A Plane for All Seasons

She would never win a beauty contest. With her snub nose, gangly lines and high waist, she looks a little like a dejected tadpole. And her speed leaves a lot to be desired. But for the 32 officers and 300 men of the Navy's "Tiger" Squadron VA-65, the all-weather A-6 Intruder bomber is the hottest thing in Viet Nam. "The other pilots really bugged us when they first saw the A-6," says Commander Robert C. Mandeville, 39, the squadron leader. "We had to prove the plane." Last week as the Tiger Squadron headed home to the U.S. after five fierce months on the Gulf of Tonkin, it had clearly done just that.

Little Black Boxes. Based on the 80,000-ton carrier Constellation in the Navy's Task Force 77, the Intruder at first found itself overshadowed by the sleeker A-4 Skyhawk and the faster, flashier F-4B Phantom. Powered by two 8,000-lb.-thrust jet engines, the Intruder has a top speed of just under 700 m.p.h., or one-third that of the Phantom. But it can carry 15,000 lbs. of bombs compared with the Phantom's 12,000 lbs. and the Skyhawk's 3,000 lbs. And unlike its beauty-queen cousins, it is a plane for all seasons, equally at home in daylight, darkness, rain or cloud. Its secret is a collection of little black boxes called DIANE (or Digital Integrated Attack Navigation Equipment), a spaghetti bowl of instruments that combines three radars, an inertial-navigation unit, and a small computer that flashes a visual image of terrain contours, buildings and other landmarks below onto a TV screen for the pilot and his bombardier-navigator. Thus, the A-6 pilot can climb into the overcast immediately after takeoff, let DIANE steer him to his target, release the bombs automatically at the optimum moment, and lead him back to clear weather a few minutes from the carrier. Even more important, DIANE's fantastic seeing-eye capability permits a pilot to zoom in toward his target at less than 200 ft., to avoid radar detection. "All the time," says Mandeville, "you haven't seen a thing except your instruments."

The Intruder did not really get to prove its mettle until last month, when the northeast monsoon brought its annual drenching rains and gale winds. While Skyhawk and Phantom pilots remained anchored to their carriers, the Intruders swarmed over North Viet Nam. During the last week of October, the Tigers flew 40% of the missions logged by all of the squadrons aboard Task Force 77's three carriers. Alone or in twos or threes, they struck as far north as Hong Gay, northeast of Haiphong, and as far south as Vinh, smashing highways, bridges and storage dumps, and weathering the hottest fire the enemy could throw at them. "The targets have to be big enough to be easily distinguished by radar," says Mandeville. "And those targets the Communists don't give away without a fight."

Blown Horn. At night, when the Intruders flew almost half their missions, the skies around them were a blaze of red, green, blue, yellow and orange tracers and white puffballs of flak. "It's like Coney Island on the Fourth of luly," says Bombardier-Navigator Dale Purdy. Adds Lieut, (j.g.) Ronald S. ("Zap") Zlatoper, 24, who completed his first bombing run a few months ago: "I figured I'd commit suicide if the rest of the missions were like that." By last week, Zap had logged 93 missions and was as cool as they come.

As it steamed home for a well-earned five-month rest, the squadron left behind a handsome record. In 1,239 sorties, it had destroyed or damaged--among other targets--139 enemy barges and patrol boats, 86 trucks and three key bridges, and had knocked out one of North Viet Nam's most important thermal-power plants. Along the way, the squadron lost only two of its twelve planes. As Mandeville told his squadron when he took over early this year: "We don't need to blow our own horn--the results will show." And so they do.

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