As the Japanese pioneered carrier warfare in the 1930's, the US took it to fruition in June of 1942 defeating the Japanese at Midway.

    The most important life preserving piece of equipment in the A-6 Intruder, the ejection seat.

      The A-6 has had its history of mishaps and this is the best known. A B/N popped through the canopy after the malfunction of his Martin Baker ejection seat.

My Squadron of the 1980's VA-115 known as the Eagles during their 1971-1972 deployments in Vietnam for Linebackers I and II.

A clip from the 1991 movie "Flight of the Intruder" with Willam Defoe. No Intruder ever flew this low through the middle of downtown Hanoi but they did fly this low during Desert Storm over Basra, Iraq.

News reports from the 1988 engagement between the United States and Iran called Operation Praying Mantis. A-6 Intruders from the USS Enterprise (which replaced our carrier USS Midway a month earlier) bombed the Iranian Navy and obliterated several small attack boats and two Iranian Frigates.

WORKS OF IRON

They forged planes at Calverton NY not "fags"

The sad reminder of what was. The so called "Grumman Park"

where great planes were once built.

      Grumman Aircraft Company at Calverton, New York and Bethpage, New Jersey wasn't called the "Iron Works" for nothing; at least not to the Sailors and combat pilots who flew Grumman planes into war from the Pacific in World War II to Afghanistan in 2001. They didn't "build" planes at the Iron Works...they forged them. In its hay day, Grumman was the top designer and builder of the US Navy's long serving combat jets. The A-6 Intruders for example shared between them and average service use life of 20 plus years aboard the Navy's aircraft carriers. Compare that with the average life span of even the latest F-18 Hornet, a seriously squalid 5 to 6 years worth of continuous carrier operation. Grumman planes were iron brutes both in combat and in everyday operation; they were designed to be unglamorous at times yet tough and reliable. In my time with the A-6 and later the EA-6B communities, I saw Grumman planes take some serious abuses and still be capable of being put back into flying condition. A tribute to the men who designed and built these great machines.

The A-6 line at Bethpage

I've seen Intruders make some seriously hard landings on flight decks or mishaps that resulted in busted wing tips, torqued landing gear and blown tires. In one mishap in Japan, an Intruder "two wheel'd" on the entire length of runway, ran off the end, crashed through a stone wall and came to a sliding stop on a local roadway. A month later the same plane was taking off on a post over-haul check flight. Think the composite designed F-18 Hornet can do that? As a Navy Non Destructive Inspector, I saw first hand the problems that plagued the Hornets and contributed to their abysmal shipboard life span. If there ever was a lemon the Navy should never have spent money on? it was the Hornet. One of the worst examples of damage I ever saw an A-6 suffer was in 1998 when a Marine Corps EA-6B prowler sliced through a set of steel gondola cables over Cavalese, Italy and killed 24 people. The aircraft suffered a near catastrophic severing of it's right wing and took damage that should have caused it to crash and yet it got back to Aviano Air Base. I don't think an F-18 would be that lucky.

      Of course age and fatigue life is an eventuality of longevity. The Intruders started suffering serious wing cracks in the mid-1980's which eventually led to their retirement from combat service and yet the Hornets are suffering short life because of their design. Composites are not designed for the rigors of carrier life and if you compare the life cost of the Intruders to the life cost of the Hornets its easy to see which aircraft sucks money like a hungry shop vac. The F-18 was and remains a poor substitute for the Intruder in terms of durability, range, armament and staying power. The A-6 had versatility drafted into the design while the F-18 was an "adapt as you go" or a "Jack of all trades and master of none of them." The Navy realized too late that "Fighter Attack" or "F/A" or "faggot birds" was a poor decision it couldn't reverse.

     The loss of Grumman Aircraft Company in 1994 and the closing of the Iron Works didn't just end a chapter in Naval Aviation history as much as it crippled Naval Aviation from then into the future. With Grumman's end went the cream of a talented generation of engineers, planners, designers and builders who didn't make planes because they had "style" they built them because they were forged to be tough and return to the Navy and the United State a plus on their investments. Since 1994, Naval Aviation has suffered in debt and the so called F-35 Lightening will only worsen the condition.

Grumman however has not gone completely into history. Melding with Northrop Aviation, Grumman designers have again caught the future of naval aviation and that future lies with the UCAV Unmanned Combat Aviation Vehicle. The XB-87-C will render manned combat flight as extinct as the dinosaur in about 30 years and Grumman expects to be the leader in this new age as it was before World War II, perhaps revenge is a sweet dish after all?

