'' A-4E/F Skyhawk ''
The history of the A-4 Skyhawk is pretty well documented being an Ed Heinemann (from Douglas) design to meet a US Navy requirement for a lightweight, single-engined, carrier-borne high-performance attack aircraft to meet a variety of roles, including close support, dive-bombing and interdiction. The design was not to add on an ounce of weight unnecessarily and thus emerged the XA4D-1 prototype with a pointy nose and probe, which first flew in June 1954, and a year later the type held the world airspeed record for the 500-km closed circuit at just under 1120 km/h. Within two years it had entered service and the first model A4D-1 (later redesignated to A-4A) featured 20-mm cannon, better engines and a refined nose radome.
Nearly 3,000 Skyhawks were built concluding in 1979, which ended the longest continuing manufacturing run of any US Military aircraft. Pretty good for a design which by that stage was already quarter of a century old! The A-4 made its mark in the mid 60's in the Vietnam war where it performed a number of close air support missions for US troops. Ironically, nearly twenty years later, in the colours of an export customer, the same aircraft took out two landing ships at the Falklands and inflicted heavy casualties among UK troops - an ally of the US.
The A-4E and A-4F models were the second (or some would argue third) generation types of the Skyhawk in US Navy service and introduced mainly upgraded engines to the previous A-4C type and further weapons pylons under the wings. The A-4F was most notably distinguished by its avionics hump along it's spine, but this was retrofitted to many A-4E's, making it difficult to tell the difference between the two types, and even worse, some later A-4F's in adversary roles had the humps removed for better performance. The A-4F also introduced the zero/zero ejection seat into the type for the first time.
