Aircraft Carriers with Bouncy Flight Decks

image via AWDNews, Amazon

The late 1940s were an exciting time for aircraft. With the advent of jet engines, all sorts of advancements were being developed for warfare. But the prize for the weirdest idea of all has to go to the British, who pioneered what is known as the "flexible" flight deck.

Or rather, they covered an aircraft carrier in rubber and tried to land aircraft by bouncing them.

The logic was that since the newer jet aircraft lacked the large propellers of previous aircraft, why not just eliminate the landing gear?

image via SCMP

Because landing gear is nothing but a crutch.

Without landing gear, there would be more room for fuel, hypothetically allowing for longer duration missions and a much larger operational distance. So instead of landing on wheels, the incoming aircraft would catch a wire which would slam them into the deck and bounce them to a stop.

image via PopSci

Foolproof.

On December 29th, 1947, Lt. Commander Eric Brown attempted the first landing on a runway padded with rubber, and unsurprisingly, crashed. Undeterred, the British government pressed on. Several months later, Brown finally achieved a good landing. There was just one last thing they needed to do: test it on an aircraft carrier.

So in the summer of 1948, the British Navy covered the HMS Warrior flight deck with rubber and spent the next several months bouncing aircraft off of it. Over 200 landings were made by British and American pilots.

In at least one case, an aircraft bounced so hard, it simply flew around again. Here's a video of the system in action:

video via Youtube

If you look real close, you can almost see the ACME logo on the plane.

However, the entertainment value of watching high-tech aircraft bounce like basketballs began to wear off and that's when people realized some serious issues with this process. Mainly that clearing aircraft out of the way for the next one to land took way too long, and that it generally isn't a good idea to slam aircraft into a flight deck if there are highly combustible weapons stored in the areas that are hitting the flight deck.

The British abandoned the concept in 1948.

But just remember, at one point in history the British Navy was attempting to land aircraft using Wile E. Coyote levels of thinking.