Korean War The Skyraider was produced too late for use in World War II, but became the backbone of United States Navy aircraft carrier and United States Marine Corps strike aircraft sorties in the
Korean War (1950–1953), with the first ADs going into action from with
VA-55 on 3 July 1950. Its weapons load and 10-hour flying time far surpassed the jets that were available at the time. On 2 May 1951, Skyraiders made the only
aerial torpedo attack of the war, hitting the
Hwacheon Dam, then controlled by North Korea. On 16 June 1953, a USMC AD-4 from
VMC-1 shot down a Soviet-built
Polikarpov Po-2 biplane, the only documented Skyraider air victory of the war. AD-3N and -4N aircraft carrying bombs and flares, flew night-attack sorties, and radar-equipped ADs carried out radar-jamming missions from carriers and land bases. Marine Corps Skyraiders suffered heavy losses when used in low-level close-support missions. To allow low-level operations to continue without unacceptable losses, a package of additional armor was fitted, consisting of thick external aluminum armor plates fitted to the underside and sides of the aircraft's fuselage. The armor package weighed a total of and had little effect on performance or handling. A total of 128 Navy and Marine AD Skyraiders were lost in the Korean War – 101 in combat and 27 to operational causes. Most operational losses were due to the tremendous power of the AD: ADs that were "waved-off" during carrier recovery operations were prone to performing a fatal torque roll into the sea or the deck of the aircraft carrier if the pilot mistakenly gave the AD too much throttle.
Cathay Pacific VR-HEU incident On 26 July 1954, two Douglas Skyraiders from the aircraft carriers and shot down two
Chinese PLAAF Lavochkin fighters off the coast of
Hainan Island while searching for survivors after the
shooting down of a Cathay Pacific Douglas DC-4 Skymaster airliner three days previously.
Vietnam War in 1965 As American involvement in the
Vietnam War began, the A-1 Skyraider was still the medium attack aircraft in many
carrier air wings, although it was planned to be replaced by the
A-6A Intruder as part of the general switch to jet aircraft. Skyraiders from and participated in the first US Navy strikes against
North Vietnam on 5 August 1964 as part of
Operation Pierce Arrow in response to the
Gulf of Tonkin Incident, striking against fuel depots at
Vinh, with one Skyraider from
Ticonderoga damaged by
anti-aircraft fire, and a second from
Constellation shot down, killing its pilot, Lieutenant Richard Sather.
Shoot-downs During the war, US Navy Skyraiders used their cannon to shoot down two
Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF)
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 jet fighters. The first, on 20 June 1965 by
Lieutenant Clinton B. Johnson and
Lt. (jg) Charles W. Hartman III of
VA-25, was the first gun kill of the Vietnam War. The other was on 9 October 1966 by Lt. (jg) William T. Patton of
VA-176. On 10 March 1966, USAF
Major Bernard F. Fisher flew an A-1E mission and was awarded the
Medal of Honor for rescuing Major "Jump" Myers at
A Shau Special Forces Camp during the
Battle of A Sau. USAF
Colonel William A. Jones III piloted an A-1H on 1 September 1968 mission for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. In that mission, despite damage to his aircraft and suffering serious burns, he returned to his base and reported the position of a downed US airman. Col. Oscar Mauterer ejected from his A-1 after taking heavy enemy fire while providing cover for a damaged friendly aircraft on February 15, 1966. Radio reports confirmed Mauterer had a good chute, but was captured by enemy forces. Mauterer is still POW/MIA status. The next A-1 was shot down on 29 April 1966, and Pilot Capt. Grant N. Tabor, was lost on 19 April 1967; both were from the
602 Air Commando Squadron. A Skyraider from Navy Squadron
VA-25 on a ferry flight from
Naval Air Station Cubi Point (Philippines) to was lost to two Chinese MiG-17s on 14 February 1968: Lieutenant (jg) Joseph P. Dunn, USN flew too close to the Chinese island of
Hainan and was intercepted. Lieutenant Dunn's A-1H Skyraider 134499 (Canasta 404) was the last Navy A-1 lost in the war. He was observed to survive the ejection and deploy his raft, but was never found. Initially listed as missing in action, he is now listed as killed in action and posthumously promoted to the rank of Commander. In October 1965, to highlight the dropping of the six millionth pound of ordnance,
Commander Clarence J. Stoddard of VA-25, flying an A-1H, dropped a special, one-time-only object in addition to his other munitions – a toilet. During the Vietnam War, the US Navy lost 65 Skyraiders, 48 of these in combat. The US Air Force used the naval A-1 Skyraider for the first time in Vietnam. As the Vietnam War progressed, USAF A-1s were painted in
camouflage, while USN A-1 Skyraiders were gray/white in color in contrast to the Korean War, when A-1s were painted dark blue. After November 1972, all A-1s in US service in
Southeast Asia were transferred to the RVNAF. The Skyraider in Vietnam pioneered the concept of tough, survivable aircraft with long loiter times and large ordnance loads. The USAF lost 191 Skyraiders in Southeast Asia, 150 of these in combat. Of the combined total of 256 lost A-1s, five were shot down by
surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), and three were shot down in air-to-air combat; the rest were shot down by
anti-aircraft artillery.
