Brodie System
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Norman Polmar’s March-April 2014 for Historic Aircraft in the U.S. Naval Institute’s (USNI) Naval History magazine concerned the smallest of aircraft carriers and perhaps its (and the Marine Corps and Army’s) smallest aircraft.
The tiny aircraft—OY-1/2 in the Navy and Marines and L-4 in the Army—are often mistaken for the ubiquitous and similar Piper Cub. Their “carrier” was an LST.
In the July 1943 invasion of Sicily, LST-386 was fitted with a flight deck to launch the so-called “grasshoppers.” The runway was 12-by-216 feet and constructed timber with a metal mesh covering in just 36 hours. While also carrying her normal full load of troops and cargo, she also launched four grasshoppers.
At Salerno in September 1943, LST-356 was fitted with a similar deck and launched five grasshoppers before a sixth hit a guardrail and crashed. The crew was rescued, but the other two planes the LST carried were not launched.
During the invasion of southern France in August 1944, three LSTs, among them LST-906, were configured as grasshopper carriers and launched more than 30 aircraft. A similar LST also operated in the Pacific with Army and Marine aircraft.
An Army lieutenant, James H. Brodie, developed a system for launching and landing light aircraft from ships. While the system could be easily adapted to virtually any ship large enough to carry the airplanes, the LST was the ship of choice. For the operations, a tripod assembly was attached to the planes nose and wing with a locking hook at the apex. This was somewhat akin to that used by the Curtiss F9Cs to attach themselves to the airships Akron (ZRS-4) and Macon (ZRS-5).
Two booms were angled off the side of the ship with a reinforced cable connecting them about 40 feet clear of the water. For launching, a plane was hoisted up and connected to a trolley on the cable. The plane would run the length of the cable gaining enough speed to remain airborne and trip a release at the end freeing the plane for flight.
To “land” the plane, the pilot would fly parallel to the ship and hook onto a trapeze attached to the trolley, which had a braking system to stop the aircraft.
During training on LST-776, three Marine aircraft were lost, with no casualties, and five pilots qualified.
At Iwo Jima in February 1945, the Brodie system was activated aboard LST-776, making four launches of Marine OY-1s. No recoveries were noted. At Okinawa in April, LST-776 successfully completed 25 Army grasshopper launches and recoveries.
Mr. Polmar’s column goes into greater detail. In the end, only one graphic was used (below) but it only shows the landing aspect of the process because it was more complex. Four photographs were published, three showing a take-off from a deck and one showing LST-776.
Two photographs of LST-776. Note that the overhead oblique shows a catapult with grasshopper amidships. This was mounted only during the early training off San Diego and was removed before the LST entered combat.
