 
All of what you listed there is valid, although I'd question the height of the F-4's A/B flame as causing a problem on an Essex class. When a Crusader was in tension on the cat its A/B flame was pretty close to the deck with no adverse effect.
Anybody who's watched aircraft trap aboard a carrier has seen the differences in how the various aircraft types come aboard. The A-3 comes wallowing in, doing its "Whale dance", and then settles onto the flight deck as crewmen take cover behind deck equipment in case it comes in a bit too far off center. :icon_lol: The F-4 seems to kinda quit flying as it crosses the ramp and lands with a thud, and that describes a good landing. With the F-4 there was always a fine line between the words "landing" and "crash". On my first cruise I saw the results of an excessively hard landing by a F-4, the main mounts were driven up through the wings to where the top skin on the wing was bulged and torn. IIRC the pilot had to find a different line of work after that incident.
 
Ian Warren said:
Here we go Tarps , scow'd the land for this book back in 1987 , no internet back then , working on a 1/144 scale RC model - least put on hold , like the Essex class the Midways are the real traditional carrier .... i dig up that photo of four together as well for interests sake . :cool:
CV-41Custom.jpg

This photo was taken in 1961 and they all appear to carry the NE tail code
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That can't be real, I mean it's got to be posed for cold war propaganda purposes, no way could that work at sea!
 
@ TARPS , Yes i have footage like many of us and the A3 seem to float on the deck by compare to the F4 , we would not want to break a pretty Essex deck :icon_lol:

@ Peter12213 , October 1961 was VAH8(A-3D) , same unit up to April 1965 , they then replaced with the earlier A-3B and for some reason but also operated VAP-61(RA-3B) , then 1967 replaced in 1972 with Air wing 5 only operating the KA-5D until phased out by the KA-6 .
They could have operated a full squadron .
 
On the Apr-Nov '71 Midway cruise we had a three-plane Whale det (EKA-3B) from VAQ-130 that provided tanker and jamming support. They were still aboard on the next cruise when the air war in VN heated up. Normally the Whale det and the RF-8 photo det (my outfit) were the "bastard children" of any air wing but fortunately we both had senior Lieutenant Commanders as OinC's so we didn't fare too badly. :icon_lol:
 
TARPSBird said:
All of what you listed there is valid, although I'd question the height of the F-4's A/B flame as causing a problem on an Essex class. When a Crusader was in tension on the cat its A/B flame was pretty close to the deck with no adverse effect.
Anybody who's watched aircraft trap aboard a carrier has seen the differences in how the various aircraft types come aboard. The A-3 comes wallowing in, doing its "Whale dance", and then settles onto the flight deck as crewmen take cover behind deck equipment in case it comes in a bit too far off center. :icon_lol: The F-4 seems to kinda quit flying as it crosses the ramp and lands with a thud, and that describes a good landing. With the F-4 there was always a fine line between the words "landing" and "crash". On my first cruise I saw the results of an excessively hard landing by a F-4, the main mounts were driven up through the wings to where the top skin on the wing was bulged and torn. IIRC the pilot had to find a different line of work after that incident.
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That F4 landing you saw sounds like he didn't land he arrived. My first encounter with F4's was with VF-154 with their F4J's Block 158 Series: they had a serious smoke abatement fix that needed fixing and I remember the sounds of the the J79's howling as they made their approach to the flight deck; it was more of a controlled crash when they snagged one of the wires. I'll bet charlie cong in his black PJ's remembers the F4's howling sounds as the pilots pickled off a few bombs/napalm from their Mers/Ters. I did do a stint with F8C's with VF-24 (Mig killers) and when they landed, it was a clumsy dodo bird style event. The nose of the plane would almost dive down really low and looked like it was almost out of control.
 
F8s and controlled crash's .. Oct 1961 coming on board the Franklin D.Roosevelt CVA-42 , in the Atlantic , be the most famous film and stills when a carrier pitch's up just as the Crusader comes down , amazing sequence of shots , used in training to show what to do .

I recall the FDR CVA-42 was scrapped early due to a grounding (1977) , i can't recall were i view the report , any of you US Navy guys can shed any light on what happened ?
 
Just an update - I am still working on this but juggling HMS Ark Royal V as well now!

:running:

Have added attachpoints for the deck to get IFOLS (attachpt_runway_start, end and edge) as well as attachpoints for cables and cats (attachpt_Catapult_start_1, end_1 etc etc).

However when testing not sure they are actually working correctly and I have used MCX to add them.

Need to search the MCX thread/drop a question to the experts at fsdeveloper to see if you can add these attachpoints in MCX (i.e. model will export with them added), or if you need to use 3DSMax and the associated attachpoint tool (I know you can add lights, effects and platforms in MCX that's what I add to my models at the moment and know they work...got less experience with cables and cats)

Also found this image of a 3D model of Oriskany created for a dive site and noticed the island more closely resembles the original Oriskany island than the sketchup model I downloaded.

