Shipbucket

I notice on most Naval vessels that flight decks are placed aft of the superstructure. Isn't there allot of turbulence in that position with exhaust gasses and dirty air coming of the superstructure? What is the Airflow and turbulence like ahead of the superstructure like for example on a container ship? And what are the Pro's /Con's of operating helicopters from either of these positions.

One big 'Con' of having flight deck ahead of superstructure is that when ship is underway, if something goes wrong with helicopter landing on 'normal' (aft) pad, it just falls into the water, while when the deck is on bow, the helo falls into the ship's bridge.

Turbulence is an issue and most ships are in fact designed to mitigate it, but compared to ship motion it's not that big of an issue.

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There's also certainly the basic fact that helicopters are faster than ships, so have an easier time catching up to them than the other way around, and an approach of the ship from astern reduces differential speed on landing. I know of only a very few unbuilt ship projects that involved a helipad amidships, but nothing that left the drawing board AFAIK.
Might also be that the superstructure shields the helo deck from the airflow along the sides of the ship and over the superstructure, rather than creating turbulence. Look at the Moskva helicopter cruiser to see that a large airflow-blocking superstructure can work. In and of itself, landing on (or at least hovering above) the bow deck is often possible, as illustrated by the countless USN ships with VERTREP spots forward. The main problems for basing helos forward on warships are probably that the pad can't be isolated from the bow waves without raising the silhouette, and that any helo hangar with a forward opening is an invitation to major flooding in heavy seas.

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