Author: Rainbow Kursk
The construction of a certain type of aircraft carrier is in full swing, and three catapults have been placed on the flight deck, which has become one of the appearance symbols of this type of aircraft carrier.
In the century-old history of aircraft carriers, catapults can be said to be the most critical equipment for aircraft carrier aviation operations, and aircraft carriers have been widely equipped since the second world war. At that time, the main use of old-fashioned hydraulic catapults, equipped on small escort aircraft carriers, because the large aircraft carriers at that time did not need catapults to take off propeller fighters, and the deck wind generated by high-speed sailing against the wind could support the take-off of carrier-based aircraft. After the war, steam catapults were developed, which was first proposed and developed by Mitchell, commander of the British Royal Navy's Aviation Reserve Force, in 1951, and later became an indispensable aviation operation equipment for modern large and medium-sized aircraft carriers.
However, whether it is a hydraulic catapult or a steam catapult, the aircraft carrier is generally configured according to the even number, often arranged 2 or 4, only the US Navy "Coral Sea" installed 3 catapults after the modification.
Photo: Catapults are one of the important equipment for aircraft carrier aviation operations.
At present, there are not many aircraft carrier models with catapults in the world, mainly including the FORD class of the US Navy, the Nimitz class and the French Navy's Charles de Gaulle class.
Among them, the Ford class uses 4 electromagnetic catapults, the Nimitz class uses 4 steam catapults, and the Charles de Gaulle class uses 2 steam catapults.
Let's put aside the French medium-sized aircraft carrier and take the US Navy's supercarrier development as an example.
The U.S. Navy's early Essex-class and Midway-class aircraft carriers were both modified versions of World War II aircraft carriers, and even after an angled deck modification, only 2 steam catapults were retained. Including the aircraft carrier "Midway", after two rounds of modification, only 2 C-11 steam catapults were installed. However, the aircraft carrier CORAL SEA, as its sister ship, moved the portside lift of the ship to the starboard side of the ship at the beginning of the conversion, which allowed the ship to place a third catapult on the angled deck.
This also made the "Coral Sea" aircraft carrier the only aircraft carrier in history to have 3 catapults, and also actively explored the later placement of catapults on the inclined deck of the American supercarrier.
Photo: Using the aircraft carrier Midway with only 2 catapults.
Picture: The aircraft carrier "Coral Sea" with the addition of a catapult on the beveled deck, a total of 3 catapults.
Let's take a look at the basic data of the USS Coral Sea.
After the modification of the "Coral Sea" aircraft carrier, the standard displacement is 52500 tons, the full load displacement is 65000 tons, belonging to the ranks of large aircraft carriers, the flight deck is 298.4 meters × 72.5 meters, using 4 steam turbines and 12 steam boilers as power, the maximum speed is 33 knots, and in the era of jet fighters, up to 75 fighters of various types can be deployed.
The C-11 catapult used was an early steam catapult, shorter in length, and was replaced by the C13 series of steam catapults on subsequent aircraft carriers.
Image: The conventionally powered aircraft carrier Coral Sea is the only modern aircraft carrier in history to have 3 steam catapults, in addition to having 3 aircraft lifts.
"Coral Sea" and "Midway" belong to the World War II aircraft carrier modification, the United States in the development of the first generation of post-war aircraft carrier Forrest class, it fully absorbed the "Coral Sea" design experience, put forward the "4 bombs and 4 liters" program, became the standardized design of later AMERICAN aircraft carriers, until the Ford-class aircraft carrier adopted "4 bombs and 3 liters".
After the C-11 steam catapult, the U.S. Navy has successively developed models such as C-7, C-11-1, C-13, C-13-1, and C13-2. Among them, the C-13-1 and C-13-2 catapults have enough power to allow the aircraft to take off without facing the wind.
Photo: U.S. aircraft carrier steam catapult repairs.
These steam catapults ensured the high sortie efficiency of U.S. aircraft carriers. But this efficiency is not the culmination, but there is still room for improvement.
In fact, the personnel on the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers have long been fed up with steam catapults, and everyone hopes to develop newer electromagnetic catapults.
