Hercules all at sea: the largest aircraft to ever land on a carrier. I never tire of watching this. The USS Forrestal is an indirect descendant of the current American nuclear-powered Nimitz-class carriers and, whilst conventionally powered, is closely comparable in size. The USMC Herc was, rather sweetly I feel, named Look Ma No Hook for the 1963 trial. At the time, the aircraft/carrier size comparison was compared to the Pearl Harbor retaliation B-25 Mitchell bomber Dolittle raid of 1942 against Japan. The B-25s did indeed look very large on the packed deck of the USS Hornet back in 1942, however both aircraft carrier size and aircraft size moved on; the Grumman F-14 Tomcat is both larger and heavier than a B-25 .
Posted on: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 18:39:13 +0000