Thursday, March 23, 2017

The Complete and Illustrated LSO Guide and Much More

Once upon a time, I posted a brief summary of the history of Landing Signal Officers here:
http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2012/11/waving-them-aboard-lso.html (also see http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2017/01/1946-royal-navy-deck-landing-training.html).

Boom Powell, Naval Aviator and LSO, has written a much more entertaining and informative book on LSOs, published by Specialty Press:

You can read the rave reviews on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/Wave-Off-History-LSOs-Ship-Board-Landings/dp/1580072356

3 comments:

  1. Got mine today and have been flipping the pages. Good read and some excellent photos and explanations. I did not know it was a hardbound book, high quality paper and binding. Good value.
    Pat D

    ReplyDelete
  2. In the bottom of the page 33, the author mentioned “Beside the low barriers, the tall barricade is raised, indicating the airplane had a problem”. Does this mean that if there is no problem, the Barricade is always not raised until any problems will be revealed? And if any kind of problem was noted, the Barricade was raised as quickly as possible? What kind of mechanism was used to raise the Barricade so quickly?

    I thought the Barricade was always raised immediately after the previous landing in addition to the Davise Barriers, during every jet fighter’s landings on the strait flight deck carriers, with or without a trouble.

    At the time of Korean War, during the intact F9F panther jet’s uneventful landing operations, was the Barricade raised and lowered after every landings, even though some hindrance for the impending wave-off by the tall Barricade?

    Or was the Barricade never raised unless a jet fighter had any problems?

    Thank you in advance.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Smitty, my understanding is that the barricade was always raised for jet landings on axial decks because the Davis barriers weren't 100% effective at stopping an unarrested jet: if one was going too slowly, the cable might have already dropped by the time the main landing gear struts arrived; too fast and the cable wouldn't have gotten high enough to snag the struts before they passed by.

    The barricade was raised using stanchions like the barrier's, only taller.

    ReplyDelete