Oh, OK then. in 1945, or possibly earlier, some bright spark in the Navy had the excellent idea of aircraft without undercarriages, which would land on a thing called a 'flexible flight deck'. (Or, in effect, a rubber aircraft carrier), the idea being to save weight - after all, the aircraft were being launched by catapult, so...
To quote Bill Gunston, in Fighters of the Fifties (possibly Benedict's current favourite book) 'The order was cancelled in 1947 when rubber decks were found by painful experience with Sea Vampires to be unattractive'. Um, yeah. What a surprise.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2003-02-22 11:01 am (UTC)Oh, OK then.
in 1945, or possibly earlier, some bright spark in the Navy had the excellent idea of aircraft without undercarriages, which would land on a thing called a 'flexible flight deck'. (Or, in effect, a rubber aircraft carrier), the idea being to save weight - after all, the aircraft were being launched by catapult, so...
To quote Bill Gunston, in Fighters of the Fifties (possibly Benedict's current favourite book) 'The order was cancelled in 1947 when rubber decks were found by painful experience with Sea Vampires to be unattractive'. Um, yeah. What a surprise.