1930s biplane fails aircraft carrier landing - GIF and photo

[Jon]

1930s fighter biplane touches down late and snags an arresting wire on a carrier. I believe this is a Grumman F3F, one of the last biplane fighters.



Different version of a Grumman F3F:



Previously:

Parallel parking a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier - GIF
1963 video of USS Enterprise, the first nuclear aircraft carrier
Tiger Moth biplane hits cow on landing

[bruce.desertrat]

Well, unless it went off the end of the carrier, it most definitely landed. "Any landing you can walk away from". Also I think that was technically an early touch down, since I think it's supposed to be that tail hook bouncing along that caught the wire, not the landing gear.

[toma]

It was an early landing obviously...

[olderdan]

I viewed this in VLC player at slow speed, it looks like the wheels locked after the first bounce just before the collapse of the landing gear. Also the wheels were hand cranked on this plane and took 26 turns to lower them, maybe he missed counted?. A lucky escape fortunately.

[Jon]

I guess late landing because it's touching down right in front of the superstructure.

[Frank S]

The way I see it the landing was not late, most likely it was early early.since the problem was the result of the arresting cable whipping up above the tires grabbing the landing gear.
Instead of making his approach with the nose slightly up he attempted to land as though it were a ground landing. Seeing this the arresting cable stauntion with the 2 cables on it was dropped in an effort to allow him to do a missed approach and take off for a fly around. For some reason the cable bounced or something and wound up above the center line of the tires.
On modern day carriers the arresting cables are placed at intervals along the flight deck and are kept taught if the tires strike them they will roll over then
there are several laid out along the deck but never stacked like the early cables were Pilots are also instructed to land at near full power so in the event of a missed hook they can take off again since they will not have the assistance of the catapult

[Ed Weldon]

If only there were a record of the reaction of the engineers back at the Grumman factory when they first saw this film...........

[Jon]

34-second video:

[Jon]

F6F Hellcat drops a rocket while landing on a carrier:

[Frank S]

That pilot had some splaining to do