AFAIK, there were no wing structural differences between from A through E until the composite spar was retrofitted in the late 80's(?). Unfortunately, I wouldn't know where to begin to look for the guy I'd want to ask about that (AMCS Mullins, my shop chief when I was Airframes Branch Officer in late '75).
The one at Boardman you mentioned was in the early '70's, right? I knew of it but not many details. The VA-128 wing failure pulling off target at El Centro in '87 was what got laser-focus on the rewing program, It was underway at the time but things accelerated considerably.
Somewhere around 200 were done, which was a pretty good chunk of the fleet at the time. Unfortunately it came to late and the joke was the last A-6 would be ferried from St. Augustine (where the new wings were fitted) to the boneyard with a brand-new wing. The wings were expensive and heavy, but they gave the airplane higher g capability compared to metal wings placarded to about half the production limit, and longer fatigue life. What really killed the A-6, in my opinion, was lack of survivability, increasing maintenance and fly-to-failure, rapidly shrinking bringback capability, and nearly non-existent (or in some cases non-existent) dirty single-engine capability. Had the -F not been cancelled to make way for the A-12 it might have lasted a little longer but not forever. Sad to see it go but it was inevitable.
Yes -- right after the Knightriders' last Vietnam combat deployment and before I joined the squadron. The North Vietnamese couldn't kill him, but the US Marines did.
No -- Mullins, not Mulligan. I'm guessing he'd be about 75 now.
The really fabulous replacement would have been the F/A-22 which was proposed in the wake of the A-12 cancellation (I saw a lovely model of it on a desk in Fort Worth), but it got way too expensive way too fast, and the F/A-18F ended up as the "low cost" (and lower capability) solution.
TC-4C was the last 128 aircraft to land at the bone yard.
I have no reason to believe this one is still on the Rock. He would have retired at least 20 years ago.
While one can debate the capabilities of the Rhino versus Intruder, that was not the comparison I was making. I was referring to the F/A-22 when I made that statement about lower cost/capability in the F/A-18 as an A-6 replacement. The F/A-22 would have had better range and payload as well as being less observable, but the Navy simply could not afford the price tag and still buy the JSF to replace the early Hornets and the Harrier.
Yep, you guessed it. It's an original Flight of The Intruder "Devil 505" inflatable A-6 with working bombs and refueling probe. Rare video store promo item. These aren't cheap my friends.
