Reflections – McDonnell Douglas Skyhawk

My initial impression of the aircraft focused on the size of the cockpit; it was extremely cramped with barely room to move, most unlike American aircraft which are usually generously designed in this regard.

I was to learn some fifteen years later when I got to check out in the RAN A-4G’s, that Ed Heineman, Douglas’ chief designer, had set out to design the smallest practical attack aircraft and that the cockpit was actually designed to accommodate the 95 percentile man. This is a statistical body size and shape into which 95% of men will fit. It covers important dimensions such as height, girth, arm length, and thigh length. In the case of the Skyhawk, the latter measurement was perhaps the most critical of all because if you exceeded it, you would leave your knee caps behind on ejection!

By the time I got to fly the aircraft I was in my late thirties and had thickened a little in the girth. All my other measurements were OK but it was a battle to do the autopilot checks as the control box was located on the right rear bulkhead of the cockpit and youhad to reach round and look at it to run the checks, particularly in the early stages of your conversion.

With a delta shaped wing of only 27ft 6in wingspan, there was no need for the usual wing fold associated with naval aircraft, however it stood tall at 15ft and had an overall length of 44ft. The controls were powered, with an unusual structural arrangement for the rudder which had external ribs. This was actually a later modification to overcome rudder buzz.

The empty weight of the A-4G was just under 10,500lbs with a maximum takeoff weight of 24,500lbs which could be any combination of weapons or external fuel, a remarkable capability. It was powered by a J52-P-8A turbojet which developed 9,300lbs of thrust. The “wet wing” had a capacity of l,600lbs of internal fuel; in addition three drop tanks each of l,000lbs capacity could be carried giving the aircraft a ferry range of over 2,000nms. Drop tank fuel was transferred to the main tank by air pressure controlled by a switch in the cockpit. Internal fuel was reduced to 700lbs in the two seat TA-4G trainerto compensate for the shift in centre of gravity (C of G) with the extra cockpit.

Slower elevator response at low speed associated with the altered c of g prevented the trainer from being flown from HMAS Melbourne as it had been calculated that there would have been insufficient deck remaining to be able to lift the nose in the event of a “bolter”.

The aircraft had a relatively primitive arrangement for overcoming pitch up when the speed brakes were operated. This consisted of large springs interlinking the speed brakes and the elevator control run. When the brakes were popped, the system grabbed a large handful of elevator and shoved the nose down, independently of the pilot!

Nosewheel steering was provided by pressing a button on top of the control column,the only snag was thatit had to be kept pressed which was a bit of a pain. Surprisingly there was no parking brake which could prove to be tiring if the aircraft had to be held on the brakes for any length of time. Neither was there a battery or the capability of a self start A major feature of the aircraft was the three quarter span leading edge slats which automatically “popped” as speed was reduced in the landing circuit or if high “g” was pulled. In conjunction with the angle ofattack indicator, they made the aircraft relatively easy to fly on the approach. The latter instrument provided a read out of the optimum angle of attack to fly without the pilot having to make allowances for weight and angle of bank. It indicated by chevrons pointing up or down whether to increase or decrease attitude, and a circle when on optimum. Being well and truly on the back end of the drag curve on the approach, the landing was a no flare crunch onto the runway with the excellent undercarriage absorbing the shock.

The aircraft had only one bad characteristic, which proved fatal on one occasion, and that was that it needed some 15,000ft to fall through should it be stalled onits back. It literally fellflat until the nose finally dropped sufficiently to regain control.

By good fortune I returned to NAS Nowra as Commander (Air) shortly after we had taken delivery of the Skyhawks and Trackers so I was ideally placed to check out in our new aircraft. After a couple of dual rides in the TA-4G, my subsequent solo flying was done in the single seater. My initial impressions of a cramped cockpit were confirmed and I always felt as if though I had been squeezed in with a shoe horn. The view ahead was good but severely restricted rearwards. I don’t think I would have been too happy in real air to air combat!

Apart from the cockpit it was a pleasant little aircraft to fly having quite well coordinated controls. It accelerated quite rapidly on take off, particularly in the clean configuration and rotation speed was achieved in a matter of seconds. It was very manoeuvrable at low to medium altitudes but was fairly useless above 20,000ft. One had to remember however that it had been designed as a light tactical strike aircraft and not as a fighter, hence it would have been foolish to think of it as being in the high altitude interceptor league.

Control forces with the hydraulics out were fairly heavy and only gentle manoeuvres were really possible; I doubt that a successful weapons mission would have been possible under these conditions. We used to practise hydraulic-out low precautionary approaches (LPAs) which providing you got the aircraft settled down, and properly lined up, didn’t make for too much sweat.

