In 1955, the US Navy's naval (deck) aviation began to receive legendary, in a sense, aircraft - deck bombers Douglas A3D Skywarrior (sky warrior). True, in everyday life they were not called that.
But this aircraft, due to its enormous size (we will return to this later), received the nickname "whale". So they went down in history as "Whales".
There was, however, one more nickname. But more about her later.
There is no point in retelling well-known facts and information about this aircraft, which is easy to find in any open source.
For example, publicly available data about this car can be obtained from the article by Kirill Ryabov "The heaviest and longest-lived: the Douglas A3D Skywarrior carrier-based bomber and its modifications".
However, in the history of these aircraft there are facts that are not only unknown to the domestic reader, but in the West are already slowly beginning to be forgotten. It makes sense to pay attention to them. After all, you can find out which radar station was on board the aircraft in five minutes of search. We will focus on something else.
Without pretending to fully disclose the topic, let us recall some little-known moments from the history of this car.
Ed Heinemann, his planes and the birth of Keith
"Kit" was created in those years when the plane was inseparable from the personality of the one who directed its creation.
The jet era was on. Nuclear weapons and computers came into widespread use. The war was becoming high-tech and complex. But not so much that personalities are blurred and lost inside a large-scale process. As is the case in the course of the creation of today's ultra-complex technology.
Edward Henry Heinemann was just such a person. You have to understand that for Americans this is a person of the same level as Andrei Nikolayevich Tupolev is for Russia.
There were many such personalities there. You can, for example, remember the same Clarence "Kelly" Johnson (Clarence Leonard "Kelly" Johnson), the creator of the U-2 and SR-71. But Heinemann stood out even against the American background.
Below is a list of his works.
The SBD Dontless was the primary dive bomber of the US Navy during World War II.
The A-26 Invader is a medium bomber. He fought until the end of the 60s in different places, mainly in Asia.
A-1 Skyrader is a piston attack aircraft. Legend of Korea and Vietnam.
D-558-1 Skystreak is an experimental aircraft. Set a world speed record.
D-558-2 Skyrocket is the first aircraft to double the speed of sound.
F3D Skynight - night interceptor.
F4D Skyray fighter. The first supersonic aircraft of the US Navy.
The F5D Skylanser is a non-serial fighter.
The A-3 Skywarrior is a carrier-based bomber.
A-4 Skyhawk is an attack aircraft.
All Heinemann's planes had something special.
This was shown very clearly by the Skyhawk attack aircraft - an ultralight and ultra-small combat aircraft, which, at the behest of Heinemann, was created twice easier than requested by the customer. It was made as simple as possible. And as a result, he lived a very long life full of wars.
Initially, this machine was supposed to carry only one nuclear bomb. And its design was sharpened exactly for this.
Skyhawk, among other things, has forever proved to be the standard of compatibility between an aircraft and an aircraft carrier.
But there was also a downside.
This aircraft (with all its advantages and maneuverability, which allowed the attack aircraft to conduct an air battle even against the MiG-17) turned out to be very fragile, knocked down by a vehicle with low survivability.
The desire to make a simple, massive and cheap aircraft for a single nuclear strike let down, without duplicating the main systems and without measures to ensure survivability. It's just that for the war for which Skyhawk was conceived, all this was not so necessary. But, however, he had to fight in other wars. And not only from the decks. With all the ensuing consequences.
This dark side, like the imprint of the complex and contradictory personality of his chief designer (and he had an extremely harsh and difficult character), was not only in Skyhawk or, for example, in the no less controversial Invader.
Whales - A3D (which Heinemann also directed) also had such dark sides. And the whales also participated in many events, served for a long time, earned themselves fame and honor, but …
In the second half of the forties, the US Navy was in a kind of identity crisis.
In a world where the American fleet was stronger than all, without exception, the military fleets combined, and at times, the Navy could not find a purpose.
It even came to a proposal to simply cut them down to the convoy forces. Such an attempt was made under President Harry Truman.
Added fuel to the fire and a new type of the Armed Forces - the Air Force, separated from the army and rapidly creating a huge fleet of intercontinental bombers.
