NoHoverstop wrote:

Ken Duffey wrote:
snip

CATOBAR, STOBAR, STOVL - but no CATOVL (AFAIK) ??

I agree about the B bit - why would you want to add 'But' ?? - you
don't say 'Short Take Off BUT Vertical Landing' - STOBVL do you ??

Ken

We used to talk about CV and STOVL when it came to embarked fast-jets
and everyone knew what was meant. Don't know who came up with the term
"STOBAR" but I suspect it was already being done before BAe (as was) got
all excited at the prospect of a "Navalised" EFA. Given that combat
aircraft used to get airborne from carriers for years without catapults,
the "S" in STOBAR would appear to mean "Ski-jump" in practice (otherwise
use the term "LWUT" - Like We Used To).

Right. The USN experimented with ski jumps for "conventional" carrier a/c
back in the late '80s. I don't recall seeing the term STOBAR used until the
Kuznetsov entered service, at which point someone decided to come up with an
acronym to describe how it fit in between the other two methods. I suppose
you could call flat deck conventional launches ROTOBAR, i.e. Rolling Takeoff
But etc.

As for the "B", I think this
comes under the "Law of acronyms" which says you get the acronym first
and explain it later, if forced to.

'B' is necessary for STOBAR, to show that it's a hybrid of the usual
methods; but CATOBAR just looks better and has an obvious pronunciation,
compared to CATOAR or the even worse CATOAAR. CATOBAR was a retrospective
designation, once STOVL and STOBAR were in the field, it was necessary to
distinguish the types, and CTOL just didn't work (cf. the F-35A CTOL/F-35B
STOVL/F-35C 'CV' variants). CVs don't have to use cat launches, so while
using 'CV' for the F-35C works for the USN (and takes up less space than
CATOBAR), you really would prefer to describe the launch and landing
technique of the a/c rather than the ship type.

As for what you term CATOVL, you perhaps may recall the P1154RN, which
the RN wanted to cat launch (hence replacing the original P1154's
bicycle gear with a tricycle layout) but presumably would VL whenever
possible for embarked ops.

If they can get EMALS cats to work up a curved ski jump, we may yet see
CATOVL a/c.

Guy