Because, when each steam catapult is ready to catapult the carrier-based aircraft, up to 25 people must do the maintenance work for it, including constantly adding lubricating oil to all rotational nodes to ensure that all moving parts run smoothly. During the Iraq War, steam catapults were maintained for up to 18 hours a day, making them the dirtiest and most tiring work on aircraft carriers.
The one-year maintenance cost of the 4 catapults is also 3 times the sum of all other maintenance costs on the deck. So, steam catapults are known as the nightmare of the U.S. Navy.
Image: F-14 fighter jets perform steam catapults.
In addition, the acceleration of steam catapults of up to 4 G or more in the early stage is even more unbearable than that of a drone. In the future, UAV combat will become the key mode of aircraft carrier operations, because if steam catapults are used again, it will automatically abandon the era of unmanned intelligent air combat.
Therefore, the Ford class firmly developed electromagnetic catapults.
And back to the issue of 3 catapults for a certain type of aircraft carrier. First of all, from the current photos, the slotted shape of these 3 catapults basically hammers the electromagnetic catapult, so it has the advantage that the steam catapult does not have, and the ejection efficiency is also higher than that of the steam catapult, and even the take-off efficiency of the 4 steam catapult can be achieved with only 3 electromagnetic catapults.
At the same time, given that the size and tonnage of a certain type of aircraft carrier can obviously not be compared with the Ford class and Nimitz class, but may be similar to the modified "Coral Sea" aircraft carrier, or larger, it is obviously more appropriate to install 3 catapults on the flight deck of this size aircraft carrier.
Image: The slotted dimensions of a catapult of a certain type of aircraft carrier basically prove that it uses an electromagnetic catapult.
Because modern warfare tends to be short and intense, the advantages of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier's ability to continue to deploy cannot be fully demonstrated in combat.
In 1998, the U.S. Congressional Audit Office issued a report entitled "Naval Aircraft Carriers: The Cost-Effectiveness of Conventionally Powered Aircraft Carriers and Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carriers", which pointed out that after comparing the performance of the "Roosevelt" nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the other 5 conventionally powered aircraft carriers in the Gulf War, it was found that the combat effectiveness of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers was not much stronger than that of conventionally powered aircraft carriers because of their use of nuclear power.
The USS Midway is the sister ship of the Coral Sea mentioned above, and it is also the one with only 2 catapults.
Image: The USS Midway, which has only 2 catapults, is the aircraft carrier with the best single-aircraft sorties in the Gulf War.
After operation Desert Storm began on January 17, 1991, it was the first round of sea-based aircraft attacks by A-6 Intruder attack aircraft flying aboard midway, and during the war the ship's carrier-based aircraft flew a total of 3339 sorties, an average of 121 sorties per day, and a total of 405.8 pounds of ammunition were dropped.
By the end of Operation Desert Storm on the afternoon of February 27, Midway was the only carrier in the Persian Gulf to lose a single carrier and a pilot.
Of course, the MIDway carrier is still inferior to the larger carrier in terms of the total number of take-offs. According to relevant data, during operation "Desert Storm", the Forlist-class aircraft carrier "Saratoga" completed 11,000 sorties of various types of fighters; the Nimitz-class "Roosevelt" completed 4,200 take-offs and landings; and the "Midway" completed 3339 take-offs and landings. In terms of ammunition drops, the 100,000-ton Roosevelt dropped 4.8 million pounds of bombs, and the 60,000-ton "Midway" dropped 4.06 million pounds. It should be said that the performance of the "Midway" is very good.
Image: The USS Midway and the Ussa Coral Sea are exemplars of 60,000-ton catapult aircraft carriers.
Therefore, we also have reason to believe that with the blessing of electromagnetic catapults, the operating efficiency of 3 electromagnetic catapults will not be worse than that of 4 steam catapults. It is necessary to study and explore more the effective dispatching and operation mechanism of carrier-based aircraft on the deck of the aircraft carrier, so as to more effectively improve the take-off and landing efficiency of carrier-based aircraft.