What was exciting however was the high precautionary approach (HPA) which was an approach designed to effect a landing from a flameout. It was not dissimilar to the approach made by the Space Shuttle, 250kts and a very steep descent requiring aflare to be initiated at a some hundreds offeet on short finals from which if you had got it right, a landing was possible.

It was pleasant to fly on instruments, the avionics fit included Tacan, an ADF and a very good autopilot which had stick steer. This latter facility enabled you to take over from the autopilot by just grasping the control column. When you let go, it would take over again and hold the attitude in which you had left the aircraft.

Having flown Hunters and Scimitars I was not particulary impressed by the Skyhawk’s performance but soon came to realise that it was a first class weapons platform and could carry a load far exceeding that of either of those two aircraft. This was confirmed in my relatively short time in the Skyhawk in which I managed to get in a reasonable amount of weaponry including bombing, rocketing, It was on one such mission when doing a period of refresher from Navy Office where I was now Director of Naval Aviation Policy (DNAP), that I gave myself a good scare. I had an aircraft configured with two drop tanks and carried out the usual fuel transfer checks after start up. This consisted of switching on the drop tank pressurisation and then switching it off whilst a member of the ground crew took the tank caps offto check that the tanks had pressurised. For some reason I failed to remake the switch in my haste to set off for the range.

Half way through the sortie, which was very much head out of the cockpit, I got round to doing an instrument check; to my surprise the main fuel tank reading was way down. A very hasty check ofthe cockpit soon showed why, but to my relief, shortly after making the pressurisation switch, the main tank reading began to increase.

Its funny how the mind works, I wasn’t so much worried about my skin, I was more concerned about the ignominy of the senior FAA staff officer being seen to have screwed it up should I have flamed out!

On the subject of weaponry, the Skyhawk was fitted with a fixed reflector gunsight, not dissimilar to that installed in fighter aircraft before the Second World War! This is all that had been needed in its true role as a strike aircraft, however we were usingit as a poor man’s fighter and needed a gyro gunsight for air to air combat with the two cannon.

As DNAP, I pressed hard to have a lightweight gyro gunsight installed and had almost succeeded when another round of defence cuts saw the demise of the project. It left me pondering the logic of having the whole of the Navy supporting the young fighter pilot as he engaged the enemy, only to have him miss because of the lack of an adequate gunsight!

Again while in Navy Office I developed a somewhat cynical theory that projects which originated at the grass roots level decelerated in their passage upward through the system while those that were dreamt up at the highest levels accelerated downwards towards implementation. Never was this truer than in the case of the acquisition of the second ten Skyhawks. For some reason, which I was not a party to as I was not in the chair at the time, Defence found itself in the embarrassing situation of having underspent for a particular year. The word went out from the Minister that anyone having a project ready to run would stand a good chance. It so happened that Navy had a plan set to go to acquire an additional eight second hand single seatersand two more trainers from the USN.

Never has a project received a more rapid nod, in the normal course of events it would have taken years to fight it through the system but in this case it was done almost overnight. I trust that the procurement procedures are a little more sophisticated now! Returning to the aircraft itself, in addition to weaponry, I checked out at night and on my solo ride discovered a phenomenon not mentioned in any briefing. This occurred if the aircraft was being flown in very still conditions at a certain power setting, when a set of bleed valves associated with the compressor would momentarily open. The effect was very off putting as it felt like a transient loss of power. The type of thing that makes you say in panic “what the hell was that?” When I mentioned it on landing the reply was “sorry, forgot to mention that one!”

The only other aspect of the aircraft worth mentioning was its capability for air to air refueling, something Navy had several decades before the RAA F. I managed to do both a tanker flight and a mission as receiver, neither of which presented any problems. The briefing for the latter was fairly simple ” justfly your right foot into the drogue”.

It was very sad when the Skyhawks went to the Kiwis. Most ofus remember the throw away line, “You can forget about that”, made by the late PM when asked whether his new government would proceed with the plan to acquire HMS Invincible. Seemed to make all those years building up a first classFleet Air Arm worthwhile.

There is no doubt that the Skyhawk served the RAN well. It had the capacity to project medium level airpower, appropriate for our neck ofthe woods, and it could do it on the spot, twenty four hours aday. The fact that the Kiwis are still flying our 25 year old aircraft (albeit highly modified and extremely capable) shows what a solid and dependable machine it is. I count myself lucky to have been in the right posting at the right time to have been able to check out in it.

The next aircraft is the Grumman Tracker, an excellent carrier borne ASW aircraft in its day.