CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

Lime

Junior Member
Registered Member
That's an excellent estimate of the width of the flight deck given the perspective of the picture and imo verifies the estimate done by horobeyo on twitter.
@Totoro

That said I'm unsure yet if the elevator opening has those specific proportions given this is an implantation of that deck module there, ideally if we can get a similar photo angle of the ship now that the most recent picture shows its been installed...
I think the width of the 003's elevator is a bit longer than Shandong. So it can lift two folded-wing J15 once a time. The width of J15 in folded-wing status is 7.4m(data from wiki), if the width of Shandong carrier's elevator is 16m, it's unlikely lift two J15(more than 14.8m, only 1.2m left, very crowd ) once a time. If the width is 22m as horobeyo said, it can easily lift two.
 

Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
i’m
None, just significantly errored approximations of a portion of the flight deck. View attachment 73159
has anyone noticed there is a quite large section of deck with tied down eyes just in front of the rear elevator? this would suggest a fairly large gap between the rear elevator and the island. It also suggest the island is a lot smaller than on the Shangdong.
 

vinnan

New Member
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I am not sure having extra large elevator that can hold 2 aircraft at once is necessary a significant advantage.

it directly weakens hull structure by requiring larger hull side cut outs. It directly reduces deck parking area.

it impose further constraints on how deck snd hanger arrangement by requiring area around the elevator leaving room to maneuver 2 aircraft on and off the elevator.

It seems cycling singke aircraft elevator more quickly is a better solution that making elevator bigger. modern computer controlled elevator mechanism ought to allow the elevator to reach higher peak velocity without to much acceleration or deceleration at the end of elevator travel.
How big an elevator is needed for the KJ 600?
 

Blitzo

Lieutenant General
Staff member
Super Moderator
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Looks very similar, this CG may produced in 2008.:oops:
In that era, it was hard to imagine the electromagnetic catapult.
View attachment 73181View attachment 73182

This just goes to show how "obvious" a "sensible" CATOBAR design really is.

The similarities between those classic CGIs (another angle below) and the real 003 as we see it, are really superficial.
Basically it just depicts an 80k+ ton CATOBAR. The only "unique" thing that is similar to 003 is that it has three catapults (but even as far back as the late 2000s, it was presumed that the first PLAN CATOBAR design would only have three catapults).

Other differences of course, include: Liaoning style island and APAR, steam catapults rather than EM cats, three elevators (rather than two), CIWS fit includes VLS, etc.

Other things like navalized Flankers, a fixed wing propeller driven AEW&C, deck configuration, etc were all just sensible educated guesses.

images_1_18.jpeg
 
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Silkworm

New Member
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What is your evidence?
I apologize, poor choice of words. I should have written "Given what has been observed so far"... hence the hunch or horse sense.

Plus something doesn't add up if 003 is indeed a supercarrier: 90k tons doesn't jive with 3 cats and 2 lifts.
 

Kejora

Junior Member
Registered Member
Remember the artwork from CSIC a few years ago? It had the same notch on the flight deck for CIWS deck. It also showed that the front end of the angled deck isn't as slanted as US carrier. I think we could assume this image is what the final shape will looks like.

20210611_224605.jpg
20210611_225637.jpg
 

Richard Santos

Captain
Registered Member
The important thing is modern large CATOBAR carriers are all reasonably similar in layout. Also the fact that China has a Kuznetsov class carrier hull and will likely use it as basis for its own evolution is well known in 2008, or even 1998. So it is not hard for someone in 2008, or even 1998 to come up with a superficially reasonably accurate LOOKING forecast of what the first Chinese CATOBAR carrier would look like.

But once you get pass the unavoidable superficial similarity, I would say the 2008 artwork got almost everything where the Chinese designers are likely to exercise design decisions wrong.
 
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