When we think of aircraft
carriers, we tend to think of something like this. A large, impressive ship – basically a floating
town- replete with all the equipment needed to operate and maintain a squadron of naval aircraft
at sea. What doesn’t come to mind is this. Now this may look like a glorified zipline with an
aircraft slung underneath, but this was in-fact a device used during the second world war to
launch and recover aircraft at sea. Known as the Brodie Landing System,
it was developed in late 1943 as the solution to a very specific problem. By this point,
light aircraft built by Aeronca, Piper, Stinson and Taylorcraft were putting in
some considerable work with the US Army. Known collectively as ‘grasshoppers’ they were used
for a multitude of duties: VIP transports, army liaison, medical evacuation, and in the
Pacific both the Army and the Marine Corps were beginning to use them for artillery spotting.
The problem was range. Many of the islands that the US Army needed to capture were
scattered across large stretches of ocean, and the Grasshoppers lacked the effective
range to hop between them. The Army quickly realized that their fleet of small aircraft
was essentially out of service until airfields could be captured or built in these new areas.
This meant that during the initial assaults, ground troops would have to rely on long-range
reconnaissance or naval aircraft to provide their eyes in the sky, and this was not ideal. Weather,
the enemy, or even superseding orders could delay or prevent these aircraft from operating,
and the Army needed something much closer, and more importantly, under their direct control.
Enter Captain James H Brodie of the Army Transportation Corps. His day job was
redesigning cargo ships to improve their chances of survival – the Battle of the Atlantic was still
raging at full force – but in is off-hours he was working on something different. He understood the
importance of aircraft being fielded at sea, the use of catapult ships in the Atlantic
being a prime example of this, but he was also conscious of the drawbacks of existing systems:
Merchant Carriers were slow and expensive, catapult ships often expended their aircraft
rather than re-using them, and assigning fleet carriers for convoy duties was such a waste of
resources that only a lunatic would consider it. It was during his nightly sketch sessions that he
stumbled upon a new idea, one that he quickly realised could be suitable for both the Army
and the Navy. Instead of using a catapult, the aircraft would be suspended below a cable and
take-off under its own power. This cable could be slung on booms over the side of a ship,
or between a series of poles on land. This was not the first time that this
recovery method had been contemplated. Back in 1913, Louis Bleriot had conducted similar tests,
with his plane suspended beneath cables, and in the 1930s the Army Air Corps had experimented
with hooks and cables for docking aircraft with airships. But Brodies proposal, despite
looking remarkably chaotic, was probably the sanest attempt at this sort of thing thus far.
The operation of the system, be it on land or at sea, was fairly straightforward. And thankfully,
there is some wonderful footage of its use, courtesy of the National Archives.
The cable acted as the runway, and two specially designed slings and trolleys were used for
take-off and landing. The take-off trolley consisted of a wheel, a wooden friction shoe,
and an emergency release. Attached to this was the sling, a four-foot nylon rope with
an eye and shackle at the top, a round lifting ring in the middle, and a stirrup at the bottom.
The plane's hook was put into the stirrup, a lifting derrick carried it upward by the
middle ring, and the top shackle was attached to the trolley. This had to be manually done,
with a man being hoisted up to complete the attachment, which would have been interesting
as the engine was often running at this point. A travel release consisting of a long hold-back
line and a spring-loaded trip prevented the aircraft from beginning its run until the
engine was at full power. An emergency release was built in to trigger if the plane had not
been released from the trolley before the end of its take-off run. Said run was relatively short,
without wind, an average take-off from the cable took 400 feet, with wind it could be
done in as little as 200, but to provide a margin of error and safety the cable’s full
take-off length was designed at 600 feet. For landing a different trolley and sling was
used. The trolley was designed to give a pendulum effect during hook-up to reduce the inertial
forces on both the aircraft and the cable. And the landing sling consisted of three loops of
nylon rope; these were spread across a six-foot frame to provide a wide target for the pilot,
who only needed to hook one of them. Once hooked on, the aircraft was slowed by an
arresting brake. The brake line attached to a drum on the mast which acted like a giant fishing reel;
not only was this simple, but it allowed the tension of the line to be adjusted for different
aircraft weights. The brake gradually applied force, reaching its maximum strength once the
trolley had travelled approximately 50 feet along the cable. Ideally, this meant that
the breaking force never subject the pilot or the aircraft to more than one third of a gee.
When submitting his proposal to the Army, Captain Brodie could be forgiven for feeling
confident. Despite being highly unorthodox, his design had numerous advantages. Logistically,
for remote operations, it seemed almost perfect. Weighing less than 7,000 pounds, including tools
and tackle, it was light enough to be parachuted into the field from a cargo plane, or if roads
were available, it could be transported by a pair of trucks. It only required hand-operated tools to
assemble, which meant that even in remote areas it could be made ready for use withing 12 hours. When
operating at sea, it required far less structural changes than a traditional catapult system.
