USS Enterprise, the US Navy’s oldest carrier, recently in-chopped into the Mediterranean while on its latest deployment. As part of its operations, cross-deck flight operations with French Rafael fighters were conducted, a rarity in these days of specialized aircraft and flight ops. Narrative comments are from an email received from a deployed Enterprise officer who participated in the events:
“We trapped two French Rafale fighters on board the Enterprise today, first time ever that they have trapped. They did touch and go’s off other carriers before, but this was the first time to trap. They shut down, met with ENT heavies, French DVs (distinguished visitors), including one with 5 stars.
At the catapult, again a first, they took off with no issues. Then did a spectacular formation fly-by at deck level.
On-deck pics include side-by-side of Rafale on Cat 1 and F/A-18F Super Hornet on Cat 2. Another Rafale has just come off Cat 4 and is using afterburners on the climb-out. Their catapult procedure are a little different. They do wipeout checks before crossing the JBD; once in tension they just go straight to MIL power, salute, and launch. AB comes once down the cat. Note the moveable canards just aft of the canopy.”
As a former catapult officer, I can attest how this would have generated a fair amount of interest from the air and flight-deck crews, if for nothing else than to be a break from the every-day monotony of launching flight operations. Having the French carrier Charles De Gaulle’s catapult and arresting gear systems designed and installed by our NAVAIR guys and gals from Lakehurst, NJ helps in that the systems used by both French naval aircraft and our our aircraft are similar (if not almost identical).
Score a few points for combined interoperability! We’ve come close in recent years, at least with regards to joint aircraft naval flight operations — I’ve seen flight deck videos of a French F-8 Crusader do touch and go’s on board USS John F Kennedy (our Landing Signal Officer call for the pilot to add a bit of power during the approach is “Power”. The French call is “Moteur”) and the Argentines bounced A-4 Skyhawks on the deck of USS Ronald Reagan a few years ago, but this is the first time I’ve seen actual traps and cats done in a long time. We scream about the aforementioned “interoperability” (or the capability of a piece of equipment/hardware/weapon/whatever to be able to function with different systems) in the halls of the Pentagon all the time — its nice to be able to see it executed on La pointe pointu du javelot again.
Photo credits TBD
–Pinch Paisley
Interesting. The French did some stuff with U.S.S. John C. Stennis in the North Arabian Sea not long ago too. I wrote about it here.
I guess HTML is not allowed. Here’s the link:
http://partridge.net/blog/2007/07/11/dogs-lying-with-cats-toads-from-the-sky/
Thanks Ed! We never had any low approaches or t&g’s on Kennedy when I was there. The F-8 that did a t&g was from the cruise just prior to mine. We *did* see a bunch of crazy Egyptian F-16’s fly by below flight-deck level at about 400 knots, though.
Thanks for the info. I’d love to see some footage of the F-18 along side the Rafale on Cats 1 & 2… and the flyby.
I trust someone had a videocam handy that day!
Cheers,
Arno
Interesting, at the start of the war, the French were ‘cheese eating surrender monkies’, now they are politically acceptable. I have to wonder if it has anything to do with the US loosing the Iraqi war and the French being right when they warned Bush against comitting both an illegal invasion, and having comitted themselves to doing that, warned them about not understanding what they were getting themselves into.
Oh how to eat humble American pie!
johnathan: france has always been a member of NATO. and they also have a new government. ever thought that with the new conservative government their relations with our military might have improved? i haven’t had my serving of pie yet.
Now that’s different! The Super Hornet dwarfs the Rafael. Good practice for the French. They’re set to build 75 ton Carriers at some point. British too.
Hope the Brits are practicing for cat launches.
It’s interesting to note that up until 99 the Brits used to regularly fly Jaguars from US carriers to keep up with Catapult launches and because there carriers were only designed for Harriers.
And to RTLM the brits don’t need to practice catapult launches for there new carriers, there going to be equipped with a ski-ramp and fly the JSF F35B
hi, re: wren and rtlm, assuming the carriers get built for the uk and france that is … and assuming the jsf is actually ever built/bought. i believe there are backup plans for the uk carriers to fly either a navalised eurofighter, or to use the rafale itself, should there be problems with the jsf, in which case there would have to be a catapult launching system on board. incidentally, and i welcome corrections, wasn’t the steam catapult a british invention which, like so many, we decided wasn’t going to be any use and the usa then proved us somewhat wrong about …
Damn, the French build ‘em pretty.
@Arno: http://www.corlobe.tk/article5826.html
plus a couple other pictures http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2007/07/le-rafale-sur-l.html
There was also an E2-C trapped and launched, but this had already been performed on USS John C Stennis.
About what is said about the procedure, it’s actually true the way it is described (the French carrier has much less space and cannot afford planes checking on the catapult, everything must be done during setup and lineup).
AB can be used right from the catapult if the configuration is very heavy (long-range strike or ultra heavy refuelling).
I’m pleased you find them pretty
Well, I’m french and I am very proud of that !
This may improve the links between French and USA, and France need that, because the “Charles de Gaulle” will be unavailable for a long time, and frenchs aircrafts will need some carriers to be trained !
What a wonderful plane the French have build. It can easily match with the Eurofighter and can even land on carriers. I am so impressed that the French have the will and brainpower to develop and build their own very modern fighter-aircraft and carriers and not to forget their “Force de frappe” in order to be militarily as autark as possible .
I hope my country Turkey will finally purchase some of them and cancel the participation in the JSF program which does not fit our needs although it will not be bad i am sure. Unfortunately some of our stupid politicians and strategists think otherwise.
What a wonderful plane the RAFALE is. It
can easily match with the Eurofighter and can even land on carriers. I am so impressed that the French have the will and brainpower to develop and build their own very modern fighter-aircraft and carriers and not to forget their “Force de frappe” in order to be militarily as autark as possible .
I hope my country Turkey will finally purchase some of them and cancel the participation in the JSF program which does not fit our needs although it will not be bad i am sure. Unfortunately some of our stupid politicians and strategists think otherwise.