Once upon a time, the A-1 Skyraider was known as the AD Skyraider. This designation resulted from a Navy decision in 1943 to combine the separate missions of dive bombers and torpedo planes into one aircraft.
For all the heaving power it showed and its capacity to carry upwards of 8,000 pounds of ordnance in its decidedly graceless barrel fuselage and hard-edged lines, though, the Skyraider looked anything but rakish when it took to the air.
The first flight was on March 18, 1945; the fleet service was for the following year. Newcomers were left with indelible impressions.
One aviator said, “My first impression was that I was in for the ride of my life surrounded by noise and vibration. That first flight behind a 3350 radial was something to behold.”
The “Able Dog,” or “Spad,” was the best attack aircraft in the Korean skies. Missions ranged from attacks on heavy industrial targets to power plants and bridges were common ones demolishing the Hwachon Dam with aerial torpedoes.
Close air support earned Skyraiders the affection of the ground troops. This ability was also evident in electronic countermeasure modifications and night attack variations.
The Skyraider would go on to see out the war in several roles, even as the jet engines began to dominate the carrier decks. In addition, trained for nuclear warfare, some pilots would fly long-range “Sandblower” missions that allowed the dropping of atomic bombs at low altitudes. These longer flights, spent mostly inside the cockpit, would earn the pilots the nickname “Butt Busters”.
By the Vietnam War, the A-4 Skyhawk had fully replaced the older model as the Navy’s primary carrier-based attack aircraft.
However, Skyraiders did participate in the first waves of attacks against North Vietnam after the Tonkin Gulf incident in August 1964 and continued to serve in these missions until 1968.
The antiaircraft defenses were becoming so advanced that Skyraiders eventually became too costly to continue losing at this rate and were retired from such missions.
The Navy continued to fly electronic countermeasures versions of the Skyraider right through 1972, and the Air Force similarly operated in search and rescue and air commando roles, passing most of the remaining imbalance over to the South Vietnamese Air Force. In all, 3,180 Skyraiders were built by Douglas Aircraft Company.
The A-1H Skyraider, Bureau Number 135300, filled this gap. It was the last attack mission by a Navy Skyraider in the Vietnam War on February 20, 1968.
The Skyraider had the Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone radial, arguably one of the largest and most powerful radial engines put into production in the United States during that era. This was an American engineering marvel, boasting 18 cylinders arranged in twin rows with supercharging.
Although not a designed airplane to be used strictly in air-to-air combat, the Skyraider had its moments of aerial triumph.
On 9 October 1966, LTJG William T. (Tom) Patton became famous for shooting down a MiG-17 over Vietnam, a rare instance of a propeller-driven aircraft besting a modern jet fighter.
The Intrepid Museum’s aircraft restoration proudly unveiled its Skyraider in April 2019, after almost two years of preservation work.
The aircraft was extensively passed under corrosion repair and received enormous new replacement parts from historic collections or rebuilt from scratch. The last paint coating was done in the configuration of the prototypes at their very introduction in 1945.