Halcyon Days V

Once upon a time, when I was a preteen, I lived with my mother and stepfather in the Philippine Islands. He was assigned as the Assistant Public Works Officer at Naval Air Station Sangley Point, which was on a small peninsula located on the south side of Manila Bay adjacent to the town of Cavite. The runway had been built in early 1945, following the retaking of the area from the Japanese in World War II. It wasn't a very big air station, with almost 50% being the runway, taxiway, and parking areas...

Cdr T.L. Bigley USNR-TAR

In addition to having a runway, Sangley provided a base for Navy seaplanes that patrolled the area.

Cdr T.L. Bigley USNR-TAR 

Sangley provided tow-target services to ships and airplanes of the Seventh Fleet operating near Manila Bay.

 T.H.Thomason

Another valuable service was providing temporary parking at Sangley's west end for the air group of a carrier when it visited Manila Bay for R&R. This freed up the carrier's deck and hangar for maintenance and cleaning, in addition to providing more room for maintenance on the airplanes themselves, albeit al fresco in most cases.

Cdr G.W. Gregory Jr.

(When we first arrived at Sangley, there were many French Corsairs parked in the west end, having been ferried in from Vietnam following the fall of Dien Bien Phu in early 1954. A French aircraft carrier eventually showed up to take them away.)

Navy aircraft carriers would also offload airplanes at Sangley that were too badly damaged for repair aboard. These would come in by lighter for temporary storage until a ship came by that was headed back to the states.

I spent many happy hours watching the Cougars, Skyraiders, Banshees, etc. taking off and landing since the runway was only a few hundred feet from our house and no one seemed to care if I sat in the grass 50 feet or so off the taxiway. One memorable occasion was when Princeton parked many of its VS-21 S2Fs at Sangley in early 1956 for a week.

I made friends with one of the pilots and got to sit in an S2F with my mother.

Equally memorable was that I got to fly an S2F, a Turbo Firecat conversion with turboprop engines, almost 40 years later courtesy of the great folks at Conair. (See http://www.cascadeaerospace.com/products/Turbo%20Firecat/)

You probably haven't heard of NAS Sangley Point. While my stepfather was stationed there, NAS Cubi Point at Subic Bay was established and Sangley became a Naval Station in accordance with a treaty with the Philippines that stipulated there would only be one Naval Air Station, per se. It continued to be an active and important U.S. Navy base until it was turned over to the Philippine government in 1971.

Although I had been enamored with airplanes since I could remember, the two years at NAS Sangley between 1954 and 1956 (and one of the great airplane movies, The Bridges at Toko-Ri) convinced me that I wanted to be a Naval aviator, even if it did mean dying in a ditch in Korea. That, alas, was not to be because of my poor eyesight but I did the best I could under the circumstances.

Cannon vs. Machine Guns

One of the many interesting presentations at the Joint Fighter Conference held at NAS Patuxent River, MD in October 1944 concerned the Navy’s upcoming transition from the .50-calibre machine gun to the 20 mm cannon for fighter armament. It was given by Commander J.P. Monroe, head of the armament branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics.

A dive-bomber, the SB2C Helldiver, was the first U.S. Navy carrier based airplane to become operational with cannon, two replacing the four .50-caliber machine guns.

There were teething problems but none were serious relative to the perceived benefits of the larger round and firing mechanism. The Navy was also procuring the F4U-1C with four 20 mm cannon (the “C” suffix probably did not stand for cannon armament per se but was simply the next designation change letter; see http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2013/06/navy-aircraft-designation-suffixes.html).

Commander Monroe noted that, from a gun “horsepower” standpoint, one 20 mm cannon was equivalent to three .50-caliber machine guns. “The 20 will go through .75 inch of armor at 500 yards, while the .50 cal will go through only .43.” He also noted that the cannon barrel was not as susceptible to being damaged with long bursts like the machine gun’s.