Dropping ordinance

How does an aircraft bombing system work?

An A-6E TRAM intruder armed with 500 pounders

The primary business end of the Intruder was of course the ordinance. The Intruder could carry almost every air weapon in the US Arsenal up to 1997 when it was retired and it wasn't called the airborne dump truck for nothing. The A-6 was a brute when it came to hauling bombs and going downtown to FED-EX people to hell. The A-6 armament system consisted of the electronics and electro-mechanics; the later end being the wing stations (pylons) and the "racks" or "rails" which held the weapons.

     When the first A-6-A Intruders arrived for service in 1965 in Vietnam with VA-75 and VA-85 it ran into a serious problem with both the racks it originally carried and the bombs that went to them. The bomb racks of 1965 were still of the Korean and World War II style which were built more for the slower prop driven planes like the A-1 Skyraider the A-6 replaced. The bombs were also old stocks and as our tightwad government usually does, it has a fire sale on old crap and unfortunately three A-6 crews paid the price. The older racks were strictly electro-mechanical free fall racks. That is... when you pressed the drop button on the control stick, the rack opened the securing grips on the bomb and allowed gravity to do the rest of the job. Well in the case of the intruder dropping multiple old World War II bombs....you got disaster. In one case, the bombs stayed in the aircraft slip stream which is the cone of air crafted as the A-6 goes into an attack dive. They tumbled into each other and exploded; shredding the poor Intruder and forcing the crew to bail out over North Vietnam.

     Two things were immediately apparent. The older bombs needed better fuse designs if they were going to stay in service, which by stupidity they did until they caused the near destruction of the USS Forrestal in a horrific 1967 fire. And the Intruder needed new bomb racks. The Douglas ordinance company quickly engineered new racks for single, triple and multiple bomb loads called SER, TER and MER racks.

The rack names stand for Single, Triple and Multiple ordinance carry and delivery ejection. You can't see from this computer image but the difference in the Douglas racks was the incorporation of a pyrotechnic activated plunger in all the racks. Each bomb station has a single 1 inch diameter power charge, a big shot gun shell, which drives a piston against the side of a bomb being released from the rack. This piston drives the bomb outside the plane's stream cone which prevents ordinance hang and the resulting loss of the aircraft. After the Douglas was rushed to Vietnam, no more Intruders were being blown up by their own weapons.

The Aero 7-A single release rack (The plunger is 11 and the shells are number 5)

      All Navy aircraft share the same program concept in delivering quantity as requirements demand. The number of bombs, the order which they are released, the time each bomb is released can be selected by the pilot. In the Intruder, release settings for bombs was programmed in nano-seconds or 1/100th of a second from 60 NS to 120NS. This was not only a safety feature with the aircraft but one which allowed precise laydown patterns for say runway destruction or bridge demolition. It was even effective if the Intruder had to lob or loft toss a stream of bombs over a ridge or land rise to catch enemy forces on the opposite side. In World War II the Germans excelled at being able to dodge the bombs of attacking prop planes by pre-estimating their ability to strike difficult positions. The A-6 took away that advantage.

   The bomb fuses were also modified in that where they used to arm the bomb right off the bat at release, the newer fuses allowed bombs to be armed clear of the aircraft and be capable of detonation before striking solid targets, such as when you need to destroy light infantry or light armor with fragmentation. Newer GPS designed bombs no loner need the traditional nose fuses as the pilot can now directly program each weapon to the specific requirements of his mission. There's more to dropping bombs than just point and shoot.

Merry Christmas Hanoi!

Linebacker II 45 years later

USS Midway (CV-41) heading for the Tonkin Gulf

It was 45 years ago this night December 24th,1972 that the US launched the largest mass bombing of North Vietnam. Operation Linebacker II began on the 18th of December after the North Vietnamese communists refused to continue peace talks in Paris, France and with the US presidential elections looming on the horizon, Richard Nixon was determined to keep his promise to pull all American troops out of Southeast Asia and free the American POW's being held by the Hanoi regime. Linebacker II was pure unrestricted Strategic bombing; US Air Force B-52 Bombers backed by the US 7TH Fleet were to "Grand Tour" North Vietnam and bomb the infrastructure to a pulp.

A fully loaded Intruder with 23 500 pound bombs.