Today it is little known that the generals of the Air Force (in order to squeeze out budgetary flows) even tried to create a geopolitical theory of "Air Power". By analogy with the ideas once sung by Mahan for sea power. I must say, they almost succeeded - not with theory, but with budgetary flows. Although amusing echoes of those theorizing, even today are available on the Internet, as a monument to the era.
The fleet resisted.
Before the war in Korea, which saved the US Navy, where they proved their vital importance, there were still several years. And the admirals put forward a new mission for their kind of the Armed Forces: nuclear strikes from the sea. Fortunately for them, nuclear bombs that could be raised by a carrier-based aircraft appeared quite quickly (Mark 4 weighing 4900 kg). But there was a problem with the planes themselves.
Since 1950, the AJ Savage piston machines began to enter service, which, even with an additional jet engine, were nothing more than ersatz. They could pick up a nuclear bomb and carry it to the target. But the progress of jet aviation made it clear that this was all for a few years.
In a real war, the fulfillment of their combat mission was questionable. I had to do something. And urgently.
In 1948, the Navy announced a competition to create a carrier-based jet bomber capable of taking off from an aircraft carrier and operating at a combat radius of 2,200 miles (naval) with a bomb load of more than 4.5 tons.
Douglas Aircraft entered this competition. Initially, the Navy requested an aircraft with a takeoff weight of 100,000 pounds (just over 45 tons), and its carrier was supposed to be a future United States-class supercarrier.
One can only guess what the Navy would have done when the Truman administration nailed this project if the deck bomber had been built to their specifications.
But Heinemann displayed his famous voluntarism. And he decided that a smaller aircraft would be offered, which would meet the requirements of the Navy in terms of load and range. But it will be able to fly from existing aircraft carriers smaller than the size of the United States. Heinemann's team decided to make an aircraft that could fly from the Midway, and even from the modernized Essex.
At the same time, another voluntaristic decision was made - that from small aircraft carriers it would be possible to fly with three tons of combat load. Heinemann (as usual) did not do as asked, but in his own way. With confidence that victory awaits him.
Heinemann then showed extreme self-confidence - at the time of the drawing of the "Whale" three-ton nuclear bombs did not yet exist. There was only a forecast (either of himself or someone from his team) that when the future bomber was ready, such bombs would appear. This led to harsh criticism of Douglas. But in the end they were completely right.
In 1949, the Navy declared Douglas the winner. Although, in truth, they were the only ones who suggested something worthwhile. In addition, the project of a new large super-aircraft carrier was nevertheless stabbed to death as part of the course to almost eliminate the Navy. And the fleet had no choice at all.
So "Kit" got a start in life.
Douglas engineers had to try hard to make an aircraft that the customer himself defined as a "strategic bomber" (deck-based) and which would be able to fly from the decks of aircraft carriers during the Second World War (albeit modernized).
First of all, it was necessary to ensure a high thrust-to-weight ratio, which, in principle, was not easy with jet engines of the late forties and early fifties. And reliability was also needed.
The Kit started flying with Westinghouse J40 engines. He entered service with others - Pratt and Whitney J57-6. And then they were replaced by the J57-10 modification.
However, thrust is only one of the components for achieving thrust-to-weight ratio. And the second component is weight reduction.
Heinemann, faced with the objective limitations of the technology of those years, went on (many times later remembered with an unkind word) such a decision - to abandon the ejection seats. Then (in the event of a defeat of the aircraft or a failure of equipment) the crew would have to leave the car through one emergency hatch and in turn. Moreover, the chances of success decreased in proportion to the distance from the hatch. So, for the pilot, who occupied the front-left seat in the bomber's cockpit, they were simply ghostly.
In this, Ed Heinemann turned out to be like his colleague on the other side of the Iron Curtain - Andrei Tupolev. He (for similar reasons) left his Tu-95 bomber without ejection seats, which, however, even in the "light" version did not reach the speed desired in those years.
The escape hatch itself was well thought out. He created an "aerodynamic shadow" that allowed getting out of the plane, even though the speed was high. (Actually, ejection seats became the answer precisely to the problem of speed - the oncoming air flow did not allow the overwhelming majority of high-speed aircraft in the world to leave the car without ejection).
