SLUF - A-7D and A-7E, ahead of their time

Salute all!

With a combat tour and 1000 hours in the 'D', it's about time to get another site goin'

Some things to ponder:

- Sluf flew about 2 and a half hours, unrefueled on combat missions carrying 10 x 500 pounders

- More avionics than current F-16's, in terms of radar modes, nav systems, displays and even radios

- neat guys flew the thing...... pic attached

later,

Beat me to it. I do really want to know about these ops. This jet had the rep of being the premier day bomber of its time ( embarrassing F111 guys more than a few times ) And it is my undersanding ( correct me ) that it was the A model F-16 that finally gave this jet a run for its money in day bombing. ( lower cockpit workload?????????? )

Anyway got to hang with both some Navy pukes and SD ANG A-7s on different occassions and was always impressed with the ability of this jet. Why did it have such a short service life?? F-16 mafia ??

Heh heh heh, ELP-breath!

Read my lips: "A-10A", money, Army attack helos on drawing board/ in flight test, more money (for Eagle), no more A-1's, and it was UGLY! The 'fighter mafia' didn't care about the A-7D, as it was already being murdered by the Warthog community and others for various reasons (see later posts). The 'fighter mafia' was dedicated to getting the F-16 or something as good as an adjunct to the eagle and Tomcat. It was not into the mud-moving aspects of airpower.

Gotta go to my high school about 250 miles away to talk with the yutes about careers, so I'm packing. Before I go.....

EXACTLY RIGHT! The Viper was the first jet to beat the A-7D/E on first-pass dumb bomb accuracy. That's why the IAF used them to hit So-damned-insane's nuke plant using 2000 pounders and CCIP mode. It also had much better radar bomb accuracy than the SLUF.

out,

The "yutes" LMAO No fighter pilot humor around the kiddies.

One of my first 'real' jobs was at LTV in Grand Prairie (near Dallas). The D/Es were in production and I would wander up and down the assembly lines just drooling on those airplanes.

Speaking of day bombing and the SLUF's radar bombing modes, was the F-16 the first jet to get CCIP/CCRP capability?

Salute!

Ok, the first 'fighter' I can recall that had a radar CCRP-type mode was the Thud. You had a fixed cursor on the radar and flew the jet so as to get the cursor cross on the tgt or offset aimpoint, then pressed a button. Bomb came off when the 'comnputer' said it was time.

Then the A-6. Much improved. Then the F-111. Then the A-7D. The F-4 also had a radar bomb mode, so I guess the A-7D/E was last one before the F-16 and F-18.

I flew the F-18 sim about 20-25 hours, as well as the F-20, but that can be on another thread.

The A-7D had a super ground attack radar. Only air-to-air mode was a beacon doofer for tanker rejoins.

A quick review:

- basic ground map had two beam-shaping features. One was a narrow pencil beam and the other was 'spoiled' so as to provide returns along a greater distance in front of the jet. Pencil beam for max range, spoiled for better situation awareness and reduced chances of losing the tgt.

- The NAVWD computer placed the cursor where it thot the tgt was and used your present position and tgt coords you entered. This also automatically tilted the antenna to keep the tgt area within the beam. You could adjust the beam up and down with a thumbwheel on the throttle. Sometimes this helped provide a better return on the tgt or the offset aimpoint.

- as with most modern radars, you could aim at something real easy and the computer would steer you to the actual tgt. Enter bearing and range from offset to tgt and shazzam!

- We also had a beacon mode for ground attack mode. Screen was black, but the beacon from a ground party would show up and you aimed at it in offset mode. heh heh. More than one troop in F-111, F-4 and A-7 and A-6 forgot to select offset. Result was a bomb on the beacon! Yikes!!!

- SLUF then had a terrain following mode and a terrain avoidance mode. Follwing mode could be set for 200 fet, 500 feet and so on. The tadpole in HUD and vertical steering doofer on the ADI provided your vertical commands. Meanwhile, left-right was a function of the nav system or NAVWD solution if you had already 'designated' the tgt in basic A-G mode. The terrain avoidance mode showed all terrain 'ABOVE" your altitude.

- Then there was the cross-scan mode. You selected ground map, then TF mode. You had vertical steering plus every other sweep of the antenna you had a real radar picture. Neat, huh?

