China has apparently killed at least two pilots trying to fly the J-15s off their new carrier…
The Liaoning- which is an ex-Kuznetsov class carrier, the Varyag (which was never completed in the Ukraine).
Since it’s an AP article, go HERE.
Back in the day I flew on the Kuznetsov when it first came out of the yards in 1985 and came down into the Med in 1986…
Link HERE.
Interestingly, the ONLY place the USSR built carriers was in the Mykolaiv, Ukraine yards…
Deja vu anyone???
Hey Old NFO;
The communist have a different view of training, Like the soviets, a certain amount of people killed is perfectly acceptable according to their doctrine. And I have a gut feeling that the Chinese are in a hurry to learn 2 generations of flight operations in 1 generation. Something about wanting to challenge the big canoe’s the U.S. have in the pacific. it also will back the Philippines and Vietnam off their claims in the pacific.
Just a thought….
I seem to recall we kill a few of our own every once in a while. The name Hultgreen comes to mind.
Interesting that they have that double FOD line thing working for them. Much more effective than the single line. And they all have the color coded vests, just like us.
They are stealing our color coded vest technology! Bastards!
Time out a minute, I thought the strike group from the USS Langley sank the Varyag off the coast of South Africa in 1993. At least that’s what Barrett Tillman says in “The Sixth Battle”.
Guess I don’t get the whole “ski jump” concept. Seems you will lose a lot of energy going uphill and compressing the landing gear. Obviously, I’m wrong.
Back in ’74, they didn’t like us steaming into the Black Sea to photograph their shipyard. A Mig flew over & fired a few rounds into the water in our vicinity; you won’t read about that in the history books, either.
Flying *OFF* of the carrier would seem to be the easy part. Wind it up, dump the brakes, rotate at the predetermined KIAS. Of course, if you’re not in a Herk, there’s some catapult stuff, too. 😉
It seems like landing would be the hard part.
Then again, my knowledge of carrier ops is limited to Dos Gringos’ “I Wanna Take Off From A Carrier” (NSFW).
In re: the vid. I didn’t understand a single thing the narrator said. “Screech Engrish, Gee-Eye!”
Bob +1.
The Chinese are pretty darned good at reverse engineering. They’re also persistent. They’ll get it figured out one of these days, and then the SHTF.
Kinda like the Hunley…
Just natural selection to them until they find the elite.
I agree with Bob’s assessment of the Chinese military. Hey, what’s the loss of a few people for the glory of China? Mao taught them the way.
Killed two!! Only 1,366,519,998 to go. Let the training begin in earnest.
Bob- Pretty close to the truth… sigh
Prof- Yep, they DO learn from us… All they have to do is watch the TV specials…
SPE- 🙂
WSF- Airspeed + wing angle… 🙂 It ‘kinda’ acts like a slingshot… kinda…
Rev- They also bumped one of our CRUDES too…
Drifter- “Off” is pretty easy… “On” is the problem… 😀
Buck- Sorry…
Tim/Eurpidies- Yep, they DO play that game…
PH- LOL
Fargo- At the rate they’re killing test pilots, that ‘may’ get interesting…
CP- Yeah…
Somewhere I read that the big ex-Soviet starlifter plane is also built in the Ukraine – no wonder they want that plot of land back in control. The Government-type may change, but Russia itself stays on trajectory.
Another target of opportunity for a 688.