Everything is smooth on the video. But the same action from an airplane (shot and set on fire at an altitude of about five or six kilometers, with wounded pilots) would have looked very different.
Heinemann himself argued that the abandonment of ejection seats saved 1.5 tons of mass, which was significant for a deck vehicle.
The B-66 Destroyer bomber, created later for the Air Force on the basis of "Kit", by the way, had ejection seats (that is, a "Kit" with this additional mass would have flown quite well). But deck basing imposed its own severe restrictions.
The lack of ejection seats is associated with a gloomy part of the life of the "Whales".
All three are dead
It is known that the "celestial warriors" had one gloomy unofficial nickname, consonant with its original name A3D - All 3 Dead - "All three are dead."
The crew of this aircraft initially consisted of a pilot, a bombardier navigator (right facing forward) and a navigator-operator KOU (left with his back forward behind the pilot). In 1960-1961, all 20-mm aft cannons were removed and replaced with an electronic warfare antenna system in a flattened fairing, and the third crew member became a navigator-operator of electronic warfare.
Today, in open sources, one can read that the plane received its gloomy name because it was impossible to get out of it when it was defeated in battle, and the crew was doomed. It is even known that the widow of one Whale crew member who died in Vietnam was suing Douglas because this plane did not have ejection seats.
The manufacturer insisted that the plane was intended for high-altitude bombing, and the altitude gave a real chance to leave the plane.
In reality, everything was somewhat different.
The tactical model for using the White Whales was as follows. The aircraft was supposed to fly to the target at relatively low altitudes. All the risks associated with leaving the plane at this moment (both the command of the Navy and Heinemann) were assigned to the crews. Or, more simply, they simply ignored them - there is no war without losses.
After the target was displayed on the navigator-navigator's radar screen (for a nuclear bomb, an optical sight was not particularly needed, a target the size of a plant, city, dam or large railway bridge could be hit by "radar"), the plane began to climb sharply from overload 2, 5g. Then, gaining altitude, dropped the bomb. He made a sharp turn (most often it was recommended to 120 degrees) and walked away from the target, gaining speed in a steep dive. Only by dodging the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion could one think about climbing.
That is, all being in the risk zone was basically planned not at a height, but vice versa. At altitude, the aircraft was supposed to be during flights closer to the airspace controlled by the enemy, at the time of dropping a nuclear bomb and then, when returning to an aircraft carrier.
Thus, the cockpit without ejection seats really became a death trap. And Douglas's assertions that a high-altitude plane supposedly leaves normally without ejection seats if necessary, to put it mildly, are dishonest.
On the other hand, the author came across a completely different legend about the origin of the dark joke about the three dead.
The Sky Warrior was a large aircraft. And heavy - its maximum take-off weight when launched from a catapult once exceeded 38 tons (84,000 lb). Normal takeoff weight was 32.9 tonnes (73,000 lb) and often exceeded. The maximum landing weight was over 22.5 tons (50,000 lb). This imposed very stringent requirements on the performance of takeoff and landing operations by both the crew and the crew of the aircraft carrier.
The video below shows how easily the overspeed on this machine could lead to an accident (in other cases, and to a disaster). This is the aircraft carrier "Coral Sea", 1963.
This time I was lucky and everyone survived. The aircraft was restored and continued to fly. True, the car turned out to be unlucky - three years later, in 1966, it fell due to running out of fuel, the crew died. As usual, all the bodies could not even be lifted, only one was lifted.
Careless landing on the finisher, an attempt to catch on the cable at the wrong angle, a gust of headwind during takeoff from a catapult were a problem for this aircraft - it punished very severely for such errors, forgivable on other machines. So, a hard touch on the deck on the "Whales" more often led to a fracture of the landing gear than on other aircraft. And a blow to the deck with the fuselage often led to the destruction of fuel tanks and an instant fire, and an imminent explosion.
At the same time, an organizational problem was also superimposed on such a specific problem for a heavy deck aircraft.
The Navy planned to use these aircraft in the so-called "Heavy Strike Squadrons". The first of these, VAH-1 (Heavy One), was deployed at Naval Air Station in Jacksnoville. In the future, the Navy deployed other "heavy" squadrons.
