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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

No simulator to practice on, just the will to protect his wife and family. and I'm assuming a pair of giant steel...

… wings.

The wings were aluminum though, not steel.

Your comment reads a lot like you were assuming that he was a layperson who never flew a plane before. The article looks as of it was deliberately staying ambiguous about that part. But the complete absence of any statement about his previous flight experience or lack thereof suggests that he was a pilot, but they prefer not to talk too much about that part for the sake of a gripping story. (it does say so in the title, even if a reader eager of sensationalism might very well argue "that was the flight that made him a pilot")

Zero experience in carrier operations is super-impressive nonetheless, but it completely pales next to the drama of setting out into nowhere overloaded and with a half-empty fuel tank. The airspeed delta between a Chessna and a carrier steaming into the wind is so low that the landing itself really would not be so that impressive. Impressive bit not crazy impressive.

> Your comment reads a lot like you were assuming that he was a layperson who never flew a plane before.

You're reading something that's just not there then. I clearly left out the details as TFA clearly states he was a pilot (you just need to have read it and not skimmed). What I was referring to was landing on an airstrip on the ground is drastically different than landing on moving landing strip that also has hidden gotchas for trained pilots. Doing that for the first time as a pilot is one thing. Doing that for the first time with your wife and kids onboard is a whole other level. Your comment, however, is a whole other level going the other direction

As the article mentions, the most dangerous aspect of the landing may have been the turbulence and downwash over the fantail. Given that this was a STOL airplane (and also given that the pilot would have had no experience landing on a target moving at almost his stall speed) it might have been safer if the ship just pointed its flight deck into the wind.

I recall from flight school one instructor who liked to demonstrate that the aging Cessna 150 he was often assigned to could be landed in the width of a runway (as performed at an intersection.)

it might have been safer if the ship just pointed its flight deck into the wind

Reading TFA, that's precisely what occurred:

Chambers ordered his chief engineer to transfer the ship’s electric load to the emergency diesel engines and make steam for 25 knots (29 mph)... The captain turned his ship into the wind to prepare for a fixed-wing landing.... Buang lowered the Bird Dog’s flaps and approached in a shallow descent at a speed of 60 knots (69 mph). With the ship providing an estimated 40 knots (46 mph) of headwind to aid the landing, the light plane slowly caught up.

15 knot headwind plus ship's speed gave 40 kt landing wind, aircraft landed at stall speed of 60 kt airspeed, giving 20 kt to kill on landing. That was a risk on a slick deck, and from the accompanying video the landing was fairly far down the deck, but had sufficient braking distance.

I mean just pointing its flight deck into the wind with sufficient speed to hold it there, as opposed to heading into it at 25 knots (which required firing up six boilers, so I assume it was not initially steaming at that speed.)

It was always possible that the airplane could have gone off the bow with insufficient speed to do a go-around, but it might also be the case that the shallow approach was a consequence of trying to land on a target moving away, and that made it difficult to spot-land. My guess is the latter, though of course I can't prove it.

With a 40 kt wind down the deck, one would need the brakes to avoid being blown backwards off it, or into a reverse groundloop which might well lead to the same outcome.

Even just holding position would give some downdraft, from those 15 kt of wind. With 2/3 of airspeed compensated by the ship moving into the wind, and an airplane already quite good at short runway landing, the descent angle relative to the moving runway should easily be steep enough to stay clear of the downdraft.

Yet the pilot apparently made a shallow approach. I suspect that was due to having not landed on a moving target before - setting up the approach for where the ship was, not where it was going to be when he got there.

At first sight, it might seem the situation is just like a high-wind landing on an airfield, but there is a difference: on an airfield, if you line up for, say, a 3-degree approach, but the wind is stronger than you anticipated, you will need more power, it will take longer, and your descent rate will be reduced, but your flightpath will be as planned, with that 3-degree slope. In the case of a ship moving away from you, not only will you need more power than anticipated, but the path you follow will be shallower than planned, as it ends further away than anticipated.

Pilot not only had no experience on carrier landings, but no comms as to how to approach.

There were two practice approaches, so the mobile-landing element may not have been as significant as you're suggesting. That's of course hard to say either way.

An alternative view on the two practice approaches (or go-arounds?) is that he still made a shallow approach over the fantail.

The lack of communications means that the pilot could not be warned of the specific difficulties and dangers of landing on a moving aircraft carrier, over and above the ordinary difficulties of a short-field landing of the sort every pilot is supposed to be proficient in. In that circumstance, my guess is that minimizing the novel dangers would be the way to go, but, as you say, we are all just guessing here.

his wife and family would likely have been much safer not on the plane

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