The British Carrier Strike Fleet. David Hobbs
amounts of water. Next came surplus aircraft with their outer wing panels removed. These were run up to full power and then launched without a pilot at increasing fuel weights. Although not expected to fly very far, some of them flew for surprising distances before they crashed into the sea to add more aircraft to the number of wrecks on the sea bed. Finally, manned operational aircraft were launched at their maximum take-off weight. The catapult structure covered the deck as far aft as the island and, since Perseus had never been fitted with arrester wires, aircraft had to fly ashore to land after being launched. The aircraft had to be craned on board every day from lighters off Rosyth Dockyard.
The whole series of trials were carried out in conditions of strict secrecy and proved to be completely successful. A total of 1560 catapult launches were made from Perseus, of which 1000 were dead loads and the remainder unmanned surplus aircraft, mainly Seafires and Sea Hornets, and the balance of manned operational aircraft including Sea Vampires.18 As with the angled deck, the USN was kept fully informed and had observers on Perseus throughout the sea trials. The RN made the ship available for USN sea trials and she arrived in the USA in December 1951. A further 140 launches were carried out using USN dead loads and operational aircraft;19 the data was found to correlate well with RN reports and the USN acquired the manufacturing rights for its own steam catapult production as part of the benefits of MDAP. Work began in the USA in April 1952; the first catapult was installed at NAS Patuxent River in December 1953 and the first launch from an operational carrier took place on 1 June 1954 when the USS Hancock launched a Grumman S2F-1 Tracker. Despite the Admiralty’s enthusiasm, however, British industry was not capable of such rapid development and the first British steam catapults went to sea in Ark Royal in February 1955.
The raised structure containing the prototype BXS-1 steam catapult on Perseus can be seen clearly in this overhead image. A Sea Hornet is positioned on the catapult with the strop attached to the shuttle and there is a second aft of the structure with its wings folded that has not yet been manned. The aircraft parked aft are a Sturgeon, Avenger and Sea Fury. A Sea Fury parked aft of the island is partially obscured by the mast. (Author’s collection)
The third major problem in 1951 was the recovery of jet fighters at increasingly high speeds. A Sea Vampire made a series of downwind approaches to Illustrious during trials which confirmed that DLCOs, no matter how experienced, were unable to appreciate errors in height or line quickly enough to signal them in time for the pilot to make corrections. The new steeper approach with power on meant that the DLCO was not even required to order the cut and so there was nothing left for him to offer although there was no replacement system in prospect.20 Once more the solution came from a serving naval officer, Commander H C N Goodhart RN, who was Captain Campbell’s assistant at the MoS. He had an engineering background and had flown Hellcat fighters during the Second World War. His solution was to place a large mirror facing aft by the port deck edge with a source light 150ft aft of it to project its light into the mirror. By tilting the mirror back slightly, an ideal pre-determined but adjustable glide slope indication was shown to pilots on final approach with the reflected ‘blob’ of light, soon to be known universally as the ‘meatball’ or simply ‘the ball’, in between green datum bars of projected light on either side of the mirror. If the ball appeared exactly between the datum bars, the pilot’s eye was exactly on the glide slope. If it appeared high he was high and if it appeared low he was low. Reaction-time lags were reduced to those of the pilot himself and potential misinterpretation of hand signals were eliminated. By adjusting the brilliance of the source lights, the pick-up range of the mirror could be increased or decreased. In practice two or more source lights were installed so that the failure of any one would not render the sight useless.
The equipment was known as the deck landing mirror sight (DLMS), and the Admiralty tasked RAE Farnborough with the production of prototypes for evaluation ashore and at sea as soon as possible. The first mirror was installed on Illustrious in October 1952 and comprised a convex, polished steel sheet on wooden backing with reflective metal datum bars. Whilst crude, it showed promise and a more effective sight was designed by Mr D Lean of the RAE. This comprised an aluminium-faced mirror with aft-facing green lights as datum bars and it had a gyro stabilisation system to cancel out the effect of ship pitch. It was installed on Indomitable in June 1953 and sea trials were carried out with landings made by a variety of operational aircraft.21 These were witnessed by RCN, USN and USMC observers and some of the landings were flown by American as well as British pilots. The exact point where the hook would hit the deck could be selected with considerable accuracy by adjusting the tilt of the mirror and the trial proved extremely successful. The sight solved the problem of giving pilots of aircraft with high approach speeds adequate glide slope information and also meant that the number of arrester wires could be reduced from an average of twelve in 1950 to just four with complete safety, thus reducing both the amount of installed flight deck machinery and the number of technical ratings needed to maintain it. The reduction in the number of wires meant that those fitted could be sited further forward, nearer the centre of pitch and further from the round down giving greater clearance for the tail hook in rough weather. The new angled deck and mirror sight together not only made deck landing safer, they made it easier. Within the space of two years, at a time of financial and manpower stringency, the RN had carried forward a revolution in carrier operating techniques that was of as great a significance to naval warfare as the design of the revolutionary battleship Dreadnought fifty years before. The new inventions were adopted by every carrier navy and are still the basis of most fixed-wing operations in 2015. Dreadnought had rendered all her predecessors obsolete but existing carrier hulls could be reconstructed to incorporate the new technology.
A pilot’s-eye view of a real angled deck, in this case Centaur’s. The mirror landing aid is clearly visible to the left with a black wind break shielding it. The reflected ‘meatball’ is slightly higher than the six datum lights, three on either side of the mirror, indicating that the photographer, probably in a helicopter, is higher than the ideal fixed-wing glide-slope. Note all the aircraft parked neatly to starboard of the wingtip safety line. (Author’s collection)
Royal Navy Aircraft in 1952
The Hawker Sea Hawk had made progress by 1952 and was undergoing intensive flying trials at RNAS Ford. It was powered by a single Rolls-Royce Nene centrifugal-flow jet engine and capable of 520 knots, clean, at low level. Its primary armament comprised four 20mm front-guns in the nose under the cockpit with 200 rounds per gun and 1000lb or 500lb bombs could be carried on underwing hardpoints. Alternatively up to four 3in rockets with 60lb warheads could be carried on rails under each wing. Drop tanks could be fitted to the underwing hardpoints to extend endurance to 3 hours 50 minutes at economical speed. It was expected to be the last sub-sonic, straight-wing day fighter in naval service and the first two squadrons were to be available to replace Attackers by mid-1953.22 Subsequently one Sea Hawk squadron was expected to be formed every three months until a total of nine operational units were in service.
The aircraft selected to replace the Sea Hawk was the Supermarine N-113D.23 Treasury sanction was given for the MoS to procure 100 fighters to meet Specification N113 in 1952; the first was expected to fly in 1954 and the first squadron to be formed in 1956. The N113 was a swept-wing, twin-turbojet engined development of the Supermarine Type 508 and was intended to intercept enemy bombers at viable ranges when launched from a deck alert. To achieve this, its outstanding feature was to be an exceptional rate of climb in the region of 20,000ft per minute up to an operational ceiling of 49,000ft. Armament was to include two 30mm Aden cannon in the nose and, eventually, air-to-air missiles.
In the short term, the de Havilland Sea Hornet NF 21 was to be replaced in the night and all-weather fighter role by the de Havilland Sea Venom, a developed version of the Venom night fighter in service with the RAF, and built to Specification N107. Powered by a single de Havilland Ghost jet engine, the first fifty were to be built to FAW 20 standard with AI Mark 10 radar and the first prototype,