In an effort to get down to the tasks of nuclear deterrence as soon as possible, the Navy recruited base aviation and coastal pilots into these squadrons. On the one hand, these people were not new to flying on heavy aircraft.
But there was also another side.
Flying from the deck requires more than just other skills than from a ground airfield.
They require different instincts. And this is, as they say, things of a different order. Everyone knows the banal rule of "full throttle before landing", but you need to "drive it into your head." And this despite the fact that there are many other such rules there.
The Chinese have recently come across this closely during the preparation of an air group for flights from the Liaoning. Their conclusion was absolutely unambiguous - a deck boat should be straightaway cook like a deck boat, otherwise there will be problems later. And on the "Shandong" lieutenants, they immediately trained as naval ship pilots.
The Americans, of course, were well aware of this in the mid-fifties, but felt that the problem would not be critical. They were wrong. This would be so if it were not for the "heavenly warriors" flying at the limit of the possible.
From the very beginning, the planes began to fight. And very often. Pilots who knew how to get on and take off from the deck, but who were not actually deck pilots, constantly made mistakes when choosing the descent speed, landing speed, landing altitude, sometimes they forgot to give gas at the end of the glide path. This resulted in accidents. Heavy aircraft descended from decks into the water and went to the bottom like a stone, hit the decks, exploded. However, an experienced pilot on this plane could easily send both himself and the crew to the next world.
We look at the photo, this is in some way a typical case.
September 26, 1957, Norwegian Sea, landing in light rain. The pilot and aircraft commander, Commander Paul Wilson, had 71 landings on the aircraft carrier by this time. Presumably, rain and water suspension in the air caused an optical illusion, which created incorrect ideas for the pilot about the deck height above the water and its own speed at the moment preceding the touchdown.
The aircraft caught the deck with the main landing gear and the fuselage, there was a break in the struts, their separation, destruction of the fuselage, instant ignition. And the burning plane fell from the deck. The crew died, the rescuers managed to find only two helmets and someone's boot. The Americans call it Ramp strike. Sometimes pilots survive after this.
Those who flew the Whales had no chance in such situations. In general, they had little chance of surviving in case of accidents during takeoffs and landings. Pay attention to the fact that the landing plane has an open evacuation hatch on top.
All Whales almost always took off and landed with a depressurized cockpit and an open hatch. The open hatch gave hope that someone would have time to jump out of the sinking plane if something went wrong during takeoff or landing. The hatch was battened down after takeoff, when it was already clear that the plane did not fall and picked up speed. Opened before landing.
Sometimes it helped. In the photo - the rise of the crew from the "Kit" that has fallen into the water. They were in time, the hatch helped. Aircraft A3D-2 from the squadron VAH-8, "Midway", September 27, 1962.
But more often the hatch did not help. Until now, sometimes divers who discovered a "heavenly warrior" plane that had died many years ago at great depths find the remains of the crews in the cockpit, which remained forever fastened to their non-catapulted seats.
So, there is an opinion that the expression "All-3-Dead" was born at that time.
In addition to the testimony of some still living pilots, already very old people, this is also indicated by the fact that this aircraft was called A3D only until 1962. This means that the nickname should have arisen at the same time.
Then all military aircraft in the US Armed Forces switched to a single classification. And this plane became known as A-3.
I must say that the Americans reacted very quickly. The training was sharply intensified. And later, in order to ensure a more effective exchange of experience, all the aviation units, equipped with the "Kit", were together at the Sanford Air Force Base. In fact, it was on the Whales and the problems of their crews that the Navy created a modern flight training system.
These measures had an effect, and since 1958 the accident rate of "heavenly warriors" has sharply declined.
But they still remained one of the most dangerous aircraft, the tradition of taking off and landing with open hatches has not gone anywhere either. Hope continued to die last.
In this video of another disaster, it can be seen that the hatch was opened in 1960 as well. And again no one was saved.
The cause of the accident this time is the detachment of the brake hook.
The production of "celestial warriors" ended in 1961.
