A UK "skyhook" named system on ships for launching and retrieveing sea harriers?

I once read a brief summary about a skyhook system for launching and retrieving sea harriers on ships, with intended introduction shortly after the Falklands. The intent of this system was to enable operating sea harriers at higher sea states. The system seems to have failed commercially and information is very sparse.

I wondered how it might have worked and on what size of ship(including submarines and submersibles) it could be operated.
In my imagination such a working system would contain elements of a sea-plane tender, the experimental blimp carriers and the rearmament aircraft trials.

Would ships without a flattop deck be able to operate fixed wing aircrafts with this system?

The mainland Chinese navy needs a slight range extension for their aircrafts to reach the second island chain and they have many hulls (and can build more) that could serve some rearmament and refuelling task with a successful skyhook system. Such a system could greatly reduce the requirements for flattop carriers and would give small surface groups quite potent strike power on very many spots, unlike the current carrier wing concentrations.

The system allowed a crane to hook the Harrier out of the air and launch it similarly, if I remember correctly. It would allow small ships with inadequate maintenance facilities to operate VTOL aircraft. Mind that you don't get the advantage of a short take off run. If you have suitable aircraft you might use small ships to provide fuel, even ordnance to them. Going out of your way to deliberately develop such a concept even to the extend of building VTOL aircraft seems perverse.

Thanks for the answer.
What about this system being able to operate aircrafts at higher sea states than the normal runways? Is this claim true?

The ability to use a crane for operating fixed wing aircraft from a rather small surface vessel is the intriguing part for me, because it does allow a massive upgrade of capability with little investment.
Was the crane limited to planes with vertical take off capability or could such a system use navalized version of close air support crafts such as the Nanchang Q-5?
I consider close air support planes very suitable for such an idea because they are compareably cheap, easy to maintain and have a very long service live of their models with great efficiency in surface, subsurface and helicopter combat.

It's impossible to catch an aircraft whizzing past at about 200 km/h or even half of that while your ship might go at 60 km/u. Also an aircraft needs more than fuel, ordnance and a bed for the pilot. There were nice ideas about water based fighter aircraft like the Saro SR.A/1 and the Convair Sea XF2Y-1 Dart, but in the end they couldn't compete with land based nor with carrier based aircraft. Other aircraft designed to operate from small ships were the tail sitters Convair XFY-1, the Lockheed XFV-1 and the Ryan X-13. Also unsuccessful.

Kurt said:

Was the crane limited to planes with vertical take off capability or could such a system use navalized version of close air support crafts such as the Nanchang Q-5?
I consider close air support planes very suitable for such an idea because they are compareably cheap, easy to maintain and have a very long service live of their models with great efficiency in surface, subsurface and helicopter combat.

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The crane can only work with two types of aircraft.

Either a VTOL aircraft hovering that is snagged by the crane and then brought on board and either housed on deck, being lashed down, or in a small hangar for that purpose. The utility you get out of such an arrangement depends on what stores, munitions, fuel, maintenance,, etc. could be housed in that hangar. The more you want to do, the more complex and burdensome the hangar to the vessel.

The other type aircraft would ba a fixed wing aircraft equiped with floats so it could land on the sea and then be picked up off the ocean by the crane. This was used by many types of vessels in World War II. Usually, a small scout plane was used, but some of them were armed. None of them were as capable as the carrier or land fighters they might meet...but they were fine in the middle of the ocean against helos, other scout planes, or particularly for scouting out other vessels.

Since most countries that can in anyway afford them are building larger flat deck vessels, from VTOL, to STOVL, to STOBAR to CATOBAR, I do not see this idea resurfacing any time too soon. Too manuy nations are simply building carriers of one sort or another, from 17-18,000 tons up to the US's 100,000 ton carriiers.

They then use pretty high performance helos for the scout function (along with ASW and SAR) from the decks of smaller vessels without requiring a crane.

For a list of all the various designs and types currently being built, or already commissioned and operating, see:

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Thanks, I also thought about seaplanes and came up with a new idea. Do you actually need the floats under the plane? What if you create a parasite plane that can launch from a high speed naval surface platform during speed bursts and also land on that platform (or a similar one at another place)? Most certainly such a plane still doesn't have the capabilities of CATOBAR carrier fighters, but it would be close to STOVL/STOBAR designs in performance while the platform can serve multiple tasks (landing troops and vehicles, clearing sea space from threats,...). This high speed platform should be as light as possible and can transport the aircraft on board to any facility required.
Currently, this would entail someone trying to land a fixed wing aircraft on a hydrofoil, trimaran or hovercraft landing vessel at high speed (LCS is still too slow). Yes, the parasite concept was tried for some time with aircrafts, but was considered quite unwiedly because of the dimensions and restrictions posed by such a system. More successful was operating aircrafts from blimps and I'm sure this will return at least for armed UAV.

Speaking of Harriers, here's a little history on UK's proposal to export the aircraft to China in late 1970s:



British bid to sell China arms provoked Soviet ire: secret files

LONDON -- British efforts to boost relations with China by selling it military equipment during the Cold War provoked fury from the Soviet Union, newly declassified documents from 1978 showed Tuesday.
Britain thought selling Harrier aircraft to China, which was boosting its military capacity after Mao Zedong's death, could improve ties between the countries as officials started to think about the future of Hong Kong.

<snip>

Callaghan said in his memoirs that the Soviets took “great exception” to the proposed deal between Britain and China. He added that China and Britain ended up signing a major seven-year economic deal but did not buy the Harrier aircraft because they were too expensive.

Kurt wrote:

More successful was operating aircrafts from blimps and I'm sure this will return at least for armed UAV.

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Light aircraft have been launched from blimps and from British rigid airships, but the only airships that launched and recovered aircraft, in casu fighter aircraft, were the two USN Zeppelins ZRS-4 Akron and ZRS-5 Macon of the early '30's. Both were lost in accidents.

you may see ;-)

Thanks for the image, I think what we'll see is a kind of UAV carrier blimp that allows rearmament and refuelling with extremely long endurance over enemy heads. As you have pointed out, all the technology is there and you won't have these accidents if you use helium and a structure with more aerodynamic lift, perhaps using solar power.