You’ve got love the oddities of the world, whether it’s odd-looking deep-sea creatures, The Oddities professional wrestling stable from the Attitude Era of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the beloved Oddball character from the WWII film Kelly’s Heroes (played by the late great Donald Sutherland; gone but not forgotten)…or odd-looking military aircraft.

Well, this time around, Yours Truly and Simple Flying will look back upon warbirds that weren’t necessarily inherently weird or odd-looking in and of themselves…but definitely looked oddly out of place either landing on and/or taking off from an aircraft carrier. Cue the Sesame Street song:

B-25 Mitchell: The Doolittle Raiders

Might as well start right off the bat with history’s most famous example, eh?

Though the North American B-25 Mitchell (or as the US Navy and Marine Corps officially redesignated it, the PBJ), definitely participated in its fair share of WWII naval warfare operations — anti-U-boat operations against Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic, inflicting devastation upon Imperial Japan’s warships and merchant vessels alike via skip-bombing tactics and nose-mounted 75 mm cannon alike in the Pacific — it was definitely not meant to operate off the deck of an aircraft carrier.

But, as the sayings go:

  • “Desperate times call for desperate measures”
  • “Necessity is the mother of invention”
  • “Adapt, Improvise, Overcome” (a military favorite)
  • “Flexibility is the key to airpower” (an Air Force-specific dictum)

Thus, it was during the early months of 1942 that the US Navy and US Army Air Forces (USAAF), desperate for any sort of victory — even if only a propaganda victory — against the ever-advancing Imperial Japanese forces subsequent to the Pearl Harbor raid and the fall of the Philippines, chose the Yorktown-class carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) — with its overall hull length of 824 ft 9 in (251.38 m), beam width of 83 ft 3 in (25.37 m), and fully laden displacement of 25,909 tons — to host the B-25s that would carry out the legendary Doolittle Raid against Tokyo that April.

As Brad Hill of SlashGear elaborates:

“By February 1942, the USAF was planning to launch a squadron of B-25 bombers from an aircraft carrier. Based on its size, the powers-that-be determined the B-25 could be launched from a carrier, but they needed to test it. This originally included three B-25s taking off from the USS Hornet (CV-8), but one of the bombers suffered from engine issues that couldn’t be repaired in a timely manner, so only two of the bombers made it onto the Hornet for the test.”

“The test out at sea was successful, allowing the U.S. to move forward with its counter attack. Before the planes could launch, most of their machine guns had to be removed to accommodate for more fuel, which made it easier to take off from a short runway. On April 18, 1942, five months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Lt. Col. ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle led 15 B-25 Mitchell bombers on a bombing raid across the mainland of Japan.”

The raid inflicted little physical damage upon the Japanese military-industrial complex (also known as the zaibatsu). But the tremendous boost it gave to American morale—and concurrent shock to the Japanese psyche—was immeasurable.

The Biggest: C-130

From the biggest oddity in the figurative sense—as in historical fame and significance—we now go to the biggest oddity in the literal sense, i.e., the biggest warbird to ever land on the deck of a carrier: the venerable Lockheed C-130.

Just how big? The gross weight of the “Hercs” that participated in these missions varied between 85,000 lb (38,555 kg) and 121,000 lb (54,884 kg), along with a wingspan of 132 ft 7 in (40.41 m) and a fuselage length of 97 ft 9 in (29.79 m); by contrast, the B-25 of the Doolittle Raid had a mere max takeoff weight of 35,000 lb (15,876 kg), wingspan of 67 ft 7 in (20.60 m), and fuselage length of 52 ft 11 in (16.13 m).

It certainly helped that the carrier hosting the C-130 landing was bigger than the USS Hornet: America’s first completed supercarrier, the USS Forrestal (CVA-59)— commissioned on October 1, 1959—with its 82,402-ton fully laden displacement, 1,067 ft (325 m) hull length, and 238 ft (73 m) beam width.

As noted by Simple Flying’s Tatenda Karuwa:

“Lieutenant James H. Flatley III, upon receiving his assignment for this extraordinary task, was taken aback. Even so, the Chief of Naval Operations had ordered a feasibility study on using the C-130 Hercules as a ‘Super COD’ (Carrier Onboard Delivery) aircraft.”

The specific airframe chosen for this experiment was a KC-130F refueler transport aircraft (Naval Bureau Number [BuNo] 149798) generously loaned by the USMC, with the following modifications made by Lockheed for test purposes:

  • A smaller nose-landing gear orifice
  • An improved anti-skid braking system
  • Removal of the underwing refueling pods

Long story short: mission accomplished: in October 1963, this specially modified “Herk” conducted 29 touch-and-go and 21 full-stop landings with varying payloads.

