The biggest threat to the US Navy’s aircraft carriers in the early 1950s came not from the Soviet Union, but the US Air Force. With jet-powered strategic bombers, many questioned why the Navy needed expensive carrier battlegroups at all. With the US armed forces adopting an "all-nuclear" force, the Navy needed a bomber capable of delivering a nuclear payload. The Lockheed P2V Neptune could be launched from carriers, but was too big to land. The North American AJ-1 Savage could launch and land, but was propeller-driven and too slow to survive over the USSR. Finally, in October 1952, famous Douglas aircraft designer, Ed Heinemann, delivered his latest masterpiece: the A3D Skywarrior.
The Skywarrior was, in a word, huge; sailors quickly nicknamed it "Whale." The largest aircraft to operate from carrier decks, it had to be big to carry the large nuclear bombs of the 1950s. Despite its size, the A3D was surprisingly docile, though engine problems kept it out of the fleet until 1956. It could not operate from the World War II-era Essex-class carriers, only from the later "supercarriers" like the Forrestal and Nimitz-classes. A lack of ejection seats led the three-man crews to joke that "A3D" stood for "All Three Dead." Nevertheless, the A3D did the job it was assigned to do, and rather well.
Technology rapidly outstripped the A3D, and only four years after it began operations, it was already obsolete in the nuclear bombing role–like its predecessor, it was too slow to survive over the USSR. It could be still used as a conventional bomber, and the Navy saw plenty of growth potential. Redesignated A-3 in 1962, a number of variants came into service, the most widely used of which was the KA-3D tanker.
Skywarriors would serve throughout the Vietnam War and well into the 1980s, although it was replaced or supplemented in all of its roles, primarily by A-6 Intruder variants. The Whale continued on because it could carry more than the A-6, when it came to fuel or electronics. By 1990, the A-3 was clearly at the end of its service life, and after a last hurrah with the First Gulf War, the A-3s were retired in 1991. 19 are left in museums.
Built as an A3D-1 in 1955, Bureau Number 130361 was modified soon after delivery as the prototype YA3D-1Q (later YEA-3A). Aside from a deployment with VQ-2 at NAS Rota, Spain from 1956 to 1959, 130361 spent most of its career with the Naval Air Testing Center at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. It was also used to test a Side-Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR) pod for the US Army; the pod was later used on the Grumman OV-1 Mohawk. In 1969, 130361 was retired, and in 1971 given to the Pima Air and Space Museum.
Though a bit faded from the Arizona sun, 130361 still shows off its Vietnam-era US Navy scheme of light gray over white; the large "W" on the nose stands for Westinghouse, and was applied during the SLAR tests. 130361 is one of the oldest "Whales" left around.
Posted by The Roving Aircraft Historian on 2019-05-18 09:37:40
Tagged: , Douglas , YA3D-1Q , YEA-3A , A-3 , Skywarrior , PatuxentRiver , USNavy , ColdWar , ECM , electronicwarfare , prototype , aircraft , Pima