Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aircraft and Vehicles => Topic started by: cav58d on July 29, 2006, 04:46:00 PM
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You have to be kidding me...Discovery Military channel just said there was a version of the Skyraider that was nuclear capable lol...I wouldnt want to be that pilot
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LoL, what were they supposed to do... dive bombing a Nuke??
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Found on the web:
The AD-4B was a version of the AD-4 designed to carry and deliver nuclear weapons. The airframe was strengthened to make it possible for the airplane to deliver nuclear weapons by the over-the-shoulder toss bombing technique. It was also armed with 4 20-mm cannon in the wings.
28 AD-4s were converted to AD-4B standards, whereas 165 AD-4Bs were built from scratch. Tests were carried out with an externally-carried dummy atomic bomb, but no AD-4B ever dropped an actual atomic bomb in a test. It may very well be the case that the AD-4B never flew with an actual atomic weapon slung underneath it. The AD-4B was apparently used as a political tool in the Navy's battle with the Air Force over the B-36 bomber. The Navy eagerly wanted a nuclear role for its fleet of carriers.
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OK, so it trolled low doing 160 kts. What was it supposed to do, drop it - haul bellybutton and hide behind a mountain when the bomb was on a long timer?
Widewing, what was the employment strategy?
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Wasn't it almost like toss bombing?
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They're probably talking about relatively low yield strategic nukes designed to be deployed directly on the battlefield. A small nuke designed to be used against massed armor or something of that nature, for example.
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A small device in the 1-10kt range wouldn't be very effective on armor beyond 1km if your speaking of pure blast and heat pulse effects - esp the NBC equipped varients. An enhanced rad weapon in the 1kt yield would only have lethal effects on armor out to 700 meters, while a pure fission device would be 400 meters.
So a small weapon I could understand, but considering the size of the devices in use when this aircraft was flying, and since ER weapons didn't come along till the late 70s early 80s, i'm just having a problem placing the aircraft in a useful scenario where it would be best used.
Wolf
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Whats wrong with that ?
Its more easy to escape with a Skyraider than with a b29.
More fast especialy in a dive, less wing loading (resistance in the shock wave).
In general very tough plane (prooven also in the field of battle).
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Low yield nukes, or drop it from a high altitude, and has already been stated, dive away?
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Originally posted by Captain Virgil Hilts
They're probably talking about relatively low yield strategic nukes designed to be deployed directly on the battlefield. A small nuke designed to be used against massed armor or something of that nature, for example.
You mean tactical nukes then, right?
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SkyRaider (A-1) and SkyHawk (A-4) are not the same plane, DiabloTX.
A low-yield device delivered in a vertical toss against troops massing at some location, i.e. river crossing conceived during (and post) Korea.
Just because it was a plan doesn't mean it was a good plan...
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Widewing will show up any minute fellas and tell us what's really up. :D
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here is a link that you might find some stuff on. :aok[URL=one more]
[url]http://www.swordsmen.org/skyraider.htm (http://www.warbirdalley.com/a1.htm)[/URL]
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Originally posted by DiabloTX
You mean tactical nukes then, right?
Yeah.
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I know we are talking about the SkyRaider, but my Dad was an A-4 pilot and he said that they did indeed practice the "toss" bombing technique for use with tactial nukes. He said the nuke attack profile for the A-4 was sharp pull up and at a certain angle (I forget now, but I think it was 60 degrees) release the bomb, and split-S to egress as fast as the thing would go.
Needless to say, Dad said he never thought that it would have been a very usefull operation (especially for the A-4 pilots), and it was more a result of the first decade of the Cold War where every attack plane had to have a nuke capacity regardless of its practicality.
Werent some tactical nukes fitted with parachutes to give the planes time to egress?
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Guys, you can read about nuke armed Spads (ADs) on Dan Ford's website here. (http://www.warbirdforum.com/toss.htm)
Follow some of the other links for some interesting reading, such as this one. (http://www.warbirdforum.com/spadltr.htm)
My regards,
Widewing
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Ah, thanks for the link WW. The method described by the Banshee pilot is what my dad told me, I got it wrong. They did the loft at near verticle sending the bomb to high altitude and did a Cuban eight, not a split-S to egress.
Dad never did any live ord drops, but his oppinion was the same as the AD pilot. He definately thought if they ever had done a real nuke mission in the A-4 it would have been a one-way trip.
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So a baro alt or contact fuse for a 1 way trip with no hope of escaping the blast.
Nice plan.
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In one of the letters on Ford's site from former pilots trained to do nuke toss bomb attacks, a pilot writes...
"Our pilots were tossing practice bombs into 25 ft circles from 5 miles!"
Now I know where Pyro and HiTech got the current AH2 bombsight modeling! ;)
My regards,
Widewing
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Originally posted by Rolex
SkyRaider (A-1) and SkyHawk (A-4) are not the same plane, DiabloTX.
A low-yield device delivered in a vertical toss against troops massing at some location, i.e. river crossing conceived during (and post) Korea.
Just because it was a plan doesn't mean it was a good plan...
Ummmm...where did I say they were???
The info that I posted can be found here. (http://home.att.net/~jbaugher4/newa1.html)
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NM.