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The carrier air wing wrecking crew circa 1975

Posted on May 19, 2017 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Here we see what the Navy’s attack team looked like for a hot minute around the mid-1970s before the Hornet made it to the fleet, stacked up for a group photo at NAS Oceana. The new and exotic swing-wing Grumman F-14 Tomcat is up front while the Vietnam holy trinity of the A-6 Intruder, F-4 Phantom, and A-4 Skyhawk bringing up the rear.

The F-14 entered fleet service starting in September 1974 with squadrons VF-1 “Wolfpack” and VF-2 “Bounty Hunters” aboard USS Enterprise (CVN-65) and participated in the American withdrawal from Saigon. At the same time, A-4Fs from VA-164 “Ghostriders” were still deploying on the WWII-era Essex-class carrier USS Hancock (CV-19) but would soon be transitioned to training and adversary duties which they would perform admirably for another decade and change. Hancock, as luck would have it, had landed her air wing for Saigon as the new F-14s from Enterprise had her back and embarked 25 Marine helicopters to help with the evacuation.

-F-4s continued to deploy as late as 1983 with the “Jolly Rogers” of VF-103 while the last Marine Phantom, an F-4S, was retired by VMFA-112’s “Cowboys” in 1992.

-The hearty A-6 was last flown by ATKRON 75, the “Sunday Punchers,” in February 1997– ironically they were also the first operational fleet squadron to be assigned the Intruder, in 1963.

-TARPS-equipped F-14Ds remained in combat with VF-31 and VF-213 dropping ordnance over Iraq as late as 2006 before they were sent to the crushers, by that time the old men of the fleet.

End of the line:

Above is BuNo 161159: One of the few (19) surviving F-14Ds “Bombcats” this one at National Naval Aviation Museum, Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida. She completed the last combat flight and the last combat carrier arrested landing (trap) by a U.S. Navy F-14 when she trapped on the deck of USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) on 8 February 2006 as part of the “Black Lions” of Fighter Squadron (VF) 213. Originally accepted by the Navy as an F-14A in December 1980– likely just five years after the above picture was taken– she was converted to the F-14D configuration in September 1991 and flew 224 combat sorties.

The ultimate replacement for all of the above? The F/A-18, absent from the class photo as she was in the class of 1978.

Israel retires their last A-4s

Posted on December 24, 2015 by laststandonzombieisland Leave a comment

Ed Heinemann’s “Tinker Toy Bomber”, the go-cart-like Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was a child of the 1950s and so good at what it did almost 3,000 of them were made. Although the U.S. military put these little scooters in the boneyard for good in 2003, the largest export customer for Skyhawks was Israel, who picked up more than 300 of the attack plane starting in 1967– dubbed Ayit (Hebrew: עיט‎, for Eagle).

Put to good use in Yom Kippur War in 1973 where Skyhawk aircrews took off to about 1000 operational sorties in the southern front– saving the day there by most accounts– and over Syria and Lebanon in the 80s and 90s, the type has slowly been replaced in service as a combat aircraft with the F-16 by 2008 and now, by the Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master in a training role.

The last Israeli A-4s were retired this month.

“Ayit pilots marked great historical events in the history of aerial combat,” Air Force Commander Amir Eshel said, “Many of the force’s achievements are the outcome of the combination between the small plane and the greatness of its pilots.”

This leaves Brazil, who operates a dozen highly modified ex-Kuwaiti A-4s for use off thier 1960s-era Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier NAe São Paulo (A12), as the last Scooter drivers in service. They are expected to remain operational until 2025.

How low can you go?

Posted on October 14, 2014 by laststandonzombieisland One comment

Taking a look at some extreme-low level passes throughout the past century or so. The tactic has been used throughout modern military aviation. While it is extremely dangerous, it can minimize the time a plane is over hostile enemy troops while terrain masks its approach from both surface-based radar and lookouts. The Argentine pilots who attacked the British Task Force in the Falklands in 1982 often flew incoming missions with their A-4’s and Mirages as low as 4-feet off the deck.