At the same time, the Navy came to the conclusion that the tasks of nuclear deterrence (and, if necessary, attack) are much better accomplished with the help of submarine ballistic missiles. And the importance of the "Whales" as a weapon of nuclear war "sank" sharply. However, they did not write them off, quite reasonably believing that a huge (for a deck) aircraft with a large payload and internal volumes will do something useful. And so it happened, and very soon.
Whales over the jungle
We will start the history of the combat use of "Whales" in the Vietnam War from the end, and from the legend.
This legend is as follows.
In 1968, the then commander of American troops in South Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, before surrendering his post, visited an aircraft carrier, from which these aircraft flew to perform strike missions in the interests of army units on the ground. The general asked what sights the pilots of these aircraft use, because they were originally intended for strikes with a nuclear bomb on targets large enough not to miss, dropping a bomb according to information from the radar.
He was told that none. Since this plane has no scopes, none at all. Allegedly shocked by the fact that thirty-ton "Whales" fly to attack in the jungle no sights at all, the general forbade them to be used to solve shock missions. And since 1968 they have ceased to perform shock missions.
It is difficult to say whether this is true or not, but the Whales really did not have sights. And they actually fought in Vietnam, and not so badly.
The Whales were among the first American attack aircraft in Vietnam. Initially, they were used to attack North Vietnam. On previously reconnoitered large targets, dropping bombs in a volley from horizontal flight, the target was identified with the help of radar and a map. This was the case in 1965, but in the same year the growth in the effectiveness of the air defense of the DRV put the survivability of the "Whales" in such raids into question.
They were reoriented to strike at the forces of the People's Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam in the south and to strike at the territory of Laos. And then the problem of scopes arose in full growth. Even the defeat of some large open area with military equipment with a massive strike in a group for these aircraft was not the easiest task, albeit feasible. Their native targets began from a large railway bridge or oil storage facility with rows of huge metal tanks and more.
And pinpoint targets in the jungle were a problem. Modern sources say that aiming was carried out using
"Marks on the glass".
It is worth dwelling on this in more detail.
The specificity of hitting a point target is that bombs must be placed on it precisely. At the same time, the A-3 (as these aircraft were already called by the beginning of Vietnam) had bombs located only in the bomb bay, which is logical for a "nuclear" bomber. And when leaving the bomb bay, the bomb falls into the air stream, which is why its deviation from the target can be quite large.
The Americans found a solution in dive attacks, the angle of which could reach up to 30 degrees. In this case, the accuracy of dropping bombs turned out to be more or less satisfactory. If you aim, right?
Yes. And here, too, a solution was found. These were the same marks on the glass. Moreover, it was not some kind of industrial solution: the reticle was drawn on the glass with an ordinary felt-tip pen and was sometimes updated.
The apocrypha of the US Navy says that sometimes such a method of aiming was still used, such as
"On the filling rod"
(how can you not recall the domestic naval expression "shoot" in the boot ").
All modifications of the A-3, starting with the second, were equipped with an in-flight refueling system. True, it is not clear how this could be done? The bar was sticking out to the left, and in order to aim at it, one needed a unique eye, experience and considerable luck.
However, this may not be accurate. And the boom could be used to calibrate the grid drawn on the glass using radar or something similar.
Sometimes the Whales worked with other types of aircraft. For example, piston "Skyraders" (another creation of Ed Heinemann) could, while hovering over the battlefield, mark targets for destruction with incendiary bombs, followed by a raid of "Whales" with felt-tip pens.
Usually, the dive was entered at an altitude of 2400-3000 meters, the angle reached 30 degrees, but it was not always so, the exit from the dive took place at about 900 meters in order to avoid the fire of machine guns and small arms and not to overload the aircraft.
Sometimes, the Whales, on the contrary, worked as leaders of strike aviation groups, using their radars to detect targets and issue target designations (in radio communication words) to the radar-deprived Skyhawks (another Heinemann creation).
One way or another, but as the Navy and the Air Force received aircraft that were more adequate to the conditions of a conventional war, the value of the A-3 as a strike weapon was continuously decreasing. But their role in other tasks, in which they acquired their fame, never diminished.
Geographically, Vietnam is a strip of land along the sea, crossing it across can be many times faster than flying along. The territory of Vietnam begins to expand only north of Hanoi.