Republic of Vietnam Air Force The A-1 Skyraider was the close air support workhorse of the RVNAF for much of the Vietnam War. The US Navy began to transfer some of its Skyraiders to the RVNAF in September 1960, replacing the RVNAF's older
Grumman F8F Bearcats. By 1962 the RVNAF had 22 of the aircraft in its inventory, and by 1968 an additional 131 aircraft had been received. Initially Navy aviators and crews were responsible for training their South Vietnamese counterparts on the aircraft, but over time responsibility was gradually transferred to the USAF. The initial trainees were selected from among RVNAF Bearcat pilots who had accumulated 800 to 1200 hours flying time. They were trained at
NAS Corpus Christi, Texas, and then sent to
NAS Lemoore, California for further training. Navy pilots and crews in Vietnam checked out the Skyraiders that were being transferred to the RVNAF, and conducted courses for RVNAF ground crews. Over the course of the war, the RVNAF acquired a total of more than 350 Skyraiders, and was operating six A-1 squadrons by the end of 1965. About one third of these were A-1E/G. These were reduced during the period of
Vietnamization from 1968 to 1972, as the US began to supply the South Vietnamese with more modern close air support aircraft, such as the
A-37 Dragonfly and
Northrop F-5, and at the beginning of 1968, only three of its squadrons were flying A-1s. As the US ended its direct involvement in the war, it transferred the remainder of its Skyraiders to the South Vietnamese, and by 1973, all remaining Skyraiders in US inventories had been turned over to the RVNAF. Unlike their American counterparts, whose combat tours were generally limited to 12 months, individual South Vietnamese Skyraider pilots ran up many thousands of combat hours in the A-1, and many senior RVNAF pilots were extremely skilled in the operation of the aircraft. The last Skyraiders transferred to the VNAF were 23 A-1H/J and 21 A-1E/G in late 1972. In 1974, 61 were put in storage. A year later, eleven fled to Thailand (5 A-1E, 1 A-1G, 5 A-1H) and more than 40 were captured by North Vietnam. A-1H 134600 was operated by the VNAF from 1965 to 1975. In 1997, it was acquired by the U. S. Army Center of Military History before it was restored and put on display at the National Museum of the USAF in 2022 (painted as 52–139738).
United Kingdom , based at
Royal Naval Air Station Culdrose, in flight in the 1950s The Royal Navy acquired 50 AD-4W early warning aircraft in 1951 through the
Military Assistance Program. All Skyraider AEW.1s were operated by
849 Naval Air Squadron, which provided four-plane detachments for the British carriers. Flights from and took part in the
Suez Crisis in 1956.
778 Naval Air Squadron was responsible for the training of the Skyraider crews at
RNAS Culdrose until July 1952. In 1960, the
Fairey Gannet AEW.3 replaced the Skyraiders, using the
AN/APS-20 radar of the Douglas aircraft. The last British Skyraiders were retired in 1962. The Skyraiders were first ordered in 1956 and the first was handed over to the French Air Force on 6 February 1958 after being overhauled and fitted with some French equipment by Sud-Aviation. The aircraft were used until the end of the
Algerian War. The aircraft were used by the 20e
Escadre de Chasse (EC 1/20 "Aures Nementcha", EC 2/20 "Ouarsenis" and EC 3/20 "Oranie") and EC 21 in the close air support role armed with rockets, bombs and
napalm. The Skyraiders had only a short career in Algeria, but they nonetheless proved to be the most successful of all the ad hoc
counter-insurgency aircraft deployed by the French. The Skyraider remained in limited French service until the 1970s. (several aircraft from Gabon and Chad were recovered by French warbird enthusiasts and entered on the French civil register). The French frequently used the aft station to carry maintenance personnel, spare parts and supplies to forward bases. In Chad they even used the aft station for a "bombardier" and his "special stores" – empty beer bottles – as these were considered as
non-lethal weapons, thus not breaking the government-imposed rules of engagement, during operations against Libyan-supported rebels in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ==Variants==