The A-6 Intruder had two roles in Linebacker II, the destruction of North Vietnamese air defenses and the mining of Hyphong Harbor. Hyphong had long been a restricted target to US attack planes because of the international shipping present. Actually what was present in Hyphong were communist cargo ships loaded with the guns and missiles being used by the North to take down American pilots. Until Richard Nixon became president, US officials feared what would happen if one of their bombs made a lucky hit on a Soviet or Eastern block ship. Linebacker II ended that idiotic restriction.

      Linebackers strategic bombing, while it did bring the North Vietnamese back to the negotiation table, did more harm in world opinion than it did to the morale or fighting spirit of the North Vietnamese. In fact when one examines the condition of North Vietnam before Linebacker II it is clear that their ability to continue any effective fighting in late 1972 was more a staged appearance for the world media than an actual fact. The North Vietnamese military was in shambles, the air force ineffective and the welfare of material support from equally financially strapped Communist states was about dry.

      Earlier in 1972, Richard Nixon made his historic visit to Communist China to open diplomatic relations and strike an important strategic coup on the Hanoi regime. The cultural and ideological war between China and Vietnam goes back thousands of years when two famous Vietnamese sisters led a national rebellion against the hated Chinese of the Ming Dynasty. Nixon used this long seething feud to his advantage, swaying Mao Tse Tong to pull Chinese protection over Hanoi in turn for US political and economic favors. Without the support and potential threat of this critical Communist ally to their North; The North Vietnamese could not continue their resistance long even without Linebacker II.

     Once again, Strategic bombing DID NOT cause the North Vietnamese to surrender, they simply chose to capitulate knowing that the United States would soon leave Southeast Asia and soon after abandon their corrupt South Vietnamese allies. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973 and by July of that year, almost all American forces were gone from Southeast Asia. As expected, the North Vietnamese invaded South Vietnam in late March of 1975 and by April 30th the South Vietnamese Capital of Saigon had fallen. Strategic bombing did not prevent the eventual collapse of South Vietnam nor the sweep of Communism that rolled through Cambodia and Laos soon after.

     The most effective weapon of Linebacker II was not the B-52. December 24th saw the most terrible loss of Air Force bombers in a single day since the early days of the Allied raids against Germany in World War II. No the most effective weapon of Linebacker was the aircraft carrier and her arm of tactical attack aircraft which did more precise damage and incurred less losses of lives than their big fat expensive cousins. It was the tactical aircraft who struck the bridges, the roads, the army camps, the power plants, the factories and the supply trains that forced the North Vietnamese to end their embargo of the Paris Peace talks.

     The low casualties among the Navy attack crews is not only a credit to their magnificent training, it is positive proof of the continued folly of having a bloated and ineffective service like the "United States Air Force" still around in this era of modern war. The Navy pilots who flew these dangerous missions into the teeth of the "Hanoi ring of steel" deserve to be remembered for having at long last brought America's abysmal war in Vietnam to a swift conclusion.

The B-49 Flying Wing

A glimpse into the future from 1953. The Northrop B-49 Flying wing which inspired all future flying wing stealth aircraft and the X-47 Navy UCAV.

Why the US Air Force was the most worthless creation the United States ever made.

The fallacy of strategic bombing and fixed air bases in the era of modern war.

"Our country spent millions of dollars on the so called "Peacekeeper" strategic bomber and for what? They sit back in the United States like over priced display cars. I have done far more with the U.S. Navy and Marines in Korea than the Air Force could possibly provide.

General Douglas MacArthur 1950

MacArthur lands at Leyte during the US Invasion to liberate the Philippines in 1944

    One might wonder why, upon his death in 1965, was General MacArthur buried in Norfolk, Virginia (A Navy/Marine Corps centered city) and not at West Point or Arlington National Cemetary. Why? Because he was the Navy's general not the armies.

    MacArthur understood the absolute fallacy that's called the United States Air Force, the most worthless duplication of military assets and by far the most politically poisoned among the four branches of the military. MacArthur also understood that fixed based air forces are about as useful in modern war as a pop gun. MacArthur was the author of classic US Naval/Land battle strategy, the concept of mobile tactical warfare which served the United States well in the Western Pacific Campaign. MacArthur's mastery resulted in less US casualties and swifter victories than the bloody campaign led by Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Curtis Lee May in the central pacific.

