The A-4 Skyhawk is an attack aircraft originally designed to operate from United States Navy aircraft carriers. Fifty years after the type's first flight, some of the nearly 3,000 Skyhawks produced remain in service with smaller air arms around the world. The aircraft was formerly the A4D Skyhawk, and was designed by the Douglas Aircraft Corporation, later McDonnell Douglas, now Boeing.

The Skyhawk was designed by Douglas' Ed Heinemann in response to a U.S. Navy call for a jet-powered attack aircraft to replace the A-1 Skyraider. Heinemann opted for a design that would minimize size, weight, and complexity. The result was an aircraft that weighed only half of the Navy's specification and had a wing so compact that it did not need to be folded for carrier stowage. The diminutive Skyhawk soon received the nicknames "Scooter", "Bantam Bomber", "Tinker Toy Bomber", and, on account of its nimble performance, "Heinemann's Hot-Rod."

The Navy issued a contract for the type on June 12th, 1952, and the first prototype first flew on June 22, 1954. Deliveries to Navy and U.S. Marine Corps squadrons commenced in late 1956.

The Skyhawk remained in production until 1975, with a total of 2,960 aircraft built, including 555 two-seat trainers. The US Navy began removing the aircraft from its front-line squadrons in 1967, with the last retiring in 1975. The Marines would pass on the A-7 Corsair II. The last USMC Skyhawk was delivered in 1979, and were used until the mid-1990s until they were replaced by the similarly small, but V/STOL vertical landing AV-8 Harrier.

Pictured here is a 1:72 scale replica of a USN McDonnell Douglas A-4B Skyhawk attack aircraft that was piloted by Cdr. L. W. Baldwin who was attached to VA-106 "Gladiator", then embarked upon the USS Essex (CV-9). Sold Out!

Dimensions:
Wingspan: 4-3/4-inches
Length: 6-3/4-inches

Release Date: July 2007

Historical Account: "Taking the Lead" - USS Essex (CV-9) (also CVA-9 and CVS-9) was a United States Navy aircraft carrier, the lead ship of her class.

She was launched July 31st, 1942 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., sponsored by Mrs. Artemus L. Gates, wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air, and commissioned December 31st, 1942, Captain Donald B. Duncan commanding.

In the spring of 1960, she was converted into an ASW Support Carrier and was thereafter home ported at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Since that time she operated as flagship of Carrier Division 18 and Antisubmarine Carrier Group Three. She conducted rescue and salvage operations off the New Jersey coast for a downed blimp; cruised with midshipmen, and was deployed on NATO and CENTO exercises. In November she joined the French navy in Operation "Jet Stream".

The Essex had just finished several months of work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and was at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for sea trials when President Kennedy placed a naval "quarantine" on Cuba in October 1962, in response to the discovered presence Soviet missiles in that country (see Cuban Missile Crisis). (The word quarantine was used rather than blockade for reasons of international law - Kennedy reasoned that a blockade would be an act of war, and war had not been declared between the U.S. and Cuba.) The Essex spent over a month in the Caribbean as one of the US Navy ships enforcing this "quarantine", returning home just before Thanksgiving.

The Essex was scheduled to be the prime recovery carrier for the ill fated Apollo 1 space mission. It was to pick up the Apollo 1 astronauts north of Puerto Rico on March 7th, 1967 after a 14-day spaceflight. However, the mission did not take place because on January 27th, 1967, the Apollo 1 crew were killed by a flash fire in their spacecraft on the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center.

Essex was the prime recovery carrier for the Apollo 7 mission. She recovered the Apollo 7 crew on October 22nd, 1968, after a splashdown north of Puerto Rico.

Essex was decommissioned June 30th, 1969. She was struck from the Navy List on June 1st, 1973, and sold by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) for scrapping June 1st, 1975.