. . . and one from the Daily Mississippian
Paul Quinn, known around here as dmwriter, reports Friday’s and the weekend’s developments to and from the Ole Miss campus. Everybody he interviews is still suffering an advanced case of mealymouth, you’ll note.
(Watch out, Paul, it’s sure going around there, and catching it will do you no good in class today . . . might better buzz by the med school and bum you an OR mask.)
March 17, 2008 at 11:33 am
Just an insignicant sidebar intended merely to correct the record: Dick was not a Navy fighter pilot … he was a Navy medium-bomber pilot, and a damn fine one at that. His bird was a strike aircraft, the A6 Intruder. I know this adds nothing to the conversation for slack-jawed civilians, but it’s a point we old Navy warbirds take seriously.
March 17, 2008 at 12:34 pm
It matters in two ways– it’s factually the truth, and it is a fact that is material to a lot of folks. So thanks for the observation. I’ll have to check back to a couple of stories in the newspapers and see if they’d had it right.
March 17, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Ben, weren’t some A-6’s capable of being armed with AIM-9’s?
Wouldn’t that techically make them a fighter when so armed?
But, it’s the same mentality. My cousin married an F-14 pilot. Anyone who thinks carrier pilots use the same risk vs. benefit matrix as eveyone else, needs to hang out with some of them. Something that I still think figures into this whole thing somewhere.
March 17, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Ben Cole is right. Scruggs is routinely referred to as a fighter pilot, when in fact he flew the two-seater A-6.
I made a post some weeks ago that made reference to an old Time magazine article. In the article, Scruggs claimed responsiblity for an aerial anti-ship tactic that involved a fast approach under enemy radar, and then popping up at the last moment to hit the hostile ship’s missile battery with anti-tank ordnance. This was during the elevated alert at the time of the Yom Kippur War, when clashes with Soviet warships were deemed likely.
Don’t know if the tactic Scruggs described was an established one, and he was engaging in a little self-promotion by claiming it as his own, but it struck me as a damned bold one.
March 17, 2008 at 3:20 pm
No, Dick wasn’t self-promoting or exaggerating the lo-lo-popup anti-shipping tactic. That was during a time (late 60’s-early 70’s)that the Soviets were providing Komar boats— missile-launching gunboats—to the United Arab Republic (mostly, Egypt) and was rapidly expanding its (USSR’s) naval presence in the Mediterranean Sea, where Scruggs flew from carriers comprising the 6th Fleet.
The A6 community thrived on perfecting tactics that combined below-radar offensive operations plus effective electronic countermeasures (radar and communications jamming). While the Airforce boasts of its stealthiness, it still depends on Navy EA6 electronic jamming aircraft to permit those billion-dollar stealthy dodos to make their runs to the targets and escape.
While, technically, AIM-9 Sidewinder air-to-air missiles could be loaded aboard an A6’s weapons stations, I never saw such and am unaware of any situation in which an A6 was used as a tactical fighter.
This I do know: all the thrust in Christendom couldn’t turn an A6 into a fighter.
March 17, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Interesting and informative post, Ben Cole. Thanks for all that.
I just finished Abraham Rabinovich’s book on the Yom Kippur War, and there was mention of the Komar class boats. Also a good bit about the maneuvering of the U.S. fleet, including Scruggs’ carrier, the Franklin D. Roosevelt.