There were disadvantages, of course. He noted that the time of flight of the 20 mm shell was longer, .75 second for 500 yards as compared to .62 second for a .50 caliber bullet. The 20 mm installation was also heavier, “one half as much ammunition for the same weight.” The standard of 400 rounds of ammunition for each gun (30 seconds) could therefore not be maintained so only 200 rounds of 20 mm ammunition could be provided per gun. Nevertheless, “The 20 is lethal enough to get far more results out of that 200 rounds than the .50 ever will get out of the 400 rounds.”

Only 200 F4U-1Cs were bought and the F4U-4 retained the six .50-caliber armament configuration, primarily due to ongoing reliability problems with the original Hispano-Suiza cannon. However, the problems were corrected so a handful of F4U-4s were produced with cannon as the F4U-4B (the suffix now designating an armament change, not built for the British) and cannon were standard on the F4U-5.

The Navy’s last propeller-driven fighter, the F8F Bearcat, was initially produced with only four .50-caliber machine guns. However, during production of the -1s, the armament was changed to four 20-mm cannon. The change was externally evident by the longer barrels and the bulges required over the chambers. The cannon were standard on the F8F-2 so no B suffix was required.

The Navy’s first jet, the McDonnell FH-1 Phantom, was produced with four .50-caliber machine guns. The North American FJ-1 Fury was delivered with six. However, the Navy's third jet fighter, the Vought F6U Pirate was armed with four 20 mm cannon, as were all subsequent Navy fighters up through the Vought F8U Crusader.

When the Navy procured the North American F-86 Sabre as a carrier-based fighter, it required the substitution of 20 mm cannon in addition to the changes required for operation to and from aircraft carriers. The armament change was evaluated in the one-off XFJ-2B BuNo 133756, the B suffix again denoting an armament change.

Note that the airplane had nothing in common with the two XFJ-2s other than F-86 parts. It was basically an F-86 with four 20 mm cannon, a Navy gun sight, and a modified windscreen.

The Air Force somewhat belatedly realized the need to transition to 20 mm, a change accelerated by combat experience during the Korean War.

The A-12 Avenger II Program: The End is Near

It's hard to believe that it has been more than two years since I last updated the status of the A-12 Avenger II program and its termination is still not yet complete from a financial standpoint. See http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/05/12-it-aint-over-until-its-over.html

For a prior post and links to four (!) more on the A-12 in this blog, see http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/01/gift-that-keeps-on-giving-final-chapter.html

The program was, of course, canceled back in 1991, but like Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Dickens' Bleak House, it has lingered on as a lawyer's dream.

However, according to an online Aviation Week note dated 21 May 2013:

In a sign of movement in the epic legal battle over the A-12 Avenger II, the Obama administration is asking Congress to allow the Navy to accept a settlement in the case.

In a letter outlining amendments to the administration’s fiscal 2014 request for appropriations, the Pentagon is seeking legislation that would “authorize the Secretary of the Navy to accept and retain in-kind goods and services in lieu of monetary payment, for the purposes of a settlement of the A-12 aircraft litigation.”

More importantly for aviation history, the A-12 mockup has finally been moved to the Veterans Memorial Air Park in Fort Worth, Texas.

 Bill Spidle Photo

The Air Park is a nice little (and growing) aviation museum north of town and just south of Meacham Field with several aircraft on display outdoors. It's well worth a visit. See http://www.veteransmemorialairpark.com/home1.aspx

The full-scale mockup was displayed at an open house in 1996 at Carswell Air Force Base.

The mockup looks a lot better than I thought it would after more than two decades of storage, mostly outside, and hopefully the museum can refurbish it and provide a suitable venue for its display.

Navy Aircraft Designation Suffixes

Dana Bell has teamed up with Classic Warships to produce a series of Aircraft Pictorials on U.S. Navy Airplanes. Three have been published so far, covering the SB2U, OS2U, and F4F. See http://www.classicwarships.com/aircraft_pictorial/aircraft_pictorial.html

These are affordable, well-researched, copiously illustrated monographs. The production quality is excellent. Dana has spent a lot of time on what I call an Easter egg hunt in the National Archives, among other places, and found pictures, drawings, and information previously unpublished and that sometimes contradicts or expands on what we know about a particular airplane type.

