Landing on a carrier?

Question

Is it true that when landing on a carrier a plane must dump any unused weapons in the sea before landing?

Answer 1

no because then the military would be the number one group to polute the oceans so no but I see what you mean. Because if one of those bombs were to explode on the ship it would do great damage or even sink the carrier

Answer 2

Some aircraft are capable of taking off with more weapons than they can land with.
I say CAPABLE. this does not mean they do.
They would only launch with the excess weapons if they planned to actually use the weapons.
The F-14 Tomcat is capable of carrying 6 AIM-54 Phoenix Missiles however they can only land with 4. They will never launch with 6 unless they are going to shoot at least two off.

Three things make up the total weaight of an Aircraft (Military anyway)
1) The plane and crew
2) the Weapons
3) The Fuel

They make sure the plane can ALWAYS land with both 1 & 2.
Fuel is the factor they can play with to get to landing weight if necessary. And no they never Dump it unless they have to. If they have too much fuel they just loiter up there until they have burned off enough fuel to get down to landing weight. Only if an inflight emergency prevents them from staying up and they have to land immediately will they dump the fuel.

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Answer 3

I only landed / took off from carriers flying choppers. Saw many other aircraft retuning from missions and landing with unused weapons unless the pilot or plane (or both) were too shot up to attempt to land without first dumping weapons. In a lot of cases it was wrong landing, however, pilots felt duty bound to bring their bird home, no bad how shot up! I.e let the experts take a look - see if something new or unknown was the cause of being shot up! Lots of times of course - you just came up against a better pilot, usually one with a lot more experience than you. I got canned 4 times! 3 times coming into land (on land) too shot up to make it to the carrier, and 1 time closing a DZ to put down marines. It being the marines who came back and dragged my butt out when they realised I hadn't followed them out!

Answer 4

I do not know the answer to your question but would just like to say that I think it is really amazing that planes can land on a ship.

It would bean almighty expensive waste to drop the weapons.

Answer 5

That is incorrect. Routinely, armed aircraft land and take off from carriers.

Answer 6

That's not true. Ordinance is expensive and they won't just dump it unless they have an extremely good reason to do so.

Answer 7

It is necessary to reduce the landing weight as less as possible so as not to overstress thelanding gear as well as the deck landing surface.

Answer 8

no...only if they're having problems with the plane. they'll dump weapons and fuel then.

Answer 9

Nope.

Answer 10

no. they dump excess fuel only. the bombs and missiles and other ammunition will be reused.