A South Vietnamese refugee’s flight to freedom

If this subheading looks familiar, it should. Roughly two weeks ago, I penned a standalone article on this amazing story of courage in a standalone article for Simple Flying:

Long story short: on April 29, 1975, as the Vietnam War was coming to a tragic end with the pending Communist forces’ capture of Saigon, Republic of Vietnam Air Force [RVNAF; Không lực Việt Nam Cộng hòa/KLVNCH]) Major (Thiếu tá) Buang-Ly hotwired a Cessna O-1 Bird Dog — which is only configured to seat a pilot and one other passenger.– and stuffed himself and his beloved wife and five children into the cabin, and landed it on the deck of the USS Midway (CVB/CVA/CV-41), which was the longest-serving aircraft carrier in the 20th century.

As noted by Vern Jumper, the air boss on the Midway responsible for all flight operations:

“We pushed over the side four Huey helicopters and one Chinook. He made a couple of low passes just looking at the deck and on his third pass he made a beautiful carrier landing.”

As a cool side note, Midway’s skipper at the time was then-Captain Lawrence Cleveland “Larry” Chambers, the first African American to command a USN aircraft carrier; he later became the first African-American graduate of the US Naval Academy to reach flag rank, retiring in 1984 with the richly deserved rank of Rear Admiral (RADM)/

Enter the Dragon

“Dragon Lady,” that is (with all due love and respect to the late great Bruce Lee), as in the U-2 spy plane. After having drafted two tragic articles on the U-2 — an already-published article on Taiwanese-piloted U-2s shot down by Communist China and an article on the Francis Gary Powers shootdown & capture, it’s nice to tell a U-2 tale with a happy ending for a change.

In 1963 (coincidentally the same year as the aforementioned C-130 carrier op), the Central Intelligence Agency CIA) got the bright idea for Project Whale Tale, with the goal of modifying the U-2 to fly from carrier decks to expand their range:

“[T]he idea was raised with U-2 designer Clarence ‘Kelly’ Johnson of Lockheed. Johnson made certain modifications, and the first test, codenamed Project Whale Tale, occurred on 3 August 1963 off the coast of San Diego. A modified U-2 lifted off from the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk [CVA-63] without catapult assistance or incident, but its landing was a different matter. The expected ‘bounce’ when the aircraft hit the carrier deck damaged a wing.”

But as the saying goes, “If at first you don’t succeed, try again.” (Especially true of a hard-charging aerospace engineering pioneer like Kelly Johnson!)

“Modifications took just over seven months to complete. The modifications to the aircraft, required the retraining of several pilots to fly the modified bird, now called the U-2G, most notably teaching them how to land this already peculiar and challenging airplane on a pitching flight deck. The first landing without damage took place on 2 March 1964. An opportunity to test the new capability arose soon after.”

That opportunity took place in May 1964, under the name of Operation Fish Hook, and this time, the host vessel was the Forrestal-class supercarrier USS Ranger (CV/CVA-61). When France announced its intention to detonate a hydrogen bomb, the US Intelligence Community (IC) sought to gather information about the French nuclear test area in the Mururoa Atoll, French Polynesia, and the U-2 was called upon for the task.

USS_RANGER_(CVA-61)_August_1961_

According to the after-action report (AAR):

“From an operational and security standpoint, this was one of the most successful operations of this nature ever conducted by the United States.”

Accommodating the enemy?

Unintentionally, of course, but this has to count as the oddest story of the bunch. It happened in WWII, more specifically during the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, which, though not as significant as the Battle of Midway the following month, was nonetheless a vital strategic victory by the USN over the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN).

The story is best told by one of the eyewitnesses to the incident, Bill Surgi, a midshipman aboard the USS Yorktown (CV-5, AKA “The Fighting Lady”), as quoted in an article on the TACAIRNET website humorously titled “Wrong Ship, Sherlock”:

“‘It happened at sunset. There was light in the western skies, and it was dark to the east. We on Yorktown were preparing to land our CAP (Combat Air Patrol) of [Grumman] F4F Wildcat fighters when a group of aircraft circled the task force sending blinker light signals that we did not recognise. This group of aircraft joined our landing pattern. Our LSO (Landing Signal Officer) would have been expecting to bring aboard the F4Fs of our CAP because they were the only aircraft expected at this time. The F4Fs had close in, retractable landing gear. The LSO sees an aircraft with wide spread, fixed landing gear coming into the landing pattern.'”

“‘It was a Japanese Aichi Type 99 ‘Val’ dive bomber, so he waves it off, and the Japanese pilot took the wave off. Our skipper, Capt. Buckmaster, passed the word ‘stand by to repel boarders’. As the Japanese plane went by the port side, and the ‘meat ball’ [service slang for the Japanese national insignia on aircraft] was seen, all guns took him on. It was like fireworks, with tracers going into any aircraft that went by. I guess they got the idea we were not theirs! It was unusual to say the least, and we were on edge. In the general confusion, some of the F4Fs of our CAP flew through friendly fire. Ensign William. W. Barnes landed with his oil cooler shot up. He was ready to fight the plane handlers, wanting to know why we shot at him.””

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