Additionally, Brodie’s design could be operated in areas where the construction of traditional
landing strips was either impossible or uneconomical. It could easily be installed
in jungle clearings, the shores of lagoon, or the mountainous terrain of southeast Asia. Also,
it was easy to camouflage, and the lack of a giant runway made it all but impossible to spot
from the air- unless the recon aircraft was below a few hundred feet anyway.
Brodie’s proposal certainly raised a few eyebrows at the Transportation Corps,
and there were a large number of sceptics, but he was eventually given a $10,000 grant to build
a test model. This he did at New Orleans, where he was based, with work beginning in April of 1943.
As it was expected to be the most challenging environment, Brodie built his first rig to
simulate operations aboard a ship. The rig itself was built without much issue,
but he did find it difficult to find a willing test pilot. Unsurprisingly,
most pilots had reservations about trying to hook onto a glorified clothesline, especially as its
designer clearly had more experience with ships rather than aircraft. Eventually, with dogged
perseverance, and after frightning away half the transient pilots of Louisiana, Brodie secured
some willing hands and work got underway. Using a Stinson L-5 Sentinel, the first take-off
was completed in late August, and then on the 3rd of September the first take-off, flight,
and successful “landing” was completed as well. These first few flights were done with various
pilots, but by mid-September Brodie finally had somebody willing and enthusiastic enough
to continue testing the system long-term, Flying Officer Raymond Gregory.
Despite a mishap that involved a prop-strike on the landing trolley, with Gregory and
Brodie both narrowly avoiding an unwelcome encounter with various pieces flying metal,
the testing went relatively smoothly. Experimentation was by trial and error,
but during the autumn months the problems of braking, shock absorption, and handling were each
addressed; and Late in the year Brodie obtained the cargo ship City of Dalhart, with which he was
able to further improve his design with actual sea landings, rather than those on a simulated rig.
After more than ten successful take-offs and landings aboard the ship at sea,
Brodie’s design was confirmed to be viable, but despite this surprising success it would
never find use with the US Army. By the end of 1943 their interest in the project had waned,
and if it hadn’t been for some sudden interest by the Navy and the Marine Corps, the Brodie
System may never have seen actual use. Aboard the City of Dalhart, the system
had been used during training manoeuvres, and the Brodie-launched aircraft performed well,
even taking off during a heavy fog that grounded all others. Impressed with the relative simplicity
of the system, and especially the fact that it could be used on land as well as sea,
the Navy issued a contract for 25 to be installed aboard their L.S.Ts. Unfortunately,
progress on completing these conversions was slow, and only a handful would see active service.
However one of these, LST-776, which was affectionately nicknamed the USS Brodie
after the systems creator, proved the success of the system beyond a doubt. In training up her
pilots, she completed over 500 successful launches and recoveries before sailing out to her destined
Battlezone: Iwo Jima. Here the ship itself had rotten luck; she collided with another LST,
suffered several engine failures, and had a hole knocked into her bottom. Half sunk,
she was repaired and then sent to Leyte Gulf. By this point she was down on pilots owing
to drafts to other ships, and this led to an amusing incident involving one Lieutenant Earl
Montgomery. Based on Leyte itself, he was told to fly out a recently modified Sentinel and to
“watch out for an LST with a cable rig sticking over the side”. He eventually found said LST,
and after making a successful hookup on his second attempt, he stepped aboard and
was immediately told “Well done, you’re now an instructor”. Apparently he must
have done a decent job as the ship recorded few incidents during the latter half of her service.
The ship and her strange equipment went on to serve well at Okinawa,
flying multiple spotting and recon sorties, but by the summer of 1945 her time was done.
The last mission had been the planned invasion of Japan, but that of course never happened,
and by now the first appearances of helicopters rendered the Brodie system utterly useless.
Attempts were made after the war to try and find a commercial niche for the system to fill, but
nothing eventuated. And so, one of the strangeer experiments involving ship-borne aircraft came
to and edn, and promptly fell into obscurity. As always, thank you all so much for watching,
and a big thank you of course to the Patrons, who’s wonderful names should be appearing on
the screen now, my my there are quite a lot of you now. And a special shoutout to the Wing
Commanders, the highest tier members of this wonderful collection of people. I hope you
all enjoyed this slightly different video, I think I’ll do a few more of these here and there to keep
things different . But as always, thank you all so much and I’ll catch you all next time. Goodbye.