     The idea of "Strategic Bombing" was created by the then US Army Air Corps before World War II around the belief that if you bombed the hell out of your enemy, he would have no choice but to surrender. It was this fallacy that led to the political creation of the United States Air Force in 1948 when the US War Department became the Department of Defense. The United States Air Force central mission is and always has been in "Strategic" terms and it has used that mission as a political sword to justify its bloated and worthless existence.

     Strategic Bombing and Strategic Air Forces have never stopped nor prevented war. The United States spent billions of dollars bombing cities in Japan and Germany en masse, sending thousands of men to their deaths and it did not bring Germany or Japan to swift surrender. Germany only surrendered after a horrific ground campaign that ended in Berlin and Japan only surrendered after the atomic bombs were unleashed. If the same type of murderous warfare were unleashed today, as it has been in Aleppo, Syria, it would be a war crime.

     Strategic bombing did not stop North Korea's 1950 invasion of South Korea. It did not stop the North Vietnamese eventual take over of South Vietnam. It has not ended the war in Afghanistan. You simply can not affect any change in the course of war through "Strategic bombing"

     The Air Force is an obsolete concept and a bloated agency which sucks up billions of dollars better spent to equip a time tested and proven military concept; one air force tied to a strong mobile force who's effect can touch 90 percent of the world's land masses.

The B-36 Gold Chicken never served in Korea.

      When the Air Force was created in 1948, it promised that the very threat of nuclear weapons and nuclear armed strategic bombers would make war obsolete. It lied to Congress, it paid off influential leaders and schemed to destroy both the US Navy and the US Marines so it could take their budgets and melt them into its ever out of control spending accounts and worthless projects like the B-36 Peacemaker bomber.

     Then came Korea. In June of 1950, North Korean despot Kim Il Sung invaded South Korea. When informed of the North Korean offensive, General MacArthur didn't unleash the Peacemakers...he unleashed the 7th fleet. Within  days the carriers of the 7th fleet were conducting round the clock tactical strikes against the North Korean Offensive and its supply lines. It was the Navy, not the Air Force which blunted the North Korean assault and paved the way for MacArthur's mastery at Inchon.

    Strategic warfare (Bombers and land based ICBM's) makes no sense in 2016 where technology exists to give greater power and effect to a single service built for mobile warfare. The Air Force waste billions of dollars around the United States in land based airfields that have no tactical or common sense purpose when they are so vulnerable to the modern weapons of this day.

   

The Navy and Marine Corps are the only logical way of employing US military power which makes a concrete and tangible impact in war. North Vietnam was not brought to the Paris Peace Talks in 1972 because US B-52 Bombers made big holes around Hanoi, they were brought to the peace table by the skillful employment of US Naval Air Power which mined the harbors and struck the supporting infrastructure of the country with deadly effect, suffering few casualties among the air crews while sparing thousands of lives otherwise destroyed by indiscriminate Air force bombers. The continued existence of a United States Air Force simply makes no sense.

More photos from the 1980's

The Intruder RAG (Replacement Air Group) hanger at NAS Whidbey Island Wa. in 1986. Whidbey was the Pacific Fleet A-6 squadron replentishment training facility until 1995 when it became Prowler Country. It is now Growler Country for the EA-18-G.

USS Midway (CV-41) at Yokosuka Naval Base in 1986.

Two VA-115 "Ordies" writing messages on bombs during Cope Thunder 1987 off the Philippines. After the 1991 Gulf War the Department of Defense began to discourage bomb messaging because it might "offend" the Muslims or some other "butt hurt" leftist group.

An A-6 from VA-115 prepares to launch off the starboard cat 1988.

The Intruder and Nuclear Warfare

A B-61 "Dial-a-yield" bomb is moved into a Carrier's magazine in this 1962 training video.

“We shall neither confirm nor deny the absence or presence of nuclear weapons aboard any ship of the United States Navy.”

Official standard U.S.N. response to civilian questioning.

     Since both the B57 and B61 bombs have been dismantled from the U.S. nuclear arsenal; I can now say that yes...we did carry nuclear weapons aboard our aircraft carriers during the Cold War from the mid-1950's to the Mid-1990's as part of the variable response options under the U.S. nuclear triad system. The triad (Nuclear bombers, land based missiles and nuclear submarines) were to assure potential enemies that one way or another; some of their most vital targets were going to end up smoking holes in the ground.

