Vertrep !

Stumbled on some videos of what I used to do for a living.

Nice sideflare to the back of the frigate in the beginning of this video



Too bad these guys can't even spell the name of their squadron, Dragon Whales, lol. Nice little two ship daisy chain though.



Ok, this one is near and dear. The carrier is the Nimitz, the AOE is USS Sacramento, and I cruised with this pair on a RIMPAC. The helo in the video, Sideflare 64, tried to kill me a couple of times on that deployment. We called 64 "Sybil" because she was possessed! Something was always going wrong, and she never yielded answers easily to our troubleshooters. I wish I knew the date of the video so I could check my log and see if I was flying 64 that day.



This is what I found when I finally found the "Real Navy". Enjoy.

Great videos..."Oh thank heaven for HC-11!"

Vertreping is something that few navies have mastered. The USN conducts vertreps & conreps now knows as RAS = Replenishment at Sea routinely. I've never seen the PLAN VERTREP. Does anyone have any photos of the PLAN doing a VERTREP??

When deployed on the USS Hancock in 1975 I was the hook up man on the flight deck with the tether....more than once..At that time HC-3 did most of the helo support for the west coast. On the belly of their aircraft was painted "Slipping the Meat to the Fleet"..Now that was the real Navy...

Can your Navy do this? See those shipmates under the helo? That's what I did on the Fightin' Hanna back in the day!

ATLANTIC OCEAN (Feb. 17, 2011) Sailors assigned to G-1 division of the weapons department of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) attach pole(tether) pendants to an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter from Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron (HSC) 9 during a vertical replenishment with the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). George H.W. Bush is underway in the Atlantic Ocean conducting joint task force exercise. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Dustin Good/Released)

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bd popeye said:

I've never seen the PLAN VERTREP. Does anyone have any photos of the PLAN doing a VERTREP??

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Bingo!





I think the two Fuchi class replenishment ships and the Qinghaihu all have Vertrep capability and the older Fuqing has limited capability, though doesn't have hangar.

Thanks Blitzo! Any idea how often the PLAN does VERTREPs?

bd popeye said:

Thanks Blitzo! Any idea how often the PLAN does VERTREPs?

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I don't have a clue -- though I think it might be more than most people think. I remember analysts saying the PLAN would face challenges in their deployment to Somalia due to lack of experience of underway refuelling, but we've seen quite a few pictures of frigates and destroyers lining up against the rep ship, connected by lines and refuelling pipes(?) without much trouble.
They must've trained quite a bit to reach that level of confidence -- the more modern vessels must have, at least.

Thanks for the photos and info. I did know about there RAS ablity...I'd like to see the PLAN doing an unrep with another navy..The US does this frequently..

Bltizo said:

I don't have a clue -- though I think it might be more than most people think. I remember analysts saying the PLAN would face challenges in their deployment to Somalia due to lack of experience of underway refuelling, but we've seen quite a few pictures of frigates and destroyers lining up against the rep ship, connected by lines and refuelling pipes(?) without much trouble.
They must've trained quite a bit to reach that level of confidence -- the more modern vessels must have, at least.

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The PLAN has been conducting UNREP exercises for the last several years and has gotten proficient at it:



...as has been shown, as you say, in their Somalia anti-piracy mission.

I have a little KA-32 time in my logbook. It is probably the next best VERTREP machine after the H-46. Maybe not as tolerant of sidewinds as tandem rotors, you won't sideflare a Kamov the way you sideflare a Boeing-Vertol machine, but the co-axial rotor is about as efficient as tandem, and both beat the heck out of tail rotor helos.
Btw, the sideflare maneuver, coming up to the stern of the ship flying sideways as you saw in the videos, allows you to keep a lot more airspeed on approach than a conventional approach. The CH-46 flies at 70 kts sideways, and you can keep that airspeed right to the edge of the flight deck. To stop you roll the helo a little in the direction opposite of the direction of flight ( say you are flying sideways to starboard, the pilot rolls the fuselage to port), pull a little collective and the rotors act like a giant air brake. The helo stops almost immediately, you roll level over the spot and set the load down or pick the new load up. When the hook is released you can drop the nose and accelerate away. Using the sideflare allowed us to be fast and productive. Deck to deck in 30 seconds was our battle cry, meaning execute the pick up, fly to the adjacent ship and deliver the load. With two helos doing this you get that daisy chain I spoke of. To upload or download a carriers ammon required both helos working as fast as possible and three CONREP stations on the AE or AOE working 12 to 14 hours non-stop. With only a single helo you loose an awful lot of production because the helos are much faster than a STREAM rig.

Seeing men manhandling packages that were just delivered by helicopter reminded me of an anecdote in one of Nicolas Monserrat's books about his time in corvettes in the early '40's. The ship's ammunition was replenished by a sailing barge and he said the sailing barge's cargo handling equipment was more modern than the corvette's.