Joined: Fri Mar 02, 2007 6:52 pm
Posts: 3413
Location: Wichita Falls, Texas, USA
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Yeah, the HIVA hangar catapult was installed on the first 6 Essex-class carriers in the forward hangar. There are conflicting reports that the Hornets were designed with 3 catapults (2 deck and 1 hangar) originally with one deck catapult not being installed due to weight of the hangar catapult, however other sources say that the ships were built with only 2 originally (1 deck, 1 hangar) and the 2nd deck cat was added to later ships after the failure of the hangar catapult idea once the first ships were in service and then refitted to the earlier ships. Either way, only the USS Hornet retained the hangar deck catapult for the whole war, only to have it removed when they did the slant-deck modification post war. These same ships were also equipped with arresting gear on both ends of the deck to allow landing operations in either direction. The point of this was that the US Navy was considering using Carriers of the Essex-class as literally floating airfields during island hopping operations (which is part of why the transverse idea would be workable). However, this idea ended up being not practical (for obvious reasons) so the hangar deck catapult went away pretty quickly and was rarely used even when installed.
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