Runway Arresting Barriers

First to the forums! Pull up a keyboard and stay a while.

Second you're posting in an appropriate area, though you might have better luck in Aircraft.

Third Don't have a clue, but somebody should be along soon. The collective knowledge of these forums is very impressive.

Welcome to the forum, Waterinjection.   Here are 2 web addresses you can use to trackdown your info.   I spent 22 years in active-duty US Air Force and for the first 4 years I was an Aircraft Weapons Mechanic.  That meant I spent some time on the Arm / DeArm ends of the runways at a couple of air bases.  I don't know the designations, but one type of RW arresting cable I saw laid accross the runway, side-to-side.  Each end was attached to some lengths of chain that were made with some humongus  ( technically speaking ) links that were laid parallel to the runway, out in the grass.   When an A/C caught the cable with its tailhook, the lengths of chain provided some serious drag to slow and stop the plane.   These cables were located about 3/4 of the way down the runway from both directions.

The second type of barrier I saw was two cables stretched accross the end of the runway between two steel posts.  The posts were normally laying on the ground until needed, when the control tower  operator could flip a switch and cause the posts to be raised to the vertical position.  The cables were attached, one at the top and one at the bottom of each post.  There were nylon ribbons tied vertically between the cables to make it easier for a pilot to see the barrier should he be using it.  This barrier did not ALWAYS work. In 1969, at Bien Hoa AB, RVN  one of my A-37 Dragonflies went through it without slowing down.  It bounced over the bottom cable while the top cable slid along the top of the fuselage .  The plane stopped when it came out of the ditch at the end of the runoff area and the landing gear folded making it belly accross the perimeter road.  This happened after an aborted take-off.  I helped the pilot climb out of the cockpit and we dee-deed  down the fenceline.  JP-4 was everywhere because the left wing buckled, but didn't catch fire -- thank goodness.  He was only loaded with 6 GP bombs.  If he'd had napes or ( God forbid, amen ) CBU-14's or CBU-19's, we would have had a different outcome.  CBU's were very nasty.  Their little bomblets armed  6 inches out of the tubes.  Those things were disposable launch tubes loaded at the factory.  Pilots NEVER  brought these puppies back from a mission unless the package was hung-up and couldn't be shaken off of the wing.  This happened every once in a while and EOD would meet a very nervous pilot at the end of the runway to visually varify each of the 6 tubes in each package was empty. 

Oh wow, sorry for the diary.  Here're the links:   ( 1 )   www.searchmil.com  This is a search engine for military websites.    ( 2 )  This site --- www.au.af.mil/au/afhra/  can keep you busy for months running their links.  You can find thousands of pictures through the links at this site.  

 

that was a good story. it also brought up a question in my mind, were these cables supposed to catch the front of the aircraft, or do some of them have tailhooks? The reason I ask is because on one of my models, an F-16C, it has a tailhook molded in the fuse! I thought that was odd, but ok, they probably know a lot more about it than me?

I've been away from the site for a while so I'll see if I can answer your question eizzle.   The tailhook is to catch the cable laying across the RW.  I don't know if any Air Force arresting cables  still uses the drag-the-chain technique.  After jogging my memories somemore; I seem to remember that there were some fighter bases changing to cable systems that used drums with centrifical clutches so that when the cables were hooked and pulled out of the drum bodies, the clutches made the planes slow to a stop.  The last chance cables like those my A-37 went through were designed to capture the A/C by the nose strut and " hug " it to a stop.  If the top cable were to break, then the tailhook would catch the bottom one.  Those Dragonflies did not have tailhooks and the cockpit combing is only about 48 inches tall.  That cable set-up worked for all the other fighters because they were a lot taller so that they could be " grabbed " by the arresting system.  I believe that all other Air Force fighters have tailhooks. 

Thats quite interesting Tinker, thank you! One thing comes to mind though, why don't they do that on all runways? It seems that if they had some sort of system like this on public airport runways, it would save some lives?

That is an excellent question eizzle.  Why don't they??  You'd think that if engineers can dig a tunnel under the English Channel, some could design work - able safty barrier for commercial airports.  The only answers I have is that the cost plus getting all airlines, airport officials, etc. to agree to the installation and costs.  And you know that ambulance chasing lawyers would be standing by waiting for one to malfunction or cause minor injuries while saving lives.  

