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THE SIMPLE SOLUTION BEHIND THE MOST ADVANCED MACHINES ON THE PLANET
ONE OF THE MOST FASCINATING USES FOR WIRE ROPE HAS TO BE IN ARRESTING GEAR—the well-placed cable lying across an aircraft carrier runway that keeps a $50 million fi ghter jet from speeding off the end of a $12 billion boat. It’s easy to forget about the range of uses for wire rope, especially within the grip of a job—when you need it to do one thing, and do it well. But then you snag a glimpse of it on TV or online, lying there across a carrier deck waiting to hook a 30,000–pound jet, and you realize that what might look simple in form is nothing short of miraculous in function.
Case in point: there’s a lot that goes into catching a plane going 150 mph, and bringing it to a dead stop in under 500 feet. T e trigger point that makes this entire process possible is the wire rope within that arresting gear—a mechanical system designed to catch a tailhook on the underside of a jet and transfer the aircraft’s kinetic energy to hydraulic damping systems attached below the deck. T ese systems, though extremely high-tech and effi cient today, took quite a while to perfect—the fi rst shipboard landing of an aircraft using arresting gear was on the USS Pennsylvania (ACR 4), on January 18, 1911. Fast-forward over a century, and without it, our modern fl oating war machines are pretty much just drifting parking lots with extravagant security systems. Dennis Scholl, a Process Quality Engineer at WireCo®
WorldGroup, spent many years designing rope, reels, and plant tooling as a product engineer, and is very familiar with the major players in this expert space. WireCo®, a world leader in manufacturing, engineering, and distributing wire rope, synthetic rope, specialized
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2014 WIRE ROPE EXCHANGE
assemblies, wire products, and electromechanical cable, is also the only company in the U.S. that makes carrier rope. T e only other supplier in North America is Wire Rope Industries, out of Canada. Scholl describes a specialized relationship that covers over 70 years. “Our tradition with the military goes back to World War II, when we were under the name Broderick & Bascom Rope. In 1983, we were bought by MacWhyte, which eventually became Wire Rope Corporation of America— and eventually WireCo® WorldGroup.” MacWhyte is now an offi cial WireCo® brand, and has been around since 1896—creating specialized assemblies for aircraft control cables and torque-balanced oceanographic ropes. As Scholl indicated, carrier rope is a pretty specialized
fi eld. Without a doubt, arresting gear on aircraft carriers is one of the most crucial components of naval aviation. Mostly used on Catobar and Stobar carriers, the system will also occasionally pop up on land-based airfi elds— either as a means to accommodate commercial-military operations, or for emergency use. CATOBAR (Catapult
WIRE
U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jacob Estes/Released.
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