Dana is currently sifting through boxes and boxes of 1940s documentation on the F4U-1 Corsair. One of his discoveries is that the F4U-1A designation of what the Navy called the "raised cabin" Corsair was never officially assigned. (There are more revelations but those will have to wait until this next Aircraft Pictorial is published.)

His assertion has generated some debate. After looking at some of my stuff that dates back to 1943 and 1944, I agree with Dana that the Navy did not officially recognize the raised cabin F4U-1 with a designation change.

In the process, I got interested in the Navy's use of letter suffixes to aircraft designations. As a result, I'm pretty sure that the early (through say, 1942) and subsequent meanings have been inadvertently conflated in a confusing way.  For example, in explanations in books and on line, you'll find that the letter suffix A stands for many different changes. After examining several examples and in particular relying on an explanation in Introduction to Naval Aviation (NavAer-80R-19) published in January 1946, it appears to me that up through about 1942 there were very few letter suffixes that were related to specific applications or capabilities. (One was P for Photographic.) "A" simply meant the first "minor modification not sufficiently important to change the modification number or where the airplane has been diverted to another service or for a special purpose".

It took a while to find an example of a "B" for a second minor modification that substantiated my thesis, which was the Consolidated NY trainer.

The above is an NY-2 modified with leading edge slats that was being evaluated by NACA in 1928. Consolidated Aircraft* won a 1925 Navy competition for a trainer that was then designated NY-1 (N for trainer, Y for Consolidated, no number between the type letter and the manufacturer letter because it was Consolidated's first trainer for the Navy). According to the interweb, the NY-1A was a modification for gunnery training with a machine gun mounted in the rear cockpit and the NY-1B was an NY-1 modified with the bigger wing and more powerful engine of the NY-2.

So in my opinion the suffix A originally didn't actually stand for amphibious (PBY-1A), armament (J2F-2A), target towing (JRF-1A), floats (TBD-1A), single-stage supercharger (F4F-3A), carrier-basing (SOC-3A), etc. It simply distinguished the modified airplane from the baseline one, like a dash number change signified a more significant change.

At some point early in World War II, however, the use of A appears to have acquired a specific connotation, possibly used only to differentiate a Navy airplane built for the Army, e.g. SB2C-1A. "B" similarly became associated with a Navy airplane that was to be provided to the British, as in F4F-4B. As a result, the first minor modification was now recognized with a "C" suffix and the second, with a "D". This led to the TBF-1C (wing guns and more fuel), the TBF-1D (ASB radar), SB2C-1C (cannon), F4U-1C (cannon), F4U-1D (multiple improvements), etc. Note that "C" did not, in this instance, stand for "cannon": it was a coincidence that the first minor change was to cannons. Thinking that D stood for droppable fuel tank in the case of the F4U-1D was even more fanciful; the F4U-1 had provisions for a droppable fuel tank.

Shortly after this philosophy change, however, mission-specific suffixes began to proliferate and the use of a generic suffix progression in alphabetic order beginning with C was abandoned.  One of the early additions was "N" for a "night" fighter (as an indication of the designation system development in progress at the time, the radar-equipped fighter version of the F4U-1 was designated F4U-2; the equivalent F6F-3 modification was the F6F-3N.) But I can't yet say whether a particular suffix used in the mid-1940s was the result of the alphabetical approach or the implementation of specific letters for particular mission capability modifications.  "C" was eventually used to designate a land-based airplane that had been adapted to be carrier capable but it's possible that the SNJ-3C was so designated because it was a first minor modification of this trainer. Similarly, "E" came to mean an electronic modification, but the TBF/M-1E might very well have simply been the third minor change of the Avenger.

Consistency in designations was not a Navy hallmark in any event. For example, the modification of the Douglas Devastator to add floats was designated TBD-1A. A similar evaluation of the Vought Vindicator was designated XSB2U-3...

