Warbird Information Exchange

As a Docent on the USS Midway Museum one of my duties calls for me to man a ready room dedicated to the A-6 community and answer guest questions. In that ready room is a Grumman produced video that captured a still from the A2F's first flight. In that still I can clearly see what certainly look like gun ports on the leading edge of the port (left) wing. Do any of you Intruder fans out there have any idea as to the Navy's original specs calling for guns in the wings?

Greg
San Diego, CA

If anybody knows it would probably be here
http://www.airwarriors.com/community/in ... general.4/

I do not think there was ever any thought of an internal gun on the A2F-1/A-6 Intruder, even in early designs.

This poor photo of an unpainted early A2F, likely the first protoype, does show 3 round objects on the inner leading edge of the port wing, so guess we can't call you crazy, but I do not think they are gun ports. http://www.aerofiles.com/grum-a2proto.jpg



And this source shows the prototype flew for 8 hours before being painted. After the paint job, the "ports" no longer show up. Perhaps the were just some type of marking or something to do with the production process such as a rivet pattern?

http://www.cradleofaviation.org/history ... n_a-6.html

No painted YAF or A-6 seems to show anything there. A photo of the mockup shows nothing there.

I think the photo in question is also published on page 431 of Grumman Aircraft since 1929 by Rene J. Francillon, and there is no mention of in-wing armament in any of the texts I've read. The holes might be for test measurements on the prototype or some carry over from past ground attack designs before the decision to pylon mount all the weapons. Remember, this was the time that the early IR and radar guided missiles were replacing the gun - until it was found they were needed again for the fighters at least. My 2 cents.

Randy

A cutaway found here : http://thelexicans.files.wordpress.com/ ... 070037.jpg
shows the spots to be part of an ECM antenna. The cutaway is of a much later aircraft, but it could be a similar system installed or at least anticipated

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Lest Hero-worship raise it's head and cloud our vision, remember that World War II was fought and won by the same sort of twenty-something punks we wouldn't let our daughters date.