      After World War II and the bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there was a belief that both world wide navies and amphibious operations were as useful as sticks in a gun fight or swords and cavalry charges on the modern battlefield. The 1948 "Operation Crossroads" test at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands was strictly a demonstration of the newly created US Air Force to prove that the US Navy and Marines were no longer needed in the new age of atomic weapons. In 1949 in what became known as "The Revolt of the Admirals" several high ranking naval officers risked and sacrificed their careers to stand up to then Secretary of Defense Louis Johnston, Joint Chief's Chairman Omar Bradley and President Harry Truman over the idiotic notion that atomic weapons were the "cure-all" to future wars. Their stupidity was made clearly evident on June 25th 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea.

       Five star general Douglas MacArthur, long an advocate of naval/land war doctrine, proved the stupidity of the Air Force and the Truman Administration by his brilliant amphibious landing at Inchon in September of 1950. At no time during the Korean War did the threat of US nuclear weapons change the mind of the enemy or scare him into retreating. The experience in Korea changed US military doctrine about the deployment and potential use of nuclear weapons. It also saved the US Navy and the Marines who quickly adapted nuclear strike capabilities to their own battle doctrines.

      So in the late 1950's came two naval weapons, the B-61 "White Rabbit" and the B-57 "Silver Bullet" BFDYNWA (Battle Field, Yield Selectable, Nuclear Weapons, Aircraft launching) both bombs were called "Dial-a-yield" weapons in which the output explosive yield could be programmed between 1 and 20 kilotons depending on the required purposes.

My A-6F with a B-61 "White Rabbit" under the right/outboard wing station

A "silver bullet" and "White Rabbit" aboard USS America in 1991

The handling of these "Special Weapons" was assigned to only qualified personnel who had gone through a detailed back ground security check and were given the training required to safely handle, stow and load these deadly bombs. The U.S. Navy Personnel Reliability Program (PRP) was a prized bullet point on personnel evaluations to those who gained the qualification. These weapons were moved only under tightly controlled environments aboard ship; what was nicknamed "Blue Bells". During "Blue Bells"; nuclear ordinance was moved from the hanger deck to the magazines and vice versa when required and one would never know if the weapon was a live one or a practice "blue band" bomb because live and inert designations were left off the weapons.

United States Marines were the only guards authorized around nuclear weapons and their purpose was to safeguard these bombs at all costs, even if it meant possible excessive casualties. Deadly Force was always authorized to protect nuclear stores; though I don't know of any incident where anyone was actually shot violating the defensive perimeter set up around the nukes.

A-6F in flight with a "White Rabbit"

In the event the word was ever passed to load live nuclear weapons for a strike against a selected target. The bombs would be loaded aboard an A-6 on the hanger deck which was designated to carry the weapon. This Intruder would be made as light as the mission could allow so that it could deploy the weapon and escape the drop zone before detonation. The standard attack with a BFNW might be made "balls to the walls" between 20,000 and 25,000 feet, the Intruder maxing out at full power (About 560 knots flat speed) to the weapon launch point. The Intruder would then pull sharply upwards and throw the weapon or "loft" it away as the plane rolled vertically then rolled horizontally and then escaped in the other direction. The B-61 "White Rabbit" was equipped with a slow decent parachute pack that would deploy the moment the bomb entered a nose-down attitude from the loft toss. By the time it reached detonation altitude, the Intruder would be safely away from the detonation.

The only time these weapons may have ever been loaded for their intended purpose was during the 1962 Cuban Missiles Crisis but since such incidents will probably remain highly classified; we will probably never know. We do know that one B-61 "White Rabbit" was lost off Japan in the early 1960's when it, the pilot and the A-4 Skyhawk it was loaded on rolled off the deck of the USS Independence. They have never been found.

It was President George HW Bush (1989-1993) who signed the agreement with the old Soviet Union (Now the Russian Republic) to remove nuclear weapons for their respective navies. The USS John F Kennedy was the last carrier to field both bombs in 1993 when they were turned over upon completion of her deployment.

All the "Silver Bullets" and "White Rabbits" were dismantled and destroyed.

With the advent of the cruise missile and more precise weapons; the old nuclear bombs have about lost their reason for existence which means delivery by naval aircraft is a part of the Cold War legacy.

They lived for the night life.

The Intruder was a low living night walker.

The Intruder was best when the light and the height......was limbo low.

Night Vision Goggles (NVG) were just coming on line by the time of the 1991 Gulf War.