Another divergence was the designation of successive variations of the North American PBJ, which for all intents and purposes was a US Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell. Although the Navy did redesignate it as the first Patrol Bomber that they procured from North American (J), the suffix letter for major derivatives was consistent with the Army designations, e.g. the B-25H became the PBJ-1H.

*Consolidated Aircraft was merged with Vultee Aircraft in 1943 to become the  Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation. After the war, the company adopted the brand name Convair. It subsequently was acquired by General Dynamics but as a named division. In 1994, GD eventually sold that portion of the division still based in San Diego to McDonnell Douglas Aircraft and the remainder that had been developing and building airplanes in Fort Worth, Texas to Lockheed.

F8U-3 Redux

I've written a couple of posts on the F8U-3 and a monograph for Steve Ginter.

http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2008/12/f8u-3-best-airplane-navy-didnt-buy.html

http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2010/08/best-f8u-3-monograph-now-available.html

The monograph is pretty good, if I do say so myself, but if in doubt you can read reviews of it on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/0984611401 and then order it if it appeals

Whether or not you have the monograph, this is a pretty good Vought sales pitch for the airplane, emphasizing the fact that a radar operator wasn't necessary for the successful interception of an attack: http://www.texasarchive.org/library/index.php/F8U-3_Weapons_System

Unfortunately, the admirals didn't agree, opting for the two-seat F4H instead...

The Curious Case of the A3D-1Q Crew Size

10 September 2022: Also see https://tailhooktopics.blogspot.com/2013/06/a3d-1q-notes.html

26 May 2013: Updated with additional information and an illustration

Every once in awhile someone asks a question that causes me to do a fact check and research that leads to a different answer than I would have given otherwise. In this case, the question was: "Can anyone tell me why these A3D-1Q's had open bomb bay doors...if they were originally (sealed) to accommodate the ECM* monitors in an unpressurized bomb bay compartment. It would seem that opening the bomb bay would be impossible if it was converted to an ECM* compartment"

*Strictly speaking, the mission wasn't ECM (Electronic CounterMeasures) but electronic reconnaissance. The A3D-1Qs were recording communication, navigation, and radar emissions, not jamming them.

Five Douglas A3D-1s bombers were converted to have an electronic reconnaissance mission capability by the Navy, reportedly at the Navy repair and overhaul facility at Norfolk, Virginia, and redesignated A3D-1Q. The A3D-1Q Characteristics Summary (CS) dated 15 July 1957 gives the Bureau Numbers (130356 and 130360-3) and states that it had a crew of seven and a "pressurized cabin". Other published sources state that the bomb bay was not pressurized (the bombs didn't need it) even though there were guys sitting back there or that there was a pressurized "capsule" installed in the bomb bay.

The bomb bay door that's open is the one on the left. The right one was modified to add a canoe-like fairing to house antenna(s); it could be opened if required. There were also mission-specific antennas located in the fairings on the side of the forward fuselage and the tip of the tail.

Two of the A3D-1Qs were delivered to VQ-1 and two to VQ-2 in late 1956.  (Chuck Huber reports that at least one A3D-1Q was delivered to VQ-1 still glossy Sea Blue.)

An excellent history by Capt Don East, USN of the U.S. Navy's electronic mission activity and these two squadrons is provided here:
http://www.coldwar.org/histories/HistoryofUSNavyFleetAirReconnaissance.asp
and here:
http://www.coldwar.org/histories/HistoryofUSNavyFleetAirReconnaissancePartTwo.asp

Capt East makes it clear that these were four-place, not seven-place, airplanes: pilot, navigator, crew chief (who would also have been the tail gunner), and a radio-electronics operator. There were a couple of other indicators as well as to the number of crewmen. In both fatal crashes, one at VQ-1 and one at VQ-2, there were only four crewmen aboard; although one was a proficiency flight, the other was almost certainly operational. There are only four guys in this picture of a VQ-1 A3D-1Q crew.