This specificity leads to the fact that for a carrier-based aircraft, launched from somewhere in the Gulf of Tonkin or in the South China Sea (in its western part), achieving a goal over Vietnamese territory turns out to be much faster than for an aircraft from any available ground air base outside zones of active hostilities.
This made carrier-based aircraft a very important factor in the war, as before in Korea. The Americans had two aircraft carrier maneuvering areas in the South China Sea - the northern Yankee station, from which airstrikes were launched against North Vietnam, and the southern Dixie station, from which they flew to strike targets in South Vietnam.
The fierce resistance of the Vietnamese required the intensive use of large aviation groups, and the often unpredictable results of combat missions in a very acute form raised the issue of refueling naval aircraft in the air.
The aircraft could strike at the limit of the combat radius and collide when returning with a delay in landing, for example, due to an accident on the deck. They could simply have miscalculated the remaining fuel. It happened that instead of hitting and returning to the ship, they had to take a battle with Vietnamese aircraft. Damage to the fuel system and fuel leaks have occurred. The problem of refueling really turned out to be very painful - the Air Force and tankers were not asked, and the refueling system there was different - a flexible rod, and not the "hose-cone" adopted by the Navy.
In these conditions, the "Whales" became a lifesaver. And it was they who turned out to be a lifesaver. No wonder the Navy believed that a large and roomy plane would be useful to them.
From the very beginning, the A-3s were retrofitted with refueling equipment and used for refueling. Moreover, the additional equipment was sometimes carried out so that the plane could carry bombs too. Such aircraft were assigned the KA-3 refueling index, but they could still bomb.
Often, the "heavenly warrior" after takeoff "stood in a circle", waiting for the rise of the strike group from other aircraft. Then, flying with them, he gave them some of the fuel. Then he flew to strike with his bombs.
Returning, "Kit" could again give fuel either to the planes flying out to strike (and then sit on the deck), or save those who did not meet their turn for landing on fuel.
The Skywarriers have rescued many hundreds of aircraft and pilots in this way.
Often, bomb-free aircraft were used as transport aircraft. "Kita"
could easily be sent to the Philippines for spare parts for aircraft and even for cash in order to give salaries to the crews of ships and deck aircraft. There have been such things.
Missions of the Whales and their crews sometimes took hundreds of days. The record is 331 days in military service, and all these days in the war, every day.
Intelligence was of particular importance - the Americans used the Whales in the EA-3 (electronic reconnaissance) and RA-3 (photo reconnaissance and infrared reconnaissance) variants. Scouts often flew not from aircraft carriers, but from ground-based air bases. Electronic reconnaissance flew from bases in Da Nang, Atsugi (Japan) and Guam, photo reconnaissance officers of the 61st heavy photo reconnaissance squadron - from Guam.
The EA-3B scouts searched for sources of electromagnetic radiation, operating radio equipment and radar. Photographic reconnaissance missions performed tasks of photographing and searching for warm-contrast objects (mainly trucks) on the famous Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Sometimes they flew from aircraft carriers, sharply differing from the main mass of deck vehicles in their colors. However - not always.
Also of great importance were jammers - ERA-3 and EKA-3. The latter, as the name implies, were created on the basis of the tanker. It was a unique machine, it not only refueled strike vehicles during the sortie, but also covered them from Vietnamese air defense systems with interference. Both meant the difference between life and death for strike aircraft.
A little later, some of these jammers - tankers were converted back into KA-3 tankers. And with such aircraft in 1970, two refueling squadrons were formed in the parts of the Navy reserve, which existed until 1990.
As these auxiliary, but such important vehicles, the Whales fought the entire war.
Analog hackers
Part of the "Whales" (25 units) was built as the EA-3B electronic reconnaissance aircraft. These machines were used in Vietnam. But besides this, they were intensively used for reconnaissance along the borders of the USSR, removing huge amounts of data on the operation of Soviet radars and radio networks, which in the event of a hypothetical strike on the Soviet Union was very important, and the Americans were quite going to bomb the USSR, and on a large scale.
More interesting is another episode in the career of these aircraft, but first about what kind of car it was.
