Photos from Ark Royal (F4, Sea Vixen etc)

Occasional visit by USN COD aircraft were even more daunting, not much clearance on the wingspan of a Greyhound.

How much clearance would you say the C-2 Greyhound had?

Re the COD, it was an S2, IIRC, and here are a couple of shots of it on a wet Ark flight deck:

I didn’t know the S-2 was ever used as a COD plane. I guess I’m used to seeing the C-2 so it didn’t cross my mind.

Just to be an utter pedant for a moment, the aircraft pictured, and serving in the COD role at the time, is a C-1 Trader, derivative of the S-2 Tracker. The larger C-2 Greyhound being a derivative of the E-2 Hawkeye of course.
These are the first pictures I’ve seen of one operating of a British carrier

Fantastic images, I’ve always enjoyed the pictures of John Eacott (does he still post here?) so glad to see this thread resurface!:)

Occasional visit by USN COD aircraft were even more daunting, not much clearance on the wingspan of a Greyhound.

How much clearance would you say the C-2 Greyhound had?

Re the COD, it was an S2, IIRC, and here are a couple of shots of it on a wet Ark flight deck:

I didn’t know the S-2 was ever used as a COD plane. I guess I’m used to seeing the C-2 so it didn’t cross my mind.

Just to be an utter pedant for a moment, the aircraft pictured, and serving in the COD role at the time, is a C-1 Trader, derivative of the S-2 Tracker. The larger C-2 Greyhound being a derivative of the E-2 Hawkeye of course.
These are the first pictures I’ve seen of one operating of a British carrier

Fantastic images, I’ve always enjoyed the pictures of John Eacott (does he still post here?) so glad to see this thread resurface!:)

Great Photos!!!
I´m searching photos of Buccaneer on us carrier in cross-deck exercises.
but, is very dificult.
Any one can help me o give m and idea where I can find it?
Thanks.

Great Photos!!!
I´m searching photos of Buccaneer on us carrier in cross-deck exercises.
but, is very dificult.
Any one can help me o give m and idea where I can find it?
Thanks.

PhII,

The pics are scanned from slides, and are a bit dark: I’ll try to lighten them up next time I’m home. The 4B was from the Kennedy, around late 74 I believe, probably in the Med. The visiting helicopter is a USN -46, and the Intruder is just waiting on the waist cat. We sent some Bucc’s and F4K’s over for crossdecking, as we did with Forrestal in the earlier USN F4 pics. I often was tasked to transfer maintenance crews over to the US carriers, compared to our deck, they were huge ! I had a close call with a fire truck on Forrestal one night, they gave wind relative to the helicopter, not the ship, so I was struggling a bit at max Tq, facing out to port with no visual reference, when my co pilot pointed out that we were about to drift left into a fire truck. Overtorque and out of there 😉

Another one for you:

You’re right. I do love my Phantoms!

Those are some great photos, but I do have some questions.

When was it that particular F-4B visited in that first photo?

Also in the last photo is that a CH-46 landing aboard? USN?

And finally in that last photo what is that plane on the right side of the photo that you can only see about 1/3 of. It appears to have the familiar stars-and-bars of a U.S. aircraft.

What is it? I can’t seem to tell. (And Intruder possibly?)

Since I’m sitting around on a damp Saturday morning, not flying because the cloud is sitting around the helipad on the skifields that I operate to, I’ll bore you all with some more photos. PhII seems to like the USN ‘tooms, here is a snapshot on a wet flight deck:

Whilst on detachment to HMS Bulwark, we had a visit from an RAF Harrier, one of the earliest to go into service

Amongst the crossdecking FW, we also got the odd rotary visitor

I didn’t know the S-2 was ever used as a COD plane. I guess I’m used to seeing the C-2 so it didn’t cross my mind.

Regarding Phantom thrust the Speys in the F-4K and F-4M produced 20,515-lbs. of static thrust each when in full afterburner so for a combined total thrust of 41,030-lbs. you have a little over 20.5 tons of total power.

The J-79’s in the F-4J’s (those were F-4J’s as I pointed out in my edited post) produced 17,900-lbs. of static thrust each when in full afterburner for a grand total of 35,800-lbs. or almost 18 tons of thrust.

So Spey powered Phantoms did have better TWR ratio I believe, but it wasn’t as a big a margin as was earlier mentioned.

Just for something different, we operated all around, and on a flight into Roosevelt Roads, I snapped this shot of some USN B47’s. I never bothered to enquire at the time just what the USN would have been doing with them, anyone enough of a history buff to enlighten me?

Also, another (fuzzy) shot of an Intruder on the waist cat of Ark

Hello mr Eacott,

Thank you for sharing these wonderful pictures with us.
Have you considered the possibility of having a book published?
I believe it would become a instant classic.
Airlife pulishing produces such photobooks.
As a younger enthusiast, I’m delighted with such titles as “Fast jet fighters 1948-1978” by Martin Bowman or “Airliners of the 1960’s” by Gerry Manning.

