What kind of plane is this?

[SengaB]

Greetings,
I photographed this plane 2 days ago. Instead of searching for the type thought I'd ask here.

Senga

[moose135]

That's a North American A-5 Vigilante. From the fairing on the bottom of the fuselage, looks like it may be an RA-5 recon version.

[Ari707]

http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/a-5_vigilante.pl

[Tom_Turner]

Nice jet Senga.

Locally, there was one on the Intrepid.

I know I've seen another one or two someplace around I have seen. Mabye Lakehurst or Willowgrove..... someplace.


Tom

[cancidas]

isn't that the biggest airplane to operate off a carrier?

[Nick]

I can honestly say I've never seen that before. Looks cool tho.

[GrummanFan]

Yeah, its the biggest one to regularly operate off a carrier...

But I came across this vid of a C-130 landing and taking off on a carrier, so this technically beats it in the "largest" category.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=5mK_9ZGAi7c

[hiss srq]

The Herc had in the early days a rule that the design must be carrier capible but I guess they found it uneconomical due to ramp space. That would be cool though to land a J series on say the Reagan

[SCOTYDEMCO]

Yes the Vigilante! Awsome big loud plane. I remeber seeing one or 2 fly as a kid. Dan is right it is the largest of a carrier wih the exception of that C-130 carrier video. Crazy.

[Tom_Turner]

Surely the Vought Crusader must give the Vigilante a run for size?

But the largest regular carrier based aircraft would be the Douglas Skywarrior -- or at least that is my guess.

Tom

[moose135]

Yes, the Skywarrior was the largest and heaviest to regularly operate off carriers, the Vigilante wasn't far behind. The A-5 was originally designed as a supersonic (Mach 2) nuclear bomber. It has a bomb bay tunnel between the two engines, and the bombs were ejected out the back. The recon version has the added fairing under the fuselage, and has camera and other gear in the bomb bay tunnel.

[Greg_NY]

GrummanFan,

Thanks for the video. I had never seen a C130 land on a carrier.

[SengaB]

Wow thx,
I thought it might have been a Vigilante. For some reason I pictured the Vigil to be much larger.

[moose135]

Hey Senga - if you have the original high-rez photo, zoom in under the horizontal stabilizer, just above the 6-digit Bureau Number. The Navy paints the model number on the airplane, very handy for spotters (and for those Navy pilots who have a hard time with aircraft identification :roll: )

[SengaB]

Thats true,
Unfortunaly it was too small to be clear in the pik :( It was amazing there was this nice park with park benches and gardens around the pane but yet no place to park you car and go up to it...
Senga