German Navy Sea Hawks Operating from Carriers?

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Member for

17 years 3 months

Posts: 271

Joint Services Recognition Journal November 1958 states that

The German Navy Sea Hawks will be operated from land bases on patrol and recce duties. It also mentions (interestingly for me) that the aircraft would be able to operate from British and Dutch carriers as part of NATO forces.

Cant imagine that they ever got around to it, but did the German Navy ever operate the Sea Hawks from these Carriers as part of NATO?

Never seen anything mentioned, so I would assume not.

Original post

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11 years 3 months

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Only carrier I have heard of being used by German Navy sea hawks was the USS Saratoga. Have never come across anything about them using British or Dutch carriers.
If you haven't seen it before, the opening couple of minutes of this video may be of interest to you -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4eOmeQ8HTs

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16 years 10 months

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Lovely video, thanks for posting!

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12 years

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Danke, a wonderful film.

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10 years 7 months

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I know the Dutch used RN carriers for training both their Sea Hawks and their Sea Furies, so there is no reason to imagine that there was a slim chance that some deck training might have been carried out...

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10 years 7 months

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Interesting info from Wiki, probably more a poor choice of words from a bad translation rather than what it appears to say, though...

Eleven months after the F-84 incident, the Soviet threat to shoot down any aircraft violating the border became real when a Hawker Sea Hawk of the Bundesmarine, piloted by Kapitänleutnant Knut Anton Winkler, was shot at by MiG-21 fighters when it accidentally crossed into East German airspace near Eisenach. Winkler, who had been returning from a training exercise on board USS Saratoga in the Atlantic Ocean, had to carry out an emergency landing at Ahlhorn, 45 km southwest of Bremen. The aircraft was eventually written-off. Winkler himself died less than four years later in a F-104 Starfighter accident on 10 May 1966.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_F-84_Thunderstreak_incident