Ships
For ships, the plane guard is positioned at least 3,000 yards behind the carrier and either to port and clear of the carrier, or at a point intersecting the carrier's final approach line. Ships in the latter position provide the advantage of providing an additional point of reference to approaching aircraft. One of the ship's boats is prepared for launch and swung over the side, but not placed in the water. If an aircraft ditches or crashes, either while approaching the carrier to land or following a failed landing, the ship proceeds to the approximate position of the aircraft, and the prepared boat is deployed to rescue the aircrew.
The plane guard role is dangerous for ships, as aircraft carriers must often change speed and direction to preserve optimum take-off and landing conditions for their aircraft, and a lack of awareness or any incorrect manoeuvres on the part of either ship can place a plane guard ship under the bows of a carrier travelling at full speed. Both HMAS Voyager and USS Frank E. Evans were lost in collisions with Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne while incorrectly manoeuvering during plane guard duties.
Read more about this topic: Plane Guard
Famous quotes containing the word ships:
“Haven’t you heard, though,
About the ships where war has found them out
At sea, about the towns where war has come
Through opening clouds at night with droning speed
Further o’erhead than all but stars and angels
And children in the ships and in the towns?”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“The ships we sank with women and children aboard. The lifeboats we shelled. Mmm ... we were good at that.”
—Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)