The specificity of the Skywarrier, which distinguished it from the overwhelming majority of jet attack aircraft, was the presence of a manhole in the bomb bay. This was necessary for various manipulations with the bomb, which then could not be performed remotely. It looks exotic. But remember that they began to draw "Whale" three years after the Second World War, and then
"Go to the bomb bay"
could not be called exotic.
Moreover, it was a large bomb bay. Such internal volumes simply begged for carrying something besides bombs there. And in the end it happened - there was a modification of the version airframe for multipurpose aircraft, in which instead of a bomb bay, a manhole for it and a fuel tank above the manhole, a pressurized cabin was equipped.
It was this aircraft that became the base for the EA-3B. It was also the base for the RA-3 photo reconnaissance aircraft, cameras were in the pressurized cabin. Later, when some of these reconnaissance personnel were converted into ERA-3 jammers, two crew members were registered in the pressurized cabin.
The EA-3B was a different story - this aircraft was not re-equipped, but was immediately built with an additional pressurized cabin of the maximum size and with more comfortable conditions, as far as it was, of course, was possible in the bowels of the aircraft, which was created as a deck bomber.
About why basically The United States used such aircraft, it is widely known.
But there is also one little-known page in this story, including for the Americans themselves (although it is not secret there).
We are talking about electronic reconnaissance of the equipment of Soviet aircraft. The essence of the project was as follows.
During the operation of cathode ray tubes (CRT), the so-called side electromagnetic radiation - TEMI is formed. Technically, it is possible to register them if the receiver is quite sensitive and located close enough.
Somewhere in the 60s, someone in the United States came up with the idea to shoot PEMI from the CRT of Soviet aircraft: just sit next to it and write radiation. Then it had to be deciphered, as a result of which the Americans planned to be able to see what the radar indicators (and, if they were there, then other indicators with a CRT) of our aircraft. And how many are there.
EA-3B was chosen as the executor of this work. And as a target - Soviet intelligence officers (mainly Tu-95RTs), who were convenient because they themselves went to the Americans. The US Navy and their intelligence knew in advance about the takeoff of the Tupolev (or its flight to a theater of operations), a two-hour warning was common, which made it possible to prepare well for departure.
Further, the EA-3B with other aircraft (usually with a pair) flew towards the Tu-95, with the task of ensuring the receipt of intelligence.
Upon detection of the Tu-95, a pair of aircraft, one of which was a reconnaissance aircraft, clamped its wing from above and below to deprive our aircraft of the ability to maneuver. The whale was large enough that a collision with it would be either extremely dangerous or fatal even for the Tu-95RTs, and this gave the Americans the opportunity to take long-term data of interest to them.
In the photo - the Mediterranean Sea. 1966 year. "Phantom" and "Sky Warrior" squeezed our "Tu" in a "sandwich". Now "Kit" writes a picture from the radar screen and reads the screens on board. And just above the F-8, with a pendant unit for refueling in the air and a pilot's camera. This photo was taken from him, and the person who first exposed the fact of such operations to the world is piloting the Phantom at the time of the shooting.
It is reliably known that the Americans completed the tasks within the framework of these operations in full - the PEMIs were recorded by them. To what extent they were able to decipher them and how much intelligence information they managed to "extract" by such methods, history is silent - without making secrets from their approaches and concepts, they very seriously secret technical information, in fact it is simply not in the public domain (which distinguishes them from us and not in our favor).
End of story
"Whales" after Vietnam slowly began to leave the scene, but they served for a long time. The last machines EA-3 took part in the "Desert Storm" in 1991. In the same year (September 27, 1991) an order was issued to withdraw the last Skywarriers from service.
Only a few of them flew a little more as flying laboratories. Ed Heinemann's creation was destined for a long life - from October 28, 1952, when the first prototype took off, until the end of the Cold War.
These machines have made a very significant contribution to the military power of the US Navy and the military operations of American naval aviation. They took a rather big price for this contribution, leaving not only a good memory of themselves.
The history of this aircraft is as controversial as its creator. There was both good and bad in her. And yes, it was an enemy plane, and the pilots who flew on it brought a lot of evil into this world, which is still well remembered in Vietnam and Laos.
Still, this story is quite worthy of being remembered at least.
