Aircraft Carrier “Bow Prongs” and Why They Are Disappearing
The supercarrier’s silhouette hasn’t changed much over the past 50 years, but one utilitarian staple of the flight deck has gone the way of the dodo bird.
BY
TYLER ROGOWAY
JUL 3, 2020 3:46 AM
TYLER ROGOWAY
It was a common poster on the wall of boys growing up, and it probably still is today—the imposing heading-on view of a fully loaded American supercarrier bristling with fighters and support aircraft. On the bow of these most complex of fighting ships, two prong-like structures stuck out over the water, ramped downward as if to give the aircraft riding along the ship's catapult tracks a few extra feet of help before leaping into the air. The strange protrusions gave these ship’s an ever more menacing appearance, but over the last few decades they have disappeared from American supercarriers. So what were they and where did they go?
By LCDR Joe “Smokin” Ruzicka
Posted in THE WAR ZONE
By Tyler Rogoway
The USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67) AKA "Big John" seen underway from an impressive angle (Huntington Ingalls image):
Enter the "bridle catch," also known as a “bridle arrestment sponson,” a utilitarian structure used to catch the slinging bridles that attached carrier-borne naval aircraft of yesteryear to their host ship's catapults. A bridle was a heavy-duty cable-like lanyard that attached to rearward facing hooks on either side of the aircraft, and would then run down toward the deck in a “v” to be attached to a single-point notch in the catapult’s shuttle. A similar single line device was also used on some aircraft like the S-2 Tracker, it was called a pendant.
A VF-111 Sundowner F-4B seen being strapped in via a bridle before launch aboard the USS Coral Sea during the Vietnam War:
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Once the green shirts hooked the aircraft up to the catapult and it fired (read all about this process here), the bridle or pendant that links the shuttle to the aircraft would pull it down the catapult track at increasing speed. At the end of the deck the aircraft would depart into the air. The bridle or pendant would then be flung out into the sea, or if the carrier was so equipped, it would whip down onto the sloped bridle catcher so that it could be recovered and used again and again. In essence the bridle catcher was a feature of economy more than anything else. The reason for angling the bridle carrier extension downward was so the bridle would not bounce up and strike the aircraft as it left the deck.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7099/__trashed-9
