Highlights from visit to USS Midway Museum, April 2017

I first went to the USS Midway Museum in the spring of 2005, and I was astounded to see the array of planes housed in the museum but also to find out that the USS Midway served in three conflicts during her career before leaving the US Navy in 1992. I went to the carrier again in January 2009, and subsequently in 2013 and 2015, but I wanted to share highlights of my most recent visit to the USS Midway Museum in April 2017.

Douglas SBD-4 Dauntless BuNo 54654 (left) and North American SNJ-5 Texan BuNo 91091 (right) inside the hangar deck exhibit of the USS Midway Museum.

The hangar deck of the USS Midway Museum contains planes that were/are stored in the hangar of an aircraft carrier below the flight deck. Although the hangar deck of the Midway houses a plethora of Navy aircraft, just two of the planes in the hangar deck hailed from Southern California, the Douglas SBD Dauntless and North American Texan trainer. 

The SBD Dauntless (also called A-24 in US Army Air Force service) was one of the Navy's premier American dive bombers of World War II, playing a key role in delivering a one-two punch to the Imperial Japanese Navy's carriers at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. Designed by Ed Heinemann in the late 1930s based on the earlier Northrop BT dive bomber and first flown in May 1, 1940, the Dauntless became the US Navy's linchpin in checking the wave of Japanese aggression in the Pacific, sinking all four Japanese carriers at Midway(Akagi, Hiryu, Kaga, and Soryu) and attacking Japanese shipping at the Battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in November 1942. A total of 5,936 SBDs and A-24s were built, and some airframes were built at a Douglas plant in El Segundo, California, while the rest were built in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The SBD was nicknamed "Slow But Deadly" by pilots because of its slow speed relative to propeller-driven fighters but lethality in dealing with the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The North American Texan trainer I photographed in the hangar deck was built for the United States Navy and designated SNJ-5 (SN=Scout Trainer; J=North American Aviation). The Texan was the most mass-produced American monoplane trainer aircraft of World War II, with over 15,000 aircraft built for the US armed forces, the Commonwealth, and many other countries. In US Army Air Corps/US Army Air Force/US Air Force service the Texan was known by several designations, including BC-1, BC-2, AT-6, AT-16, and T-6, while the US Navy referred to the Texan as the SNJ and later TJ. The Royal Air Force and Royal Navy, on the other hand, allocated the name Harvard to the Texan in accordance with the tendency to name trainer aircraft after universities and other places of tuition.

Douglas attack aircraft on USS Midway deck, from left to right: Douglas AD-4W Skyraider (BuNo 127922); Douglas EKA-3B Skywarrior (BuNo 142251); Douglas A-4F Skyhawk (BuNo 154977).

Going up to the flight deck of the USS Midway Museum, one of the most formidable sights on display on the deck was a trio of attack aircraft designed at the El Segundo Division of Douglas Aircraft by Ed Heinemann (1908-1991). Capitalizing on the success of his SBD Dauntless dive bomber, Heinemann worked on advanced piston-engine attack aircraft for the US Navy in the last years of World War II, including the SB2D/BTD Destroyer, TB2D Skypirate torpedo-bomber, and eventually the BTD/AD Skyraider (designated A-1 under a 1962 Tri-service aircraft designation system), but only the Skyraider entered mass production. Despite arriving too late for World War II (its first flight was on March 18, 1945, about 6 months before V-J day), the Skyraider would go on to see action in Korea and Vietnam, with over 3,100 aircraft built, serving with Navy, Air Force, and Marines in ground attack and counter-insurgency (COIN) functions. During the Vietnam War, the Americans and South Vietnamese used Skyraiders to launch rocket attacks against Vietcong positions in South Vietnam. The A3D/A-3 Skywarrior, on the other hand, was designed by Heinemann himself in response to a US Navy requirement for a nuclear-armed strategic bomber that could operate from large carriers. Nicknamed the "Whale" by Navy crews due to its large size, the Skywarrior became the mainstay of the Navy's strategic nuclear strike force in the 1950s, but as the Cold War progressed, it became adapted for use as a tanker, electronic warfare platform, and photo-reconnaissance plane, especially during the Vietnam War. The A-4 Skyhawk on the Midway deck, however, was the most prolific Cold War aircraft design conceived by Ed Heinemann. Nicknamed the "Hot Rod", it was originally designated A4D and became popular with Navy pilots accustomed to close air support, with 2,960 built. The Skyhawk served in the Vietnam War, Yom Kippur War, and Falklands War, and A-4s were exported to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Israel, Kuwait, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore; Argentina used its A-4s against British vessels in the Falklands. Although the A-4 no longer serves its country of origin, a small number of Skyhawks still fly with Argentina.

North American T-2 Buckeye jet trainer (BuNo 156697) (left); North American RA-5C Vigilante reconnaissance jet (BuNo 156641) (middle); Lockheed S-3 Viking ASW aircraft (BuNo 159766) (right)

The flight deck of the USS Midway also has three other jet aircraft built in Southern California on display. The North American T-2 Buckeye (originally T2J) was a jet trainer developed and built in the late 1950s to conduct flight training for a new generation of Navy and Marine Corps aviators. For most of its career beginning in 1959 it was the US Navy's premier jet trainer until the early 1990s, when it began to be supplanted in service by the T-45 Goshawk, a US-built copy of the British BAE Systems Hawk jet trainer. A total of 529 Buckeyes were produced, and a small number were delivered to the air forces of Greece and Venezuela; the Hellenic Air Force remains the only foreign operator of the T-2 Buckeye. The North American A-5 Vigilante (originally A3J) was originally developed as a supersonic bomber to replace the Navy's A-3 Skywarriors in the strategic nuclear warfighting mission. First flown in August 1958, the Vigilante's career as a nuclear strike aircraft was brief because of the deployment of the George Washington-class ballistic missile submarines and Polaris SLBM, so the Vigilante ended up becoming a tactical reconnaissance plane, the RA-5C. During the Vietnam War, the RA-5C served as a tactical reconnaissance strike vehicle, and in 1979 the last Vigilantes were retired from Navy service. The Lockheed S-3 Viking was an anti-submarine jet aircraft built in the early 1970s as a replacement for the Navy's piston-engine S-2 Tracker fleet. Although primarily designed for anti-submarine warfare, by the late 1990s, its primary mission shifted to surface warfare and aerial refueling. Over 180 S-3s were built, and they became known as the "Swiss Army Knife of Naval Aviation" due to their use for anti-submarine warfare, electronic warfare, refueling, and surface surveillance. US President George W. Bush flew an S-3 to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003 in preparation for his announcement of the end of major US combat operations in Iraq (not to mention the controversial "Mission Accomplished" banner on the mast of the Abraham Lincoln) The Viking was retired from Navy service aboard carriers in January 2009 due to its primary role being taken up by the P-3 Orion ocean reconnaissance aircraft and SH-60/MH-60 Seahawk ASW helicopter; a small number were reactivated by the Navy in June 2010 and served with experimental Navy squadron VX-30 until January 2016, while NASA operates a small number of S-3s for aviation safety research, environmental research, and satellite communications testing.