The Douglas A-3 (originally, A3D) Skywarrior, known as the
Whale, offers several insights to modern carrier and aircraft (in particular, a
large, long range air superiority fighter) design.
To briefly review, the Whale was the largest aircraft to
routinely operate from a carrier (the E-2 Hawkeye comes close depending on what
parameter one looks at). With a crew of
3-7, depending on the variant, it filled the roles of strike, nuclear strike, electronic
warfare (EW), tanker, recon, and bomb damage assessment. The ample room in the aircraft afforded great
flexibility in design of the many variants.
The aircraft served from the 1950’s to 1991.
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| A-3 Skywarrior |
Interestingly, the A-3 had the most capacity of any Navy
tanker, delivering 29,000 lb of fuel at 460 miles (see, “Navy Aerial Refueling”).
The Navy is currently struggling to develop a tanker with half that
capacity (stated goal of 15,000 lb at 500 miles).
What lessons does the A-3 Skywarrior/Whale offer for today’s
ship and aircraft designs?
Aircraft Weight – A constant claim, today, is that we
can’t operate large tankers, large air superiority fighters, or any large
aircraft because we can’t launch/recover heavy aircraft. This is patently false as the Whale
demonstrated. We not only routinely
operated the Whale from carriers but we did so from post-WWII Essex and Midway
class carriers![1] The steam catapults
of the day were sufficient to launch the 40,000-80,000 lb Whale which leads one
to wonder why we felt we needed EMALS. We
could launch and recover heavy aircraft before.
We didn’t need EMALS and certainly didn’t need it until it was fully
debugged and ready.
Aircraft weight, at least up to that of the Whale, is not a
constraint on modern carrier or aircraft design.
Aircraft Size - There is a common misbelief that we
can’t operate aircraft much larger than a Hornet from a carrier deck. For example, this fallacy is used to argue
against large air superiority fighters. However,
we see from the Whale’s operational history that this is not true. The A-3 was 72 ft long with a 76 ft wingspan
and we managed to operate them from post-WWII Essex and Midway class carriers
up through the supercarriers of the Nimitz class. This doesn’t mean we can have an air wing of
90+ Whale size aircraft but it means we can certainly operate larger aircraft
than we have now (the Hornet). Our
carrier decks are barely half-full. We
can easily operate many more large aircraft.
Payload – Weapons were carried in an internal bomb
bay which demonstrates that large amounts of weapons can be carried internally
on a large fighter – how large, of course, is the question. An AMRAAM is around 360 lbs so, in theory, a
Skywarrior could have carried 33 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles (ignoring actual
launch mechanisms and dimensional constraints).
Carrier Design – The A-3 initially operated from
post-WWII Essex and Midway carriers thus demonstrating that the massive deck of
the Nimitz/Ford is not a requirement to operate large aircraft. We don’t have to constantly design larger and
larger carriers. We simply have to
remember how to operate large air wings on moderate sized carrier decks. Our current air wings are steadily shrinking
while the carriers are steadily increasing in size. What’s wrong with this picture?
Air Superiority
Fighter
Let’s look at the specific case of the air superiority
fighter. As you know, ComNavOps has
proposed a very long range, air superiority fighter and, due to existing
paradigms among commenters, arguments have claimed that it’s not possible to
design a suitably long range fighter and that, if it were possible, the
aircraft would be:
-too large to operate from a carrier
-too heavy to operate from a carrier
-unable to carry enough weapons
and, finally, that if such an aircraft could be built,
there’s no room on a carrier for such an aircraft.
As the Whale routinely demonstrated, we can, and did,
operate large, heavy aircraft from a carrier – larger and heavier than anything
we operate currently. Combined with the
nearly half-size air wings, we have lots of room for large aircraft such as a
long range, air superiority fighter.
Conclusion
We’ve forgotten what we were once had and what we were once capable
of doing and now believe those things to be impossible. The only impossibility seems to be
remembering what we once had.
Routine operation of large, heavy aircraft was long ago
proven. This invalidates the argument
that we can’t operate a large air superiority fighter from a carrier.
The Whale proved that we don’t need EMALS or Advanced
Arresting Gear to operate large, heavy aircraft. The ancient steam catapult and landing gear
were perfectly adequate. We could revert
to the Kitty Hawk carrier design and be perfectly capable of operating many
large air superiority fighters.
So says the Whale!
____________________________
-too heavy to operate from a carrier
-unable to carry enough weapons