In 1972, A VA-75 Intruder was flying "NAPE" (Nuts Above the Palms) over North Vietnam when it crashed through something solid enough to make the plane shake. The Pilot and B/N both lived with the pleasant aroma of scented pine and burnt wood until they landed back aboard the USS Independence where to their shock they found out....they had gone tree pruning. The Intruder had passed over a high ridge while evading a Surface to Air radar lock and chopped off the tops of several trees!

Before Night Vision Goggles became standard equipment with US Navy pilots, low level flying was a full attention affair amid dim cockpit lighting and the early computerized radar displays such as the A-6 DIANE system. Pilots had to "feel" their way around the night and depend on their eyes and their altitude indicators to get back safety from low level penetration attacks.

Night time low level flying was a dangerous affair and miscalculations could easily end in tragedy. In 1987 during her six month Indian Ocean deployment, USS Midway lost one of its EA-6B Prowlers and four flight officers to a low level crash. It was suspected that the Prowler was between 500 and 200 feet off the Indian Ocean and most likely its pilot suffered disorientation and lost attention to his flight instruments. Both plane and crew plowed into the Indian Ocean and sank to the bottom. Known as "Ironclaw 606" the Prowler and the Commanding Officer of VAQ-136 have never been found.

 EA-6B Prowler BoNo. 162226/NF-606 of VAQ-136, US Navy. Missing on operations November 19, 1987: Loss occurred during a night Emcon departure from the USS Midway (CVA-41) while rounding the tip of India heading into the North Arabian Sea. Cause of the accident was unknown. Search by helicopters that night and fixed wing aircraft the next day found no trace of wreckage or the four crew.

All four crew were killed - LT John Carter (pilot), Commander Justin (Noel) Greene (Commanding Officer of VAQ-136) Lt Doug Hora and Lt Dave Gibson - were all posted initially as "missing". This was later changed to KIAS/lost at sea 

The landing was to be Commander Greene's 1000th trap, so there was cake awaiting in the ready room.

A-6 Pilots were truly a rare breed in the days when combat flying took more human skill than technological assistance. Today's aircraft, like the Super Hornet, are extensively equipped for low level flying and every Navy pilot uses NVG's to enhance their capabilities but there is nothing that took more skill than the days when the Intruder pilots were nearly "barm-storming" their way in and out of the enemies yard.

Could the A-12 Avenger perform?

What computer Simulation tells about the flying Dorito

The glass cockpit of the A-12 Avenger II

Though it never flew, The McDonnel Douglas A-12 Avenger II, which was to replace the Grumman A-6 Intruder, lives on in the computer flight sim world. This flight model is from Strike Fighters series 1 and closely follows the known parameters of the actual aircraft. So could the flying Dorito chip actually do what was promised before its' 1991 cancelation? How does it compare to the A-6F Intruder II?

The A-12 looks a lot like the Jack Northrop YB-48 bomber.

The first thing you notice about the A-12 Avenger is how closely it looks like the YB-48 jet bomber created by Jack Northrop in the early 1950's. The A-12 actually took design ideals from both Northrop aircraft and Nazi aircraft like the Horton flying wing jet fighter. The smooth curvatures in the design were for low presentation to radar, to reduce the cross sectional return that would be sent back to a search radar after the signal bounced around the Avenger's surface. The plus for the Avenger is it would have had a lower radar cross section to the A-6.

    Like the F-117 stealth fighter, the A-12 would need a computer system to maintain flight because the aircraft had no traditional vertical stabilizers, like the twin tails on the F-14. The computer flight model is unstable at low speeds and it's speed brakes make bringing the aircraft down to proper landing speed difficult if the aircraft is topping 300 knots. These problems were part of the negatives which eventually killed the project. The other factor was weight, the A-12 had to be under a specified weight for carrier service in order to last through thousands of catapult shots and landing cycles. Up to project cancelation, the aircrafts' useful carrier life was no better than the F/A-18-A fighter of that time. Five years maximum. The A-6 Intruders in service during the Gulf War had an average use span of 20 to 30 years per aircraft. Here is the clear difference between "plastic jets" like the F-18 and real combat jets like the A-6.

The A-12 had vector thrust.

