The Corsair II
The A-7A made its inaugural flight in September 1965, and exactly one year later, the first operational squadrons started receiving the aircraft to train pilots for its frontline deployment. By that point, naval aviation was deeply involved in the air conflict over Vietnam, so the initial tactical squadron equipped with the Corsair II, Attack Squadron (VA) 147, embarked on its first cruise under combat conditions, undertaking its initial missions over North Vietnam in December 1967. By this time, its successor, the A-7B, was already in the production phase, with its first flight taking place in February 1968. In total, seven production variants of the aircraft were in service with the Navy, including the two-seat TA-7C and the EA-7L designed for electronic countermeasures. Additionally, the A-7D was operationally used by the U.S. Air Force.
The last version of the Corsair II was the A-7E, which took to the skies for the first time in November 1968, and was equipped with a 14,250 lb. static thrust Allison TF41-A-2 engine, enhanced avionics and hydraulic systems, and a multi-barrel M61 cannon. During the production run of the A-7E, which totaled 535 aircraft, features such as Target-Recognition Attack Multi-Sensors (TRAM) and Forward Looking Infra-Red (FLIR) were added to enhance the aircraft’s attack capabilities.
A-7D/E BDA camera
A little-known feature of the A-7D/E is that she had a bomb-damage-assessment (BDA) camera, as David Tussey, former US Navy A-7E Corsair II pilot, explains on Quora;
‘The A-7E (and the USAF “D” model) had an internal camera, a Fairchild KB-18. It was mounted on the bottom rear of the fuselage and would activate when bombs were dropped. The idea was that it would capture photos of the bomb impacts and thus provide a bomb-damage assessment (BDA) without the need for a separate “recce” flight. The camera would perform a panorama scanning.
‘Unfortunately, it never worked well. The location on the bottom of the fuselage meant that it was constantly covered with dirt, oil, and debris. The glass enclosure that the camera looked through quickly became cloudy and blurred. And the KB-18 used this weird, hard-to-procure film. Very expensive. Pain in the rear to maintain and install/extract the film.
‘And even worse was the fact that in order to get a good BDA, the bombing aircraft had to execute a smooth, linear pullout after releasing the ordnance. That’s not generally what you want to do…drop your bombs and then get the hell out of there.
5% success, 95% failure
‘I was in a squadron where we worked for a long time to get the KB-18 to work. We met with some success, but it was 5% success, 95% failure. Simply not worth it.’
Circled in Red:
Tussey concludes;
‘I think it was another of those technologies that everyone thought would work great on the A-7D/E, but which never panned out (See: TA/TF radar, auto-throttle, some of the autopilot modes, doppler radar, etc.)’
Fairchild KB-18 panoramic strike camera.
Photo by Cmdr. John R. Leenhouts / U.S. Navy