- Our radar bombs were CCRP, Constantly Computed Release Point. You had to steer left-right, but vertical was built-in. Could do a toss from 3 or 4 miles out by pulling up. We got about 2-3 times the miss distance as the Viper. Viper could routinely drop 30 meter bombs in CCRP. A-7 was about 40-60 meters on a good day, with good pilot and good tgt.

Now listen up! All this was operational in 1971 and had been tested and flown since 1968 or so.

When we talk about 'gold-plated' I shall review some more of the SLUF's advanced stuff in later posts.

out,

How was the avionics up times on the A-7s?I think of avionics from that period as being great on the test bench in a lab and something completely different in the field. An F-111 or A-6 of the 60s-early 70's would be a good example. Pretty amazing avionics for their day.... when they worked.

Gums wrote:...... CCRP. A-7 was about 40-60 meters on a good day, with good pilot and good tgt.

Good enough for government work for a tac nuke.

Radar bombs?

well, on the toss-ups from 3-4 miles away, we didn't get the 40 meters, we got like 100 meters. Still good enuf for a nuke, tho.

Try to find an old copy of Fighter Weapons Newsletter from late '73 early '74. I posted a neat article about the A-7's projected map display.

I'll talk about our equivalent of the GPS-aiding for our inertial later. STBY has mentioned the new Viper nav-suite and it is awesome. However, when the A-7D showed up, the F-4 pukes were also awed. Our Doppler allowed us to do airborne alignments and to limit the INS drift. 30 years later we have GPS doing the same thing for the Viper INS. I luv it!

later,

Perhaps someone could answer this one for me. I saw footage (about 12 years ago) of a SLUF mishap, which had been taped sometime before that (early to mid 80s if I had to guess.) The A-7s were still painted in Southeast Asia camo if that gives you a clue to the date of this tape. Anyway, picture if you will, two SLUFs in trail formation over a bombing range, somewhere out west as I recall. (Barry M. Goldwater Range, perhaps?) Lead A-7 dives in, and puts his bombs perfectly on target. SHACK! Second A-7 dives in, and puts HIMSELF perfectly on target. SHACK and Bad Day! Given the western look to the bombing range, TC would use his wonderful deductive logic, and guess that the A-7s were most likely from DM, or Arizona ANG. Were there any other SLUF units out there? I don't recall there being any others. Also, Gums, did you ever fly the K model (believe that was the 2 seater if I'm not mistaken?) Also, did we use the K model in Nam? But, tell me more about that mishap if anybody knows. Obviously, it was a fatality. But I'd like to know where the jets were from, and where and when it occured. Thanks!

Salute!

Can't recall any ground impact on a range in mid-seventies except one at Barber's Point. 23rd had deployed there. We had other ground impacts, but I never saw any film.

Never flew the K, and they were never used in combat . I know this because:

HABU WARNING HABU WARNING

I led last flight of dedicated attack jets outta the whole damned war in late 1975.

Was neat, as I had flown very same tail number to Korat in 1972 when the 354th deployed for LineBacker 2.

Names deleted for privacy

The 2-seat Corsair II prototype first flew in 1972 and was called the YA-7H (no relation to the later A-7Hs for Greece). The TA-7C was the US Navy production version, first flight was in 1977 - after 'Nam. In 1982 several of the TA-7C were modded into EA-7L electronic aggressor aircraft.

The USAF A-7K was first delivered to ANG units in 1981 - also post 'Nam.

Don't have any info on the mishap.

Thanks for the info that you remembered on the mishap, and the stuff about the K model. The only reason that I would think that the mishap I'm thinking of didn't involve the 23rd, was because I don't remember shark faces on their noses (Did all 23rd TFW SLUFs have shark faces?) I know all 23rd FW Warthogs have shark faces, so one would assume all of their SLUFs did too. Anyway, I'm not finding any info on the net either concerning this mishap. I do remember, however, the name of the tape I was watching was entitled "Airshows and Accidents." Really cool video. Wish I could find it again. Oh yeah, almost forgot. This video did show the footage of the A-7 in Indianapolis, circa 1988, that hit the Indy Ramada. How the hell did that one happen? Think he punched out before he started the remodeling efforts on the hotel.

TC, I think I have a copy of the A-7 target fixation tape. Very hilly range as I recall. I'll see if I can find it over the weekend and view it again.

The A-7 RAMada was an ejection prior to aircraft-hotel interface...

Kevin