The A-12 Avenger was planned to have vector thrust where the tail exhaust was designed to tilt left/right and up/down to assist the aircraft in turning and climbing. But the actual planned engines for the Avenger presented a serious problem. Weighted down by bombs and missiles, the Avenger would have been seriously under-powered in a classic attack move called "the pop" which the A-6 Intruder could out-perform it's supposed successor. In flying both models in the computer simulation. The A-6F Intruder could go from 250 feet to 15,000 feet at full speed with a 40 degree climb in 57 seconds. The A-12 however reaches only 10,000 feet before it stalls out, a dangerous position where an attack aircraft must be out of the range of medium caliber guns when it goes into a diving attack.

The A-12's swing down racks are a liability.

The A-12 ordinance delivery system included a touchy swing down launching system that more often than not in the simulations, jams or fails to operate. The A-6F how ever had a near 100 percent expectation of operation and reliability. All modern stealth aircraft, like the F-35 Lightning, have to have internal weapons bays in order to have good stealth capabilities. Deployable rack systems are notoriously complex and very vulnerable to potential damage in a combat environment.

 
In the end, the A-12 for all the plus of stealth is simply not designed for the kind of environment the A-6 was built for but that doesn't matter in 2016 where manned combat aircraft are slowly being phased out of existence by the Unmanned Airborne Combat Vehicle (UCAV) the legacy of the A-12 lives on in the Navy's newest combat jet; the X-47B Pegasus. Combat jets are severely limited by the human crew and removing them allows for aircraft designs which can do things manned aircraft can not do. So the A-12 didn't exactly die...it just didn't need a human crew.

 

The piece of garbage that killed the A-6 program

The A-12 Avenger aka "The golden Dorito"

The most expensive balsa wood model in history.

In the spring of 1991, U.S. Defense Secretary Richard "Dick" Cheney dropped the final bomb on the most abusive and wasted use of American taxpayer dollars to that time (Now eclipsed by the F-35 Lightening, the Zumwalt class non-destroyer and the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The A-12 Avenger II (What an insult to the World War II torpedo bomber) never went beyond its' balsa wood presentation model made to show the aircraft to the American people. What it actually showed is the level of corruption, sexual organ sucking and criminal backstabbing that exists in the US Government. When all totaled, the American people paid 69 Billion dollars for a wooden display model.

The A-12 started out as the Advanced Tactical Aircraft Concept begun at the start of the Reagan Administration under then Secretary of the Navy John Lehman, a Naval Reservist and career liar who falsified his Vietnam service. I'm ashamed to think he even sat in my A-6 Intruder when I was a plane captain with VA-115 in 1987.

Lehman sold this piece of crap aircraft to the Navy while gutting the A-6 program of funding and ending the long era of Grumman's service to the United States Navy. The A-12 program was plagued with problems from the start and all through the 1980's it failed every requirement for naval service. But the aircraft remained alive thanks to the underhanded dealings between the defense contractors, John Lehman, several senior naval officers and the Reagan Administration. The controversy around the A-12 caused the ending of careers for several Admirals and Captains and the litigation fight over the failed project was not completed until 2014.

By contrast, the A-6F Intruder II by estimates would have cost 15 billion dollars and delivered to the US Navy a powerful, highly versatile stop gap aircraft which could have filled the void in naval aviation that was caused by the A-12 sucking of the Navy's early 1990's budgets. But John Lehman ended the Intruder program for his costly criminal enterprise.

This is a scum bag. A man who lied about his Vietnam service, who stole from the American people and left us with a piece of crap balsa wood model worth 69 billion dollars....thanks John, this award from an Intruder Sailor is well awarded to you......scumbag.

Keeping Intruder warfare alive through computer sims

Me and my Strike Fighters A-6 Simulator

      Ah the feeling of flying "Nape", dodging SAMs, outwitting MIGS and delivering bombs on target. Though the A-6 Intruder has been gone from the Navy for 20 years now, it's still important to keep the memory of both the aircraft and the men who flew it "downtown" into "Indian Country" from 1965 to 1991.

     Computer flight simulations have come a long way since my first PC, the Amega 500, and the crude computer games of the 1980's like F-19 Stealth Fighter or F-15 Strike Eagle. Today we have PC sims like the Strike Fighter family which bring utra-realism to computer flight that only the A-6 crews wished for their simulators. In fact, the A-6 Intruder crews at NAS Whidbey Island in Washington used the most crude and rudimentary graphics of their day, nothing more than model ships and targets displayed with video cameras.

An AVSIM model of an A-6F cockpit.

