Submarine aircraft carrier

[Hobbes]

from http://englishrussia.com/2016/03/09/the-mysterious-story-of-russian-rogue-typhoon-submarine-aircraft-carrier/

[sandiego89]

Well that is different!  I love aircraft carrying submarines.  Not too practical, but perfect WHIF stuff.

[su27rules]

 

[Tophe]

Incredible & nice!

[Captain Canada]

That's different ! Very cool tho. Nice find 

[McColm]

Wow! Makes that old joke about being deckcrew on a submarine plausible.

[sandiego89]

Not too practical, but perfect WHIF stuff.

Not so sure it's not too practical. Emerge, launch, submerge and similar for recovery. Inconvenient maybe in a emergency but it's not non practical IMHO.

I'll offer the following:
-Very odd hull shape, likely slow and poor handling underwater. Noisier than a normal SSBN with the notch at the rear of the flight deck etc.
-Hull shape poor for surface/flight ops.  Would likely take green water over the flight deck. Would be difficult to get enough wind over deck with limited surface speed. 
-Dry part look perhaps a bit high out of the water.  A more realistic waterline would put the flight deck even closer to the water, and make taking green water over the bulbous bow and up onto the flight deck even more of a concern.   
-Huge through hull opening to/from hangar.  Very difficult to maintain watertight integrity, and likely impossible to make it work at deeper levels.  Not sure if the massive open hatch is intended to be the watertight part.
-Looks like the model has a catapult, but looks like a short cat stroke.  Difficult to keep the catapult water tight.  With steam catapults there is always steam escaping when they are live.   If no catapult there is no ski jump making it impossible or difficult to get airborne with a meaningful payload.
-Arresting gear.  Require massive under deck braking engines.  Huge engineering challenge to design how to keep this watertight.
-Limited aircraft complement. Would likely only be able to generate a few aircraft per cycle, so limited to counter MPA patrols, limited strike etc.  Not the capability to maintain constant air defense CAP for example.   
-Lauch and recovery would obviously make the submarine vulnerable, and it would take some time to open the hangar, winch the aircraft out, power them up, taxi/tow, unseal the catapult, hook up and launch.  With only one hangar and winch? it would take some time to get the aircraft on deck and recover.  Limited deck parking during recovery. 

Sure the idea of submarine aircraft carriers sounds neat to launch a few quick aircraft, but the challenges are numerous.  I hate to throw a wet blanket of realism over a neat model that I do like, but I still think it lacks practicality.   

[Madoc]

Renaud - of Sharkit fame - sketched up, and did some basic modeling, of a submarine aircraft carrier which used C.450 Coléoptère type jets for its aircraft compliment.  They were housed and launched like missiles with each in their own silo.  For recovery the planes would come down to a hover near a crane system that'd pluck them out of the air to bring them aboard.  This, much like the Skyhook system Hawker proposed for the Harrier.

The sub woulda been huge, nuclear powered - of course, and since it operated nothing but VTOL machines, have no need for a landing deck nor worries of green water coming over it.  The shape of the hull could remain hydrodynamically efficient and it was a far simpler thing to safely seal each aircraft in its individual silo as far as water tightness goes as well.  A pretty slick set up, all in all.

[Captain Canada]

Good points for sure, and many of them pertain to this model in particular, but that shouldn't stop us whiffers from dreaming !

[zenrat]

Not too practical, but perfect WHIF stuff.

Not so sure it's not too practical. Emerge, launch, submerge and similar for recovery. Inconvenient maybe in a emergency but it's not non practical IMHO.

I'll offer the following:
-Very odd hull shape, likely slow and poor handling underwater. Noisier than a normal SSBN with the notch at the rear of the flight deck etc.
-Hull shape poor for surface/flight ops.  Would likely take green water over the flight deck. Would be difficult to get enough wind over deck with limited surface speed. 
-Dry part look perhaps a bit high out of the water.  A more realistic waterline would put the flight deck even closer to the water, and make taking green water over the bulbous bow and up onto the flight deck even more of a concern.   
-Huge through hull opening to/from hangar.  Very difficult to maintain watertight integrity, and likely impossible to make it work at deeper levels.  Not sure if the massive open hatch is intended to be the watertight part.
-Looks like the model has a catapult, but looks like a short cat stroke.  Difficult to keep the catapult water tight.  With steam catapults there is always steam escaping when they are live.   If no catapult there is no ski jump making it impossible or difficult to get airborne with a meaningful payload.
-Arresting gear.  Require massive under deck braking engines.  Huge engineering challenge to design how to keep this watertight.
-Limited aircraft complement. Would likely only be able to generate a few aircraft per cycle, so limited to counter MPA patrols, limited strike etc.  Not the capability to maintain constant air defense CAP for example.   
-Lauch and recovery would obviously make the submarine vulnerable, and it would take some time to open the hangar, winch the aircraft out, power them up, taxi/tow, unseal the catapult, hook up and launch.  With only one hangar and winch? it would take some time to get the aircraft on deck and recover.  Limited deck parking during recovery. 

Sure the idea of submarine aircraft carriers sounds neat to launch a few quick aircraft, but the challenges are numerous.  I hate to throw a wet blanket of realism over a neat model that I do like, but I still think it lacks practicality.   

All can be solved by making the entire submarine fly...

[Old Wombat]

This is my favorite submarine aircraft carrier!

[Captain Canada]

That is defo a cool rendition of a submarine a/c carrier ! Great painting as well.