FFG-7 wrote:
why were the Forrestal class forward port elevator not moved to a similar position as what the Kitty Hawk class had?
You focus on the port elevator. From my experience, the greater deficiency was in the location of the island an the two elevators aft.
I served on Independence in 83-84, including the time we operated off Lebanon with JFK. In a briefing from the battle group staff where they were discussing air ops and flight deck cycles, they were firm that the JFK ("big decks") were much superior to the Forrestal class (In 1983, they actually had the nerve to call us a "small deck). Their main factor was not related to the location of elevator #2, but rather the fact that #3 was aft of the island. In Air Ops terms, this caused some kind of a bottleneck for deck aircraft handling. The "big" or "smal" label had nothing to do with the actual square feet of real estate, just the operational factor.
They said that the Forrestals needed to use package launch or recovery, while their precious (no jealousy here
) JFK could handle near simultaneous launch and recovery, allowing many more sorties per day. Bleah.
All I know is that their precious JFK had an engineering casualty and had to leave the station while we continued to continue.
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