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Australia has a 3km ice runway, 3,500km south of Hobart.

I don't understand a comment by a pilot talking about a 12 hour flight. The runway is 3,500 km south. It shouldn't take 12 hours, unless he meant the return trip. I would also question the maximum range of an A319!

"Ice runway" all I seem to remember is spending a lot of time and effort keeping ice OFF the runway.....

Good point! I seem to recall a flight out of Hokkaido which was delayed by waiting for the runway to be cleared. Still, when all you have is ice, I guess you have to make do!

"Snow and Ice clearance party" was a week long duty that you got picked for every winter, and meant when it got cold and weather got back you would spend the night filling a gritting lorry with what was politely termed "Urea prills" and impolitely called "pigs p!ss". The crystalline solid would be scattered over the runway and taxiways to prevent the ice forming, then it was back to the shed to be refilled and repeat until everything was clear.

This was a partial improvement on the previous method of clearing ice and snow, which was a wheeled contraption mounting two jet engines with the exhausts pointing "forwards". The contraption was then secured to a fuel tanker, and the whole thing was driven down the taxiway and runway using the jet exhaust to clear the snow and ice away. The jet engines were operated by a qualified technician who sat in a small cabin between the two engines, with an intercom to the tanker driver behind him.

Hey, it worked after a fashion....

I hadn't heard of that before! Runways must have reeked after that!


I guess it's an obvious source of heat when you are working with jets. It sounds kinda dangerous though!

Deicing a pitching carrier flight deck's a whole new kinda pleasure then! Have to be able to greet Santa (and other folks) whenever.

There's an easy source of urea on a carrier - but they wouldn't use that on the flight deck, would they?

There's always some one down wind but it would make FOD walkdowns a two-fer-one if it weren't for the chill factor.

The RAAF's always been respected by USN for special air ops like those above. Anyone happen to have a recommendation for a good book on RAAF ops in VN?

Not if they wanted to stop the flight deck corroding. Urea is quite corrosive, we had to make sure the aircraft were washed more regularly in the winter

I can't imagine that FOD checks would be fun on a moving carrier, especially if it's in poor weather and not Nimitz class (or another huge carrier).

Personally no, but I'd be interested to hear recommendations too. The only book I have from a former RAAF pilot is by a former fighter pilot. In terms of carrier ops that was the Fleet Air Arm not the RAAF though. I understand that the RAN carriers were pushing the envelope to operate Skyhawks on such as small ship. I live relatively close to the Fleet Air Arm museum in Nowra. Sadly we now have bigger ships that the old HMAS Melbourne and HMAS Sydney, but the only aircraft operated will be helicopters.

I imagine that the exposure of everything to seawater alone would be a challenge.

Saltwater exposure and anti-corrosion provisions, the additional weight of catapult/arresting gear and stronger structures to handle those stresses plus wing-folding are just three primary design differences between land based 'AF toys' and carrier acft. Always compromises in performance. That's why the USN never bought the F-111 solution for a multi-service design. Of course the AF can't launch and recover anything from 40 N lat/170 W long either.

As for small decks, my first two deployments to VN were on the Tico (CVA 14!) and the Bonny Dick (CVA-31) with only A-4s & F-8s on WW2 wooden decks. Tight.

[Pic #1,2,3: My EKA-3B (Robby 033) center of pix just barely fit and we had to keep 1 of 4 ashore for deck space.]

I don't recall seeing the Skywarrior before. Thanks for posting! Was there really enough space below deck for all those aircraft? It looks so crowded that it's hard to imagine they could all be stored below, or even moved out of the way of landing and launching aircraft. interesting you mention the deck being wooden - I understand that the decks on the Australian LHDs haven't been sufficiently reinforced to allow a VSTOL F35B to land, even though the ski jump was left in the design. I just read that US Ospreys have been tested with HMAS Canberra.


Ticonderoga and Bon homme were 27,100 tons, and Canberra is 27,500 tons, but the LHD doesn't have the angled flight deck, so it's definitely not designed for fixed wing operations. Melbourne was only 15,740 tons and only had a slight angled flight deck. Melbourne was launched in 1945, so it was very much a WW2 design. I have never understood why the UK failed to use the angled deck concept even though the idea was British.

All my EKA-3B picts from PF albums were of that '67 - '69 era. The USAF flew a lighter version known as a B-66.


https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/members/5425-pacerr/albums/7648-acft-150/page2.html

No, typically 10-12% of the air wing plus one A-3 were positioned ashore in the Philippines as available /maintenance spares. Had to fold the vertical tail as well as the wings and evict three acft to even think about hangering a Whale. A bent A-3 could lock the deck.

The conundrum was the Whale's tanker role was also critical to the operation of the very small decks despite its size.