Aircraft Carriers...

[Pelorus]

Cool thread!
Forestal Wikipedia article is good reading:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_USS_Forrestal_fire

 

[woodworkingboy]

Quite a read, and a terrible accident from a devastating chain of events.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Interesting!

 

[woodworkingboy]

Given the video, it seems that alertness on the flight deck would need to be constant, and working those long hours, not an easy thing to always have going. Poor guy going through the intake, a heck of a way to go. Can't they put a bar over the intake or some other preventative measure to prevent that, or no matter what size of the opening, it's going to suck you in?

 

[MasterBlaster]

I have no idea, that's an engineering question. I guess you don't want anything to block the air intake on an aircraft engine.

It's pretty easy NOT to walk into one.

 

[woodworkingboy]

During WW2, the Japanese developed a plane launching submarine. It was a large ship by submarine standards of the day, had a hangar that could hold three planes that launched by way of a catapult. The plane's wings folded up to fit into the hangar, and also the tip of the tail. They produced a few of them for various plans, first to attack American coastal cities, then came the idea to damage the Panama canal to disrupt the flow of ships to the Pacific that used that route from the east coast of the US. Some impressive new technology went into the subs, like how to keep a top heavy vessel from rolling over, and the specialised planes, but a big drawback was that the planes could carry only limited armament, i think one bomb, much reducing the potential for doing damage. I think that they hit somewhere in Oregon using the I-400 class sub as they called them, but with minimal effectiveness. Sneaky though....

 

[MasterBlaster]

It was a start!