Interesting Photo of the USS Hornet and an aircraft landing

Wow.

My wife's uncle was an aviation machinist's mate on the Hornet during its history. I wonder what the scuttlebutt was after the incident?

 

Great photo. Did the gear actually collapse? The gear on the F4F could do what is being pictured without collapsing.

 

Perhaps due to enemy fire, it (landing gear) was also as shot up as the rest of the fuselage, cockpit, and internal wiring?

That gear was rugged as all get out, but a few well placed shots from an airborn cannon, like those on the Zeke might make for a bit of a bother.

 

Nice Picture, and a interesting Story. Looks like a rough landing to me.

 

From my perspective as a "snipe" (eg., engineering type) the likely response then, like today, would have been ....

GD'd airedales! They so friggin' useless......

 

From no other evidence than the photograph, it would certainly appear that the gear are collapsing. The starboard gear seems to be only partially extended, most likely due to the landing.

And BIAK, I see no reason to believe a completely intact P-47 would survive even a clean carrier landing. It's possible, I suppose, but the type wasn't designed for carrier operations nor did the navy ever use them, so far as I know. Taking off from a carrier is one thing. Getting back down on one is altogether another. The F4F was rather narrow of track, but no more so that Spitfires or Bf-109s. And all told they performed pretty well.

 

I have some pics in my Dad's tour book from his CVE that shows an FM-2 with collapsed landing gear, similar to that in this photo. It looks as though the gear couldn't take an off-kilter landing very well.

That poor pilot had to live with the fact that he accidentally killed some U.S servicemen..........


tom

tom

 

Dan Sheedy in VF-3's bu no 5239, side no 24. Yes, the gear collapsed and the plane was subsequently tossed overboard.

While the F4F has somewhat of a reputation for ground loops, that phenomena was confined to landings ashore, not with arrested landings. What you are seeing is the starboard gear collapsing in combination with an arrested landing.

 

Yes, fortunately, no one hurt in this event. A great photo showing the typical VF-3 Midway paint job, You can see Bill Barnes lurching forward as the plane stops and, looking close, you can see the .50 cal. brass falling to the deck below the right wing. Buno is 5167. Yes, I know the photo caption on the web site says Horace Bass was the pilot, but Bass was one of but 4 VF-3 pilots who actually flew in his assigned airplane that day, #22, buno 5050.

 

And....

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8Bim7-hZfg&feature=PlayList&p=327E8CADD4643F49&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=30[/youtube]

 

Regretfully OpanaPointer's photo is incorrectly captioned.

The photo is of the USS Iowa, probably on her builder's trials, or sometime shortly after completion, as the wind baffles on the conning tower are not installed yet.

I think this is the photo the original author meant.
http://www.navsource.org/archives/01/013821.jpg

 

Sorry, BIAK. Failed to realize you were making a joke. My funny bone is probably still sprained from my last game of Tennis. (Which was pretty funny, but lousy tennis.)

And I hate to be a spoil sport, OpanaPointer, but the amazing last picture from the dieing Frederick Read is an urban legend that's been circulating a while. (I've seen it published many many times.)

But it's not a photograph at all. It's extracted from a film clip shot by Marion Riley which you can see as part of a short montage on youtube:

YouTube - Dive Bombers Attack the USS Enterprise

It's clearly cobbled together from several clips, as the early footage is from early in the war, possibly the Doolittle Raid.

You'll see two bombs hit Enterprise in the course of the clip. The first strikes near the fantail and penetrates to the starboard after gun gallery, killing almost everyone nearby. The Enterprise group's cv6.org reports that Read was stationed in that gallery and killed by this bomb hit. (The second hit on Enterprise that day.)

The third bomb hits at about the three minute mark, and someone pans the camera to the burning wreckage of Japanese planes just after the attack. While it's possible that the cameraman stepped over the body of a dead or dieing comrade to operate the camera, it seems a little far fetched. Rather, I would guess that Riley himself got back up once the smoke had cleared and panned the camera to catch what he thought was interesting.

You can read a little about Read and Riley and the controversy surrounding the picture on cv6.org's site:

Battle of the Eastern Solomons: August 24, 1942

Haunting video, just the same, as it's pretty darn clear just what happens in that gun gallery.

Sorry to be a spoil-sport. I've walked into exactly that same myth. (I first saw the picture published in some book or other in my High School library. Apparently the Navy has even printed the mistaken caption.)

Sincerely,
David Ackerman

 

Like I said. I thought the same thing. If you go sulk, I want to come along and the Navy can come with us.