Ken wrote:
I flew many times at the airline with a former A3 pilot; great guy. While he had hoped to fly fighters, he always said that strong grades during carrier training locked him into the A3. It had a reputation for requiring extra skill and, according to him, the A3 assignments went out ahead of everything else to ensure the right guys were flying it. He was later an A3 instructor and told some hair raising stories about teaching someone else while stuck in the right seat with no control stick ....
Ken
My father told me a story once (actually about a hundred times) about operations in the Med in KA-3 tankers. The fighter used to run practice intercepts on them during training. Whenever there were noob pilots in the fighter squadron this one particular whale pilot my father flew with like to knock some of the shine off their bars. The Phantom would come zipping in on intercept and work up a firing position on the KA-3. Something that was not widely known at the time is that the A-3 at full throttle is faster than a F-4 Phantom... until the afterburners kick in and then its no contest. Well these noob pilot would work up a firing solution and my father would give a running commentary on what the Phantom was doing. The Whale pilot would firewall the throttle and slowly pull away from the Phantom, frustrating the solution for the noob. The Phantom would try and catch up but couldn't, the moment the Phantom went to afterburners my father would warn his pilot and the he would chop the throttle, drop the flaps, open the speed brakes and drop the gear and tail hook to make the Whale as dirty as possible.
The over eager Phantom pilot would suddenly find the Skywarrior hanging in the air like a brick relative to his speed and he would overshoot. The Whale pilot would choose his moment, clean up everything and go to full throttle as the inexperienced Phantom pilot tried to rapidly slow down (not the smartest move). The Whale would slip in behind the Phantom and the pilot would declare "GUNS GUNS GUNS" over the radio, indicating he was "shooting down" the noob.
Suffice is to say, EVERYONE on the carrier new the noob pilot was shot down by a whale before the Phantoms tailhook caught the wire.
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Awesome story Scott! You gotta love stuff like that. KA-3s were our tankers on Forrestal-class boats when I was aboard flattops in '76-'78...don't know when they phased them out. I don't recall every seeing the bomber versions; I think they were already gone by then. Your dad had a GREAT job...a flying Plane Captain/crewman as opposed to us Phantom Plane Captains. Though I did manage to get one F-4 flight in the back seat before I rotated out.