And that poor little 6-year old boy wouldn't have been killed in Chicago by that run -away jet last week.  The pilots of that plane claimed their thrust reversers malfunctioned.  But, they failed to mention that they landed long.  My avatar is the picture of an E - 3  Sentry inflight.  I flew on these for 3 years before retiring from active duty.  These planes had no thrust reversers, but we did have pilots who knew what they were doing and would have never landed long.  Anyone of them would have added  power back on final and " gone around '.  You can tell on final if you're going to be long or short on touchdown. 

 

Tinker wrote:

That is an excellent question eizzle.  Why don't they??  You'd think that if engineers can dig a tunnel under the English Channel, some could design work - able safty barrier for commercial airports.  The only answers I have is that the cost plus getting all airlines, airport officials, etc. to agree to the installation and costs.  And you know that ambulance chasing lawyers would be standing by waiting for one to malfunction or cause minor injuries while saving lives.

Well, I know of at least one 6 year old boy from Indiana that would still be alive if they had something like this, to me, that would be worth it poor parents, losing their kid like that! I guess it just seems so obvious to us, why is it that these engineers make a LOT more money a year than I do, and can't seem to figure this out? We made it impossible to get anything onto an airline to make it crash, but we do nothing to stop it if it "just happens" Kinda seems turned around, not that we don't need the security, but we need other things to.

Agreed.  See my edit above.

I won't get into the should done this or that rant, cause I have never flown a plane, so I have no business talking about that, however, it seems,like you said, if they knew they were landing long on a short runway, you would think they would say hey, lets go around and try this again? I mean, when I pull my car into a parking spot and I pull up to far, I don't pull a little farther up, I back up and fix it? Thats a car with just me in it, jeez, these guys had how many peoples lives in their hands? I guess we shouldn't jump right to the blame game, but like you said, one would thing they would try to fix it before diving in?

I got my license in 1975 and that's  one of the first things you're taught.  Pick your landing spot.  If it goes up in the windscreen, you're landing short;  if it goes down, you're landing long.  Either way, you've enough time to correct your approach.  In " heavies " with passengers , if you're going long, add power and go around again, no matter if you'll be late landing.  If you're in a light, single engined plane, you can " slip " the plane to lose altitude fast.  BUT  when in doubt -- go around. 

Well, good night for now.

 

I don't  want to start laying blame, but if it was the pilots error, I think he is going to get enough punishment with having to live with the fact that he killed somebody because he was in a hurry or because he made a bad decision. Hopefully they find that it was a mechanical failure and not his fault, but regardless, the need for some sort of saftey net is obvious!

Hey Tinker, thank you for the reply and sending the two links...you're right, many potential hours of viewing pleasure there!  I just previewed some of it and added to my "favorites" listing.  Enjoyed hearing about your rescue of the Dragonfly pilot at EOR of Bien Hoad....Cool!  Although at the time I'm sure you were thinking, "I hope we don't die."  Yeah, the A-37 sat too low to the ground to engage the "rabbit catcher" (MA-1A) at the departure EOR. I live in Arizona and although I was never in the Air Force, I probably spent more time hanging around AF bases (Luke AFB in particular) than many service personnel. I recall seeing visiting T-37 "Tweets" taxit past and over the approach end barrier cable of the BAK-9 gear, for takeoff.  This was again because of insufficient clearance of the Cessna's nose landing gear doors and the barrier cable. There was one dramatic incident at Luke back in June of 1975 when a New Jersey ANG F-105B crashed on takeoff from runway 3R.  The aircraft did not attain sufficient airspeed upon rotation and slammed back down on the runway, slid several hundred feet, passed OVER or UNDER the MA-1A barrier (like your A-37) and came to rest on a civilian roadway just past the perimeter fence and burned. (The pilot got out of the Acft. when it came to a halt and was not seriously injured). I understand that he was later removed from flying status beacause of this incident.  The runway barrier systems have saved many countless millions of $ of military aircraft.....but like anything built by man...things do go wrong! 

Best wishes and a happy new year.