Newsgroups: sci.military
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: wb9omc@ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick)
Subject: Tailhooks
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Date: Wed, 7 Nov 90 03:39:21 GMT
Approved: military@att.att.com
Message-ID: <1990Nov7.033921.10528@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker)
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From: wb9omc@ecn.purdue.edu (Duane P Mantick)
>From: ehr@uncecs.edu (Ernest H. Robl)
>Now, for a question that I didn't get around to asking anyone at the
>airshow:  Some of the modern *AIR FORCE* fighters have tailhooks.  Are
>these ever used?  If so, when, where, how?  Thanks.
	This is true.  In fact, the F117A has a tailhook.  It has been said
	that this is for emergency stops only, although I haven't seen
	any definative material *yet*.  Most people are of the train
	of thought that the F117A is too fragile for a carrier landing,
	if that is what you are thinking of.

	Some of the impetus for this may go back to some Lockheed tests
	on the F104 Starfighter done for the West German Air Force many
	years ago - in this case, Starfighters were stopped in short
	distances by arresting cables that grabbed the landing gear;
	no tailhooks.  The tailhook is considerably less likely to
	cause problems than a straight-out gear snag, i.e., if you snag
	the landing gear unevenly you will stop unevenly and who knows
	how that will end up......

	It may be that having an ability to slow a landing aircraft
	via the tailhook is desirable if you are trying to design
	"stealthy" aircraft.  As the designer, you could then leave
	out things like thrust reversers, massive brakes, etc., meaning
	overall, less metal to generate radar returns *even if* the
	plane is in-flight.  As a guess, I'd suspect that a tailhook,
	even a big metal one, can be hidden inside a radar-absorbing
	compartment fairly easily.

	There are several books about the F117A that are just now
	becoming fairly available....keep an eye out for them.

Duane