7 MAR 44
"Anchored as before."
The first three words of March 7th's brief War Diary entry set the tone for another day of maintenance, resupply and training. Princeton's watch standers dutifully noted the comings and goings of seventeen other vessels from the lagoon. There was a small amount of excitement in the late afternoon when "At 1653 received information that a friendly aircraft was on fire and would make a crash landing in the lagoon. Called away crash boat party, but had no occasion to employ it." The diary entry, frustratingly, does not elaborate further. A hint that the P may be departing on a new assignment is contained in the final five words of the Diary:
"At 2329 completed provisioning ship."
We left yesterday's discussion with a promise to further explain how the barrier system has evolved. Before we undertake that task, I'd like to share what I think is a really cool document I found just this morning. The Booklet of General Plan for one of Princeton's sister ships, USS Monterey (CVL-26).
The General Plan is a set of 1/16 scale drawings of Monterey and honestly, I feel like they are pieces of art:
Dad worked here, in the Medical Department spaces:
Of particular note, relative to our discussion from yesterday, is this draft blueprint of the flight deck, where (if you zoom, or visit the link above) the 9 arresting wires and 3 barrier wires can be easily identified:
Before we move on, I would like to share an excellent 9 minute video clip of flight operations in which numerous things which we've previously touched on can be seen in action: Deck Run launches, multi-carrier operations with airplanes filling the sky like bees, combat footage, landing operations, a few emergency landings and at the end, a solemn ceremony. Well worth your time, in my opinion. The voice-over is characteristically designed for home front consumption, but the footage speaks eloquently to the complexity of the effort, and the courage of all the young Americans involved. Notice a perfect example of the steel cable barrier system in operation at the 4:40 mark.
The damage inflicted by the WWII-era barrier system was mitigated somewhat by the replacement after the war of the steel cables with nylon webbing material:
And as you can see from this photo of a 1950's era F9F Panther, it seems to have accomplished what it set out to.
This system was short-lived however, because the aircraft carrier was about to undergo the most significant evolution in its history with the adoption of the "angled deck."
USS Intrepid (CV-11) was modernized in 1954 and reclassified as an attack carrier, (CVA-11). The side-by-side photos below clearly show the ability of the upgraded boat to launch and recover simultaneously, a fighting carrier Skipper's dream. A landing aircraft that missed the wires, known as a "bolter," would simply go to full power and fly straight ahead off the angled deck, thus avoiding any aircraft that may be launching straight ahead on the ship's course off the bow.
The angled deck, pioneered by the Royal Navy, was necessitated largely by the jet age and the increased size, performance, weight and speed of more modern aircraft. It also immediately rendered the old barrier system obsolete. The requirement to stop an aircraft by means other than just the arresting wires, however, did not go away.
The most obvious need for a follow-on barrier-type capability was in the event that an aircraft has a lost or malfunctioning tailhook. Additional considerations that required an alternate means to stop an aircraft included pilot injury, arresting wire or flight deck damage, low fuel state of an aircraft which dictated only a "single look" or attempt at landing, landing gear malfunction, and probably several others I can't think of at the moment.
So...enter the "barricade."
USS Essex (CVA-9) after her post-WWII modernization.
The barricade is essentially a large, nylon net that is stretched across the flight deck and acts to stop an aircraft when, for whatever reason, the arresting wires may not do the trick. The system looks simple, and it is, but underlying the concept is an intricately designed and engineered series of "moving parts." If you have 17 minutes to kill, have at it:
Modern aircraft carriers still use this "nylon net" system, although circumstances requiring it be used are thankfully rare. That said, the flight deck crews train to "rig the barricade" consistently...
US Navy (USN) Sailors aboard onboard the aircraft carrier USS KITTY HAWK (CV 63), prepare an aircraft barricade during flight deck drills. The barricade is used to recover aircraft unable to land with the conventional tailhook for routine recoveries.
...so that when it is needed, it is ready...
Tomorrow, Majuro Atoll is left in the rear view mirror and The Peerless P is underway again. But bound for where?
NNNN
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