Modern flight sims today can be played on your Smart Phone as well as lap top and super designed desk top systems and they act and behave just as the real aircraft would in combat; including weapons that screw up like bombs that hang and refuse to drop or missiles that self detonate too early and cause aircraft damage. It's not only an ideal way to experience what the Intruder crews went through, it's also an important educational tool as well; helping writers like myself and Stephen Koontz of "Flight of the Intruder" fame to flesh out for the reader what old style bomber attack warfare was about. The first time the Intruder was shown in computer Games was Spectrum Hollowbyte's version of "Flight of the Intruder" and no way was that as detailed as the modern Strike Fighter versions.

God speed to Colonel John H Glenn USMC

1921 - 2016

A new and dangerous era of air warfare and the A-6 Intruder

When Francis Gary Powers and his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, a new and dangerous era in air warfare was begun. The S-75 Davina (Da-vee-nah) or as NATO calls it "The S-2 Guideline" was the first effective surface to air missile capable of shooting down high flying heavy bombers like the U.S. B-52. The appearance of such an effective weapon in the Soviet/Warsaw Pact arsenal overnight; negated the airborne component of the United States strategic nuclear triad (Missiles, Bombers and Missile carrying submarines) and would prove its deadly effectiveness beginning in 1966 in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

When Grumman Aircraft Company began development of their Y-2F aircraft in the mid-1950's, which would eventually become the A-6 Intruder in 1960. They were seeking to answer two priority requests of the United States Navy...

1. That the aircraft be fully capable of operating at all hours of the day and in all adverse weather conditions.

2. That the aircraft be fully capable of flying at low altitudes and maintain a suitable degree of maneuverability for evasion and radar avoidance.

   

It was a complex technical challenge in an era where computers still took up massive amounts of spacing and only planes such as the B-52 possessed the ample space to support what was considered that latest state of the art technology. The then Y-2F had to possess both a reliable method of measuring and displaying the ground changes below the aircraft as well as provide the pilot with a simplistic way to navigate at low altitudes and in miserable weather or pitch black darkness.

The answer was two fold. One was a vertical shooting radar altimeter which shot then captured a radio wave pulse from a transmitter/receiver transducer that was placed on the belly of the aircraft. The A-6 had two of these units, one under the port side intake and one on the tail behind the tail hook.

The other answer was the first solid state digital presentation computer tied to an aircraft radar system. Known as the DIANE (Digital Integrated Attack/Navigation Equipment) this computer turned incoming radar signals into a visual horizontal presentation of the outside world. The DIANE was the worlds first TIRCOM (Terrain Immediate Repetition Computer) navigation and guidance system for any airborne aircraft.

The DIANE presentation screen.

DIANE allowed the Intruder to fly "NAP" (Nape) a common pilots slang for "Nuts Above the Palm Trees!" and though the screen showed in only two colors, various shades of green and black, the presentation could tell the pilot both the altitudes of features but their various grades and inclines. DANE gave the pilot steering information to the target, detection of various threats and was designed to allow for both manual and auto delivery of weapons upon targets.

The A-6 Intruder lived best at low altitudes. The majority of A-6 missions during the Vietnam War were conducted at night, in miserable conditions at tree top level which negated the effectiveness of the North Vietnamese SAM defense systems. The Intruder would scream in at 500 feet under the cover of the traditional Vietnamese monsoon season to deliver a common mix of Mark 82 Snake eyes and Rock-eye cluster bombs upon enemy positions, weapons concentrations and supply routes. Few Intruders were shot down by SAM's with the majority taken out by that lucky shot from a Vietnamese rifle or machine gun.

In the end...the Intruders ability to carry out low level attacks made it one of the aircraft not to lose substantial numbers during the Vietnam War.

The Various models of the A-6 Intruder family from the original

Y-2F Prototype to the A-6F which never flew.

Photographs from my time with VA-115 (Eagles) and USS Midway (CV-41) during the late 1980's. USS Midway was home ported in Yokosuka, Japan with VA-115 and the Carrier Air Wing (CAW-5) out of Naval Air Facility Atsugi Japan in Sagami Prefecture.

Here's Eagle 500 being readied on the right catapult

John Caserotti and Mike Bacon from the Line Shack

Launch of a KA-6D Tanker

Eagle 506 on the right catapult.

A jet starter tractor or "huffer" and Eagle 506

An A-6E launching off the right catapult.