Slatted Phantoms in naval service

[macelena 1,070]

While i allway felt that a modification like the F-4S undertook was a no brainer for carrier service, i was intrigued about why weren´t naval phantoms modified this way much earlier, and such improvements being made with F-4Ns, project Bee Line and such. I´ve read somewhere, that F-4S however had issues operating from carriers and that slats were not so much of a good idea for the Navy...why? I mean, i thought of a different landing envelope about higher AoA making view of the deck difficult or the airframes being too heavy and wasted to land in a less shallow glide, but found nothing wich really made sense about the issue it seemed to be

[Panjilucu 0]

what more intriquing to me is why they're not installing equivalent landing system (like DLIR) to compensate higher AOA.

[+ravenclaw_007 7,633]

the US-Navy dont like to adopt Air Force solutions

[+daddyairplanes 10,243]

the S didnt handle as well around the boat as the N did, esp on the Midways.  thats why they only served on the Forrestal, Midway and Coral Sea.  as it was, the Navy was trying to get the Tomcat into service before BEELINE came about,  only really extended the life of the J Phantoms due to Carter era budget restrictions. i wonder if the slats were a Marine idea, as they used them the most (finallly retired in 92)

[Toryu 156]

The E/F slats were different to the slats used on the S. The improvement made by the slats in ACM was quite a lot in tems of additional maneuvering potential.

Keep in mind that the slats slowed down the aircraft in terms of maximal achievable Mach and (very probably) acceleation times to Mach and altitude (=> increased drag of the slats).

 

I'm not quite sure how much the weight-difference of the BLC and slat-systems were. BLC would have lots of piping and plumbing and would cause a loss of thrust, when activated, as the mass-flow of air (taken out of compressor stage 17 - at least that's where the F-104 got it's BLC bleed-air from) would not be accelerated out of the jet-pipe.

 

BLC provides a higher CL-value, and thus lower approach-speeds*. As far as I know, the N and S were actually just life-extensions that became necessary once the Navy cut-back it's initial plans of F-14 procurement.

 

____

* Basicly, BLC and slats do a similar thing: they re-energize boundary-layer air and thus delay flow-separation. On BLC, this is used to employ larger deflection-angles of flaps and leading-edge droops, creating larger CL-values. Slats are used in a similar fashion. BLC introduces energy into the airflow, slats employ the slot created between the slat and the wing.

BLC is inefficient at higher airspeeds - that's why slats were used for the maneuvering-potential increase.