Oops!
I’ve made a few errors in my time and I’ve witnessed some doozies. Once when I worked in air traffic control, we had a naval aircraft carrier come in for major repairs. The sea base or port had no facilities for aircraft – the obvious thing was to send the planes to us so the pilots could still fly while the ship was being fixed. The aircraft were anti-submarine Fairey Gannets.
A strange looking thing with turbo prop contra-rotating propellers. I’ve nothing against the navy, except they have a rather stuck-up attitude. Being the so-called senior service, they have this dream that other people are merely there for their benefit. We did get the last laugh as the commander thought his men should show off their prowess as fliers. But we had a concrete runway not a ship’s deck. Brilliant as the navy must be, they came up with a solution. We used one-meter square concrete blocks with rings in the top for planes to be tied to in high wind conditions. Sort of a way to stop the planes from blowing away. The sailors painted a section of the runway to look like the deck of a carrier, then they placed two rows of our concrete airplane anchors at about 75 meters apart and connected a steel cable along the top. With great interest we observed these diligent jolly Jack tars build this magnificent device. The last two blocks, one at the end of each row were joined with a cable representing the arresting wire on an aircraft carrier. The theory being that the plane would land between the two rows of concrete blocks and catch the wire on the first pair thus being brought to a stop as if aboard the ship. On first sight, this device looked as if it might well do the thing. Though now I’m sure air arm commanders have physics included in their curriculum. The very first Fairey Gannet approached, making its strange sound as it gently lowered and levelled out for the landing. Flaps down, wheels down, arrester hook down. She teetered gracefully in the air then the hook hit the runway. Flames and sparks flew like the devil’s own grindstone. The hook caught the wire perfectly. At this point the experiment went awry. With 16,000 pounds of airplane coming in at a about 70 miles an hour the physics of the equation meant the concrete blocks took to the air like fleeing giant crows – well not so much fleeing as converging. They landed on top of the once pretty little aircraft and turned it into so much scrap metal. The pilot escaped with only minor injuries and major embarrassment. The experiment was not repeated.
