Plausibility of CATOVL Aircraft

Hi folks,

I’m working through ideas for my US-Nazi Germany Cold War story and I’ve come up to a brick wall on the plausibility of something I’ve been thinking about.

Is it possible to build a catapult assisted take-off/vertical landing aircraft? Are there inherent problems with such a design in terms of weight? Is it just more efficient to do full STOVL or CATOBAR?

My idea is to give somewhat of a compromise between the utility of a Harrier-type aircraft but also give navies using them the ability to get them into the air with a larger payload.
 
It is certaily possible to build that. The (jet) engine that is to power the aircraft does not need to provide a thrust ratio better than 1:1 for the A/C that has full tanks and/or plenty of ordnance, but it is just need to provide the 1:1 thrust ratio for aircraft that has spent a good portion of it's fuel, plus has just light external load. Talk about non needing a 80-95 kN Pegasus for the Harrier, since 65-75 kN will do. Or, use the historical Pegasus, but make a bigger/heavier A/C around it.
Another aproach is the 'ALT Yak-38' - stressed for catapult launch, with bigger wing, stronger U/C and actually useful radar, use the vertical jet (+ main jet) just for landing.

IMO the CATOVL A/C should be more efficient than STOVL.
 
This arrangement might well allow the a/c to take off with more ordnance than STOVL would allow, as you suggested. A potential downside is that ordnance might need to jettisoned before vertical landing if it is not used. Is this going to be a German or an American plane?
 
This arrangement might well allow the a/c to take off with more ordnance than STOVL would allow, as you suggested. A potential downside is that ordnance might need to jettisoned before vertical landing if it is not used. Is this going to be a German or an American plane?

American/British. The idea is for a kind of pseudo-Harrier for the Royal Navy and US Marines.

I haven’t fully figured out German naval aircraft yet, but I imagine they are going to be as disfunctional as the Soviets.
 
American/British. The idea is for a kind of pseudo-Harrier for the Royal Navy and US Marines.

I haven’t fully figured out German naval aircraft yet, but I imagine they are going to be as disfunctional as the Soviets.

Going for catapult take-off A/C opens plenty of room for a useful design, IMO 'giving' the Germans an useless A/C is selling them short.
 
ZELL? Motto: Whatever you imagine, was tried during 1950's...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-length_launch

avzel_3.jpg
 
Going for catapult take-off A/C opens plenty of room for a useful design, IMO 'giving' the Germans an useless A/C is selling them short.

Not useless. More like a solution seeking a problem. German aircraft carrier design runs into a lot of problems, not least of which is that they are propaganda projects that don’t have a place in German naval doctrine.

Ostensibly, German carrier aircraft are intended to supplement the air defense of their battlegroups, but their SAM (or rather FlaR) technology have already outpaced their capabilities.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Sorry but I dont see this working. Catapult launch capabilty would carry a HUGE weigth penalty. Harrier main limitation being the load it could carry back not the one it could bring to target. For example with the strict ROEs of the Balkan/Serbian operations smart (very expensive) bombs being drop unused to the sea.
 

Ramontxo

Donor
Well dont have the source (am posting from the street in my spanish languague loving phone ) but I remenber reading that the F18 took one ton for being converted to carrier operations. How much of that was due to landing arrest requierements and folding wing I dont know. But harrier was a very light aircraft and stress it to take off by a catapult would take a lot of weight
 
Well dont have the source (am posting from the street in my spanish languague loving phone ) but I remenber reading that the F18 took one ton for being converted to carrier operations. How much of that was due to landing arrest requierements and folding wing I dont know. But harrier was a very light aircraft and stress it to take off by a catapult would take a lot of weight

The YF-17 have had empty weight of 9525 kg, F-18C = 10433 kg (I'll use numbers from Wikipedia, FWIW). In area terms, the F-18 was bigger by 20%? Engines of 64 kN were replaced by 79 kN types. New electronics. Bigger fuel tanks. All of those will up the weight.
More external loads can be carried. Now add new U/C so the new A/C doesn't collapse when standing still, there was 10 ton difference in max TO weights of the two.
Harrier was much heavier than A-4. Granted, a new aircraft would've been desirable, to take advantage of catapult launch so it can carry more.
F-18 was carrier capable from the day it flew.
 

SsgtC

Banned
My question is, why? If the aircraft is for the Marine Corps, you're better going full on STOVL. Any aircraft that needs a cat to get off the deck is going to need a full length runway on land to take off. The whole point of going STOVL was so that they DIDN'T need a fully functioning airbase to operate from. Instead, they could bring the airbase with them and operate from a couple of steel planks, a portable fuel bladder and trucks carrying ammo. IMO, you're better off going with one or the other, instead of trying to combine the two
 
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