Suspended Runways. The Brodie System. Livestream | Aviation Documentary
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Published 2023-05-18
During World War II, like most red-blooded Americans, the Piper J-3 Cub was called to serve in the military. Classified as the L-4 by the Army but most commonly called “Grasshoppers,” more than 4900 were used to help spot and correct the fall of artillery shells over enemy lines and otherwise help coordinate troops. Well, it turned out that the Army needed these planes in some pretty inaccessible places, and that’s where the Navy came in.
During the first part of World War II, the Allies were on the defense, falling back and able to use their local airfields to house and feed their planes of all types. Then in 1943, the tide soon turned as the Allied forces in the Pacific, starting at Guadalcanal, as well as in the European theater, with the invasion of Sicily, started taking the war to the Germans, Japanese, and Italians. It was in these invasions, however, that the Army soon realized that their fleet of small, fixed-wing L-4 Pipers and L-5 Stinsons were out of service until airfields could be captured or built in these new areas. This put the generals on the ground blind and reliant on long-range reconnaissance aircraft and Navy planes to provide their eyes.
However, there soon became a fix for this in place.
In late 1943, an Army Transportation Corps Captain by the name of James H Brodie was busy with a solution. Stationed in New Orleans and detailed to work supervising the loading of cargo ships with war materials, he sketched out a design for a boom and line system with a release that could hold a small aircraft fitted with a corresponding hook along the top of the wing roots. With the boom, a small plane (Piper L-4) could be lifted into the air, then the engine worked up, and, when rpms were high enough to be reasonably sure of lift, released to fly away. To land, the system worked in reverse, capturing a passing hook-equipped Grasshopper by wire and allowing it to spin down.
Of course, we all know that the Cub is a tail-dragger, and to make that three-point landing pilots pull the stick into their belly. However, doing this on the hook just north of that 38-ish knot stall speed took some getting used to.
The Brodie System was invented during World War II. A pilot could take off or land with the aircraft hooked to a trolley that ran along a cable. On landing, the trolley provided braking for a smooth stop. The cable and trolley could be rigged on very short jungle fields, or even on ships. This picture shows how a light aircraft could take off or land on a ship using the cable.
This meant that by using Brodie’s system, a Cub or Stinson could be launched and recovered in a very small area, without a landing strip, allowing it to operate from a clearing, a small field, or even the deck of a medium-sized ship.
The Navy had by early 1944, several hundred ships they classified as “Landing Ship, Tank.” These purpose-built vessels were built to carry several hundred tons of cargo, as well as vehicles and up to 160 or so soldiers or marines into combat, landing them on the beach where giant doors would open up and spit them out onto the sand. The Navy built so many of these ships, so fast, that they didn’t even bother to name them although they were some 328-feet long and crewed by 7 officers and 104 sailors. As such, they just had numbers, such as USS LST-16, etc.
Big blue had enough of these LSTs around that they agreed to allow the Army to use a few of them in 1944 as tiny aircraft carriers. While L4s and L5s had flown off big deck Navy carriers earlier in the war, the Navy really didn’t like Army planes on their flattops, so the arrangement worked out nicely.
The idea would be that 6-10 small Cubs or Stinsons would be loaded on an LST, modified with a 220′ x 16′ flight deck. From the top of this tiny ersatz carrier, they would take to the sky over an invasion beach, scout out enemy locations, and call artillery strikes in on said bad guys. Once the GIs moved inland and acquired access to more real estate, especially airfields, the grasshoppers could leave their LST behind and relocate to drier accommodations.
#airplane #aircraft #brodie
All Comments (4)
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OMG. That was the most awesome government boondoggle ever!
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Show begins at 02:00 in. Thanks 👍
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"The pilot , unbenounced to himself , must distill the fuel necessary from his surroundings for flight beyond said surroundings". Wait what ? JK . Men did what they had to back then...... Its how things got DONE .
