Rubber Deck Trials

After joining Warrior in September 1948 the dockyard matey's were soon bringing loads of tubing and a thick rubber sheet onto the ship and we couldn't find out what it was for, until we managed to get onto the flight deck to see about the last third of the deck covered rubber, the miles of rubber tubing being underneath. When in use the tubing was filled with high pressure air.  I think it must have been early in 1949 that we sailed out to Spit-head one Monday morning and all crowded into the sponsons to watch Lt.Cdr Eric Brown, the RN Chief Test Pilot arrive in a twin boom Vampire.  He made one low pass over the flight deck, went around again and came in with no undercarriage down.  He picked up the one arrester wire that was propped up on two pieces of wood, about 18 inches long, and skidded along the rubber.  The pilot jumped out, a naval airman jumped in and the crane lifted the plane up, the undercarriage was lowered and the plane was then lowered onto the steel flight deck and wheeled away for'd.  To reduce the friction of the Vampires body the seamen sprayed the rubber with the fire main on all subsequent landings.  For the first take off the Vampire was backed up to the rubber and promptly scorched it with her jet exhausts.  It never took off like that again, but was catapulted off by the ATOG (the steam catapult) for the rest of the programme. We went out every Monday morning did all the trials and came back every Friday in time for long weekends. Some of the attempted landings were hairy at times, with the Vampire missing the arrester wire, bouncing a few times along the rubber and taking off again.  In all 200 landings and take offs were performed without any accidents, which was very good as an ordinary Carrier tended to have one per day.   The Vampires started as a basic model with the engine down rated to land at stow speed, the second one was faster and eventually worked up to the final one which we were told was as fast as a standard land based plane.  On completion of the trials the Skipper assembled us on the Flight Deck and wished us all the best of luck and had a tear in his eye.

Ref. Brian Davy