Posted on 01/01/2018 11:08:34 AM PST by pickrell
The navy times has published, apparently, that DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, is now moving forward with a flying aircraft carrier. Before you scoff, they aren't talking about putting wings on a nuclear carrier.
They will be using a long loiter time C-130 as a carrier for drones, recon and armed. What the oldtimers here know, of course, is that these will not be the first Navy flying aircraft carriers. In fact it was way back in the early 1930's, when the USS Akron and the USS Macon, 2 of what might have become a long class of dirigible aircraft carriers, were built, and the Akron, ZRS-4, began shakedown trials.
Now you're asking... how do you land on a balloon?
First, Dirigibles were not balloons or blimps. The blimp was so named accidentally when the military first started experimented with both rigid and non-rigid airships. Several prototypes of the non-rigid types were being evaluated, and were designated A-Limp, B-limp, C-Limp, etc. As usual a newsman rushed to print that "Blimps" were being tested, and once the public was enthralled, there was no correcting it from there. Any balloon with a Zepplin shape, was ever thereafter...a blimp.
The second type was the rigid airship. (A navy wit remarked while guarding the huge Akron out in the vicious cold, that it was a F*****Rigid. It never caught on, thankfully.)
The Akron was a large dirigible, nearing the size of the German Hindenburg, and had what appeared to be a trapeze bar on it's bottom, from which a biplane could be suspended by a single hook. The bar could be lowered into the airstream on the bottom of the airship for launch and then retracted.
The bi-plane could then range far from the dirigible, scouting with unprecedented speed, range and view. Re-landing was a matter of just matching speeds carefully, and re-hooking to the suspension bar. It solved every problem which crept up... except one. The large size and slow speed, in the 60 MPH range, of the Akron left it vulnerable to the weather, and it was lost during a storm.
Sadly, it's sister ship, the USS Macon ZRS-5, met the same fate and the navy switched, kicking and screaming in many cases, to floating carriers. A dozen years later, it was a good thing we had. A carrier can absorb a war hit, but I rather doubt a dirigible would, especially with only a couple of light bi-planes for defense.
And the rest is history. Read up on it as it makes a great read.
Several prototypes of the non-rigid types were being evaluated, and were designated A-Limp, B-limp, C-Limp, etc.
...
Hey, I learned something.
Just what I was thinking. They were called helicarriers in the movie. Here’s some dialogue from the movie:
Jasper Sitwell: Zola’a algorithm is a program for choosing Insight’s targets.
Steve Rogers: What targets?
Jasper Sitwell: You! A TV anchor in Cairo, the Under Secretary of Defense, a high school valedictorian in Iowa City, Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, anyone who’s a threat to HYDRA. Now, or in the future.
Steve Rogers: In the future? How could it know?
Jasper Sitwell: How could it not? The 21st century is a digital book. Zola told HYDRA how to read it. Your bank records, medical histories, voting patterns, emails, phone calls, your damn SAT scores! Zola’s algorithm evaluates people’s past to predict their future.
Steve Rogers: And what then?
Jasper Sitwell: Oh, my God. Pierce is gonna kill me.
Steve Rogers: What then?
Jasper Sitwell: Then the Insight helicarriers scratch people off the list. A few million at a time.
And more from the movie. This text sounds like Q Anon info for those who follow Q.
______________________
Dr. Arnim Zola: HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom. What we did not realize was that if you tried to take that freedom, they resist. The war taught us much. Humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly. After the war, S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded, and I was recruited. The new HYDRA grew, a beautiful parasite inside S.H.I.E.L.D. For 70 years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crises, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.
Natasha Romanoff: That’s impossible. S.H.I.E.L.D. would’ve stopped you.
Dr. Arnim Zola: Accidents will happen. HYDRA created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security. Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA’s New World Order will arise.
The only remaining XF-85 Goblin parasite fighter is at the SAC Museum in Ashland, NE
Your picture of the fictitious "flying carrier" is the same as many others I've seen, on other threads and in the movies.
I see the same mistake every time - one of the giant lift rotors is right at the end of the runway! Guess if the diagonal runway was for landings only and no one ever missed the wire, this might work for a while. And those brave pilots would never worry about the huge sucking vortex at the end of the runway, right?
You don't have to leave FR to do just that.
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