Cheers, Transall.

Dazza,

All the pictures on Ark were taken between 1973 and 1975, I was out of the Andrew before ’77!

PhII,

The Intruder was by far the noisiest aircraft. Running up on the cat, it was painful even through ear defenders 😮 I don’t recall any noticeable difference between the RN & USN F4’s re noise, although the increased AoA of the F4K sent the AB flames straight down onto the JBD’s, hence the requirement for water cooling. Night ops, with darkened ship, were a bit of a waste of time during Phantom launches. You could see the AB for miles!! I’ve got quite a few pics on a “parking” directory, here’s one of an F4K 4 ship;

And a general view of the flight deck

Re the COD, it was an S2, IIRC, and here are a couple of shots of it on a wet Ark flight deck:

More shots here and here .

Regarding the F-4J/S question, if the picture of the USN F-4s was taken in 1977 then they are definitely F-4Js, the maiden flight of the F-4S was July 22 1977 and the first unit to recieve them was VMFA-451 in June 1978, however they could easily be mistaken for F-4Js because the first 43 jets were delivered without the leading edge slats which were retrofitted later.
Great website though, good see so many RN FG.1s.

Regards, Dazza.:)

Massive site!

This is the most photos I’ve seen of F-4Ks in a single site so far on board the Ark.

The K is definitely my favourite version.

Please post them all!

That was some force! A RAF Lightning pilot who flew Ks from the Ark on exchange said ‘that you couldn’t compare that type of flying to anything else’ or something along those lines. Coming from the cream of the RAF at the time, it just goes to show the calibre of flying those RN units produced.

Even USN exchange officers admitted as much, people like Mig killer and Topgun graduate Jerry Beaulier and others.

They Spey F-4 had better acceleration and of course T/W ratio from those Speys (18.6 tons total against IIRC 14.2t of the J!!)..

A lovely site you have.

Sorry bout causing all the uproar about the model of F-4. I think I might have missed the apostrophe before the S.

Also since you were on the deck with both Spey and J-79 powered Phantoms which one was louder?

I’d guess J-79, but then again I’ve never heard a Spey before and certainly not in afterburner.

Also when you say loud aircraft were you referring to the Phantoms or Intruders?

How much clearance would you say the C-2 Greyhound had?

Sorry for the questions, but it’s a treat to talk to someone who was in the RN when they had real carriers. 🙂

Thanks for the background info, John. It must have been fantastic to watch the RN F4s run up and take off with that extended leg.

There’s a cracking picture of one of these just after launch (head on, with HMS Ark Royal in the background – you may see yourself!), painted by Philip E West, advertised in flypast this month. You may be able to view it on:

www.swafineart.com

Seafuryfan has told me of the interest in my site, so a couple of explanations. The USN F4’s are just that, F4’s but my ISP used a capital ‘S, instead of lower case ‘s :rolleyes: I’ll get it changed!

We had cross decking quite often, both the F4’s pictured and Intruders, which have to be the noisiest aircraft that I’ve ever come across. Occasional visit by USN COD aircraft were even more daunting, not much clearance on the wingspan of a Greyhound. I’ve got some scanned pics that I can post, if wanted.

The USMC Phantom with 892 NAS tail was an interesting tale: we were operating in the Med, and the subject F4 went U/S on the cat quite a few times. We were due into Grand Harbour, Valetta, but the Maltese (under Mintoff) had declared the Sixth Fleet persona non grata, so the presence of a USMC aircraft presented a bit of an embarrasment. So, it was struck down into the lower hangar, hidden amongst the Bucc’s.

After a couple of days, it was moved into the upper hangar and repaired, during which it mysteriously aquired a paint job on the tail fin, identical to that on 892 😉 A lot of brown paper stuck over the US markings, and up on to the flight deck for ground runs 🙂 First call after leaving Malta, flying stations and launch the F4 back to mother. The aircraft “belonged” to the squadron CO, and apparently he was quite impressed, taking it back to the USA unchanged 😀

Our F4K’s had an extending nose leg, which increased the AoA for our shorter cats. The waist cat was 200′, the bow cat 180′ long, each with 1 second/hundred foot acceleration rate. I only got to go off on a Gannet, but it was quite a push. Mind you, the Gannet was the only aircraft to slow down after a cat launch 😎

The “For Sale” notice on the back of Sea Vixen XN684 is amusing.

That should date the photo quite accurately.

Yes they are F4J’s, there are no leading edge slats on these aircraft, leading edge slats were part of the upgrade from J to S.

US F4’s could operate from this size of ship, well clearly cos they are on it. This ‘visit’ does feature in a book I have about the F4, cannot remember which one, I will check. But the trials for the F4K were conducted off a US carrier, again memory fails me as to which one, that operated US F4’s at the time that was very comparable in size to the Ark. There was one problem though and that was because of the F4K’s extended nose oleo the UK F4’s burnt holes in that carriers deck when at reheat waiting for launch!!