View attachment 74360

The nit picky person in me wants to modify the sketchup island structure now!

I know I said this would be a "quick and dirty mod" but i've caught the bug for this ship now and want to try and get it right (i'm spending more time on this than my HMS Queen Elizabeth model for myself!)

So....for the guys who showed the initial enthusiasm creating the thread for this sketchup model to be converted (which caught my interest), if you would like a copy of the model as is now whilst I continue working on it - PM me i'll zip up a copy.

It WILL be buggy, but you should be able to at least do bolters and chopper landings on the deck (and provide me feedback on any issues you see) ;)

However if you are happy to wait....please be patient...same goes for the rest of you :mixedsmi: I don't want to release something "en masse" when it's still not right and get flooded with complaints.

FYI for some of the people who contacted me privately - yes I am aware this sketchup model was not created by me, but at no point have I claimed this to be my own work...I am merely trying to bring it to life in FSX...all rights and credits are those of the original developers and I will state this in any "readme's"

Cheers
Gary
 
Gary I'm going to PM you , with your reply did you want photos of the bridge superstructure and Island sent thru ? take a little while to collect all and scan .

Cheers Ian
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Gary,

You can add the attach points for the catapults etc. in 3D Studio/gMax, it's not as straightforward as the other stuff as they're not included in the default options. I've linked a couple of pages at FSDevelepor.com that should cover what you need to do to get them working, although they may be a bit hard to follow as I wrote a lot of the content! If you're having problems drop me a PM and I can send you a file with the attach points in which you should be able to merge with yours and just reposition accordingly.

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/wiki/index.php?title=Catapult/Arrestor_Operations_(FSXA)

http://www.fsdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8673&highlight=carrier+cables
 
I can help you out with some questions and a online session if needed. Attachpoints and how they are named is how this is accomplished in 3DMax/GMAX
 
Ian Warren said:
I recall the FDR CVA-42 was scrapped early due to a grounding (1977) , i can't recall were i view the report , any of you US Navy guys can shed any light on what happened ?
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She wasn't scrapped due to a grounding. FDR was pretty weary by the mid-1970's. She didn't receive the modernizations the Coral Sea and Midway received, and I don't think the Navy ever allowed her to recover from the lengthy 1972 deployment when America and Saratoga went to Vietnam and FDR was left covering the Med. She got a quick turn-around and was deployed again in the fall of 1973 during the Yom Kippur war. The new Nimitz class decks were coming online so the Navy decided to scrap her rather than spend money updating her. Same thing might have happened to Coral Sea but she made it into the Reagan years with the 600-ship Navy.
 
Cheers , Thanks TARPS , it gos with the entire Essex fleet , some ships simply have the legs to continue for decades , from the well known to the most famous , with so many of the class CV-34 scored the final run , Intrepid well known NY museum , Lexington 1992 service , but the info on the latter , the Midways , guess the ole FDR just got a lot more bruised than here sisters .
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USS Shangri-La (CV/CVA/CVS-38) was another Essex class deck that gave her last full measure of devotion (and more) in the late 60's. There's no doubt among us old Vietnam carrier sailors that the Navy pretty much drove "Shang" into the ground. Here is a narrative by Cdr. Jim Reid describing Shang's last deployment, a pretty good read and a lot of it confirmed to me personally years ago by my VFP-63 squadron mates who made the cruise...
http://uss-shangri-la.com/lastcruise.html
 
Thanks for all the advice fellas, i'll look into 3DS attachpoints and those links you've all sent me. the attachpoints are all added via MCX and are specified correctly - I just don't know if they can be exported by MCX unlike the effects and lights.

Cheers
G
 
A3 Whales

TARPSBird said:
On the Apr-Nov '71 Midway cruise we had a three-plane Whale det (EKA-3B) from VAQ-130 that provided tanker and jamming support. They were still aboard on the next cruise when the air war in VN heated up. Normally the Whale det and the RF-8 photo det (my outfit) were the "bastard children" of any air wing but fortunately we both had senior Lieutenant Commanders as OinC's so we didn't fare too badly. :icon_lol:
Click to expand...


I was with VF-24 (F-8 C's - No wing hard points for bomb racks) and deployed on the Hancock and Bonnie Dick back in the early 60's; we had a few Whales on board as well. Seems I can remember them being useful for transporting Mail and Zuni Tubes for us to use on those F-8's. I loaded my share of Zunis' back then. I know they had a black whale at Cubi point that would fly only at night to Nam on some kind of hush hush quiet quiet secret missions. I think they had the Peter Rabbit (PR) on their tails.
 
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