CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

[lcloo]

Another way of resupply the ship while at mother port is via mobile conveyors and smaller cranes, these are mostly for food stuff and others.

 

[Intrepid]

Is fuel the lion share of this 20,000 tons of deadweight? What would be other major categories in percentage terms?

I think so. An aircraft carrier is a tanker with flight deck.

A conventional super aircraft carrier carries 8,000 tons of marine fuel and 6,000 tons of aviation fuel. A nuclear powered aircraft carrier usually has a capacity for 12,000 tons of fuel, which it also gives to the escort ships before passing through a storm area in order to top them up for better seaworthiness. The planes weigh around 1,300 tons. Ordnance in the magazines weighs up to 3,000 tons.

 

[asif iqbal]

yes one thing we miss is that because 003 has only 2 elevator and not 3 its total free deck area for aircraft handling is larger

maybe not as large as the Ford Class but still that maybe one reason why China did not want a 3rd elevator

I would estimate this carrier to be in the region of 100,000 tons a directly comparison to Nimitz + Ford

 

[nlalyst]

I've communicated with HI over this -- his flight deck estimate was based on two differing assumptions from the estimates of 82m flight deck max width.:
1. The photo he used (the satellite picture in the Naval News piece) was taken 22nd June, before the 25th June satellite image in the Economist piece -- and you can see that the modules for the more forward parts of the landing strip/waist (and the part that we are all measuring the "widest point of the flight deck" from) has yet to be installed on the 22nd June picture. On the other hand, the satellite picture from the Economist piece shows that module is installed. That would likely add a couple of meters to the flight deck width.
2. He used the measurement of the internal drydock width as 80m rather than 82m. A small difference, but again, it adds up.

Those two factors likely led to his significantly smaller estimate of the "maximum flight deck width" compared to the 82m ones we've been getting consistently.

View attachment 74247View attachment 74248

I have strong reservations about any estimate that relied on the drydock width, as explained in a previous post. The angle and contrast are too low in most images.

In the Economist photo, the low resolution and contrast on the starboard side makes it easy to misdjudge the deck edges: an error of 3px amounts to over 2m difference. Most measurements seem to have conflated the high contrast line that belongs to the crane rails with the deck width. IMO, the actual deck is 2-3 px off that line, which gives me 74.5m. I drew the rail line here so that others can take a look. The image is scaled 400%, so there will be some interpolation errors too. This is a very poor image for estimation.


I have much more confidence for measurements done with the higher resolution CSIS photo, even if it doesn't allow the measurement of the extreme width of the deck. They measured 74m for the deck width. Using their photo, I got 73.75m. I encourage others to try as well.

 

[Intrepid]

maybe not as large as the Ford Class but still that maybe one reason why China did not want a 3rd elevator

The aircraft elevators are used as additional parking space during flight operations. They remain in the upper position and are not moved for transport between the hangar deck and flight deck.

CV 41 as example:

 

[nlalyst]

Just to illustrate how tricky it is getting the edges right, here's a crop of the Economist image with the Sobel filter applied on it, illustrating a difference of 1px in measurement.

And here's the CSIS photo with the same filter. A 1px error is much more forgiving as it amounts to just 0.25m:

 

[asif iqbal]

The aircraft elevators are used as additional parking space during flight operations. They remain in the upper position and are not moved for transport between the hangar deck and flight deck.

CV 41 as example:

View attachment 74267

yes when sailing in free and open water

not when doing surge sorties

 

[Blitzo]

View attachment 74269Just to illustrate how tricky it is getting the edges right, here's a crop of the Economist image with the Sobel filter applied on it, illustrating a difference of 1px in measurement.

And here's the CSIS photo with the same filter. A 1px error is much more forgiving as it amounts to just 0.25m:
View attachment 74273

The problem is that the CSIS picture is useless if you are trying to measure the maximum flight deck width because the modules for the relevant sections had yet to be installed.

In other words, if we want to estimate the maximum flight deck width, the Economist picture is the best we have at this stage -- as well as trying to correlate certain other serial photos so long as they were taken when the flight deck was complete.

 

[PeoplesPoster]

Why not just find a reference that we know the length of, say a shipping container. Then we can use that as a scale to measure the length/width/whatever of the 003.

 

[Blitzo]

Why not just find a reference that we know the length of, say a shipping container. Then we can use that as a scale to measure the length/width/whatever of the 003.

That is what everyone has been doing.