At first I assumed that the fourth crewman was located in the bomb bay but the more I thought about it, the less sense this made. The bomb bay was not pressurized (although the flight deck wasn't pressurized much and pressurization isn't absolutely necessary for flight at high altitude). There didn't appear to be any side or upper escape hatches added to the mid fuselage, much less a porthole. Theoretically, however, bailout could be accomplished by opening the bomb bay door and the fourth crewman would probably ride the jump seat on the flight deck for takeoffs, landings, and when a ditching or crash landing was going to occur.

Closer inspection of the forward fuselage revealed two interesting features though. First, the periscope fairing had been removed consistent with the removal of the ASB-1 bombing system since the electronic reconnaissance mission didn't require it. Second, the aft part of the canopy appeared to have be replaced with solid panels and the sides of the canopy looked nonstandard as well.

As a result, I suspected that the flight deck of the A3D-1Q was configured with a fourth work station. Eliminating the bombing system would allow the right front seat to be moved forward, creating adequate space behind it to accommodate it.

Captain East confirmed by email that the A3D-1Q had a four-man crew and they were all seated on the flight deck. The fourth crewman's work station was not in the bomb bay.

This is a comparison of a poor-quality A3D-1Q canopy photo with one of an A3D Bomber that suggests the seating arrangement on the right in the A3D-1Q was the same as existing one on the left although the fourth seat reportedly faced forward.

However, one second-hand report has the aft right-hand seat facing forward, with the back of the seat consisting of "the aft bulkhead of the cockpit". That would be consistent with the addition of a jump seat during A3D-2 production.

It is also described as a bucket seat, which would seem to be more appropriate for crew comfort on a long mission.

How to explain the 1957 CS that lists it as a seven-place airplane with a pressurized cabin? This is almost certainly an error, possibly caused by confusion with the forthcoming A3D-2Q (the mockup had been reviewed in September 1954) that was a seven-place airplane with four crewmen added in a rearrangement of the fuselage interior that created a pressurized cabin immediately behind the flight deck. (See http://tailspintopics.blogspot.com/2010/09/mighty-skywarrior.html) The same applies to the published and online instances of the A3D-1Q described as having seven crewmen.

I'd appreciate it if someone would look inside the cockpit and bomb bay of the last remaining EA-3A (the redesgnation of the A3D-1Q) that is on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum http://www.pimaair.org/collection-detail.php?cid=94 and report back.

There might be enough hardware left in it to ascertain the configuration of the fourth crew station. It was however, used by Westinghouse to test side-looking radar, among other things, so the flight deck might have been rearranged at some point and no longer represents that of the A3D-1Q.

I'm also hopeful that a connection gets made with an A3D-1Q crewman who has a reliable memory...

The First Launch of an Unmanned Aircraft from an Aircraft Carrier?

Not the X-47B, despite the press release claim.

U.S. Navy photo courtesy of Northrop Grumman by Alan Radecki

It might not even be the tenth one. For sure there were a few F6F drones catapulted during the Korean War on combat missions:

There were F6F Hellcats launched as target drones.

At least one, anyway:

National Naval Aviation Museum via Rick Morgan

And then there was at least one Regulus missile launch using a cart:

And there may have been some TDN or TDR drone catapult launches although all I've ever seen are deck-run takeoffs of the TDN:

Since the Brits were first with just about everything concerning carrier-based operations, I wouldn't be surprised if they had held the honour on this achievement as well.

But congratulations to Northrop Grumman and the Navy nevertheless. The launch itself is actually not a big deal; F-18 pilots aren't even supposed to have their hand on the control stick during the launch. The taxi forward and hookup to the catapult unmanned? That is a much bigger deal and the X-47B is the first to do that.

The arrested landing on a carrier of an unmanned airplane would also be a first for sure. But not the first hands-off arrested landing. That was done more than 50 years ago. See http://thanlont.blogspot.com/2011/07/look-no-hands.html