Combat landing

A combat landing is a landing performed in the most dire of combat situations where retreat is neccesary. They are usually performed for their speed, but not their safety. In a combat landing, ships will not care about where they land on the landing bay, as long as they can set down on it. The pilots will activate their magnetic clamps and try to skid along the landing bay until the clamps catch and halt the ship. Divets are formed by the skidding undercarriage in combat landing and need to be pounded out.

In 33, for 239 of the 240 jumps that the Galactica and the ragtag fleet had to make to escape the Cylons, combat landings were used to the point that the pilots had to check their undercarriages before each launch to check for structural decay because of all the friction and stress that these few ships have been subjected to.