The caption on this picture mentioned this F-14 successfully landed on a carrier in this condition.
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I doubt very much that it landed on a carrier.
Carrier landings include a great deal of engineering. A damaged aircraft, and the required approach speed for damage like this, is hard to fit within those engineering limitations. As an example, the maximum engagement speed of the F-14 hook is 119 knots (relative to the carrier).
So, a 140 knot (aircraft airspeed) approach required a minimum of 21 knots wind over the deck for recovery, and unless the ship was dragging a screw, or there was some other problem, we operated at 25 knots wind over the deck to give a couple of knots of buffer for pilot technique.
This thing was probably up around 180 or 200 knots to stay in the air. Making the wind over the deck requirement nearly impossible, unless you had an already windy day, and a nuclear carrier (which could go really fast).
Even if you could meet the wind over the deck, the unpredictable handling of this airplane in the turbulence, known as the burble, behind the ship makes bringing it aboard a big risk.
If a runway is available - that is always the better option for an aircraft like this.
Finally, this is back when the Black Lions flew the -A model. Which means it was during my time flying the jet and being an LSO. If a shipboard recovery had been done with this damage, we would’ve been talking about it in LSO school and through professional channels.
I believe this was one of the jets in the infamous Black Lion photo shoot mid-air collision. A travesty of poor briefing, poor safety management, and poor flying. The squadron had loaded 6AIM – 54 missiles on one of their jets, and went out to take photos of the airplane with the “ he-man load out”. In fact, that’s exactly what their flight schedule said. They didn’t cover responsibilities of the photo airplane as well as how to break away if the airplanes got too close.
The goal was to take pictures while the airplanes were going, vertical, and the pilot in the photo jet lost sight during the vertical climb, while the RIO in the back was looking through his video camera. In the accident report, the Rio said “he looked a lot farther away than he was, because I was still looking through my camera.”
Edit - That mission was flown off the boat. One aircraft lost. The other (pictured) landed in Singapore. please ignore my following paragraph.
That Mission was flown out to Miramar, and the two airplanes were recovered back at Miramar. The fact that the RIO was looking through his camera instead of worried about a mid air collision, tells you that this whole thing was poorly thought out.
bottom line, don’t believe everything you see on the Internet…