Not to belittle the above - but in *my* navy (mid 70s-80s) if a carrier rolled more than 5 degrees, tie downs started breaking and aircraft started rolling off the deck. In order to turn they stop or back one set of screws, thus they don't impart a heel. Of course, they're also 90,000 tons of diplomacy which is just a tad bigger than the WWII carriers. Still, I've seen some video that freaked me out watching the deck pitch like a wild banshee. And, of course, 5 degrees over 1000 feet (500 feet to the center of gravity give or take) = 43 feet (up and down) which is a huge differential.
I'm not a carrier guy - I was small boys all the way and we had pretty strict limits for landing helos. On my last ship ( an FF-1052 class) we lost a helo just before I reported for duty. Bad weather, heavy seas, night time, - all the right ingredients. Cause of the accident was a malfunction in the SH-2F landing gear whereby the pilot had down and lock indicated, but the left gear collapsed (it wasn't locked), he applied too much power in an attempt to get airborne before rotor blades would go flying every which way. Didn't matter, though, he actually ended up inverted, hit the ocean, blades ripped up the stern of the ship, the pilot was killed. Co-pilot and crewman escaped. My CO was paranoid the entire time I was OPSO every time we had helo ops after that.
In an odd sort of irony, the company my mother worked for made the landing gear assembly.
Bookmarks