Grumman A2F/A-6 Intruder/Prowler

Grumman's long heritage of building fighter aircraft to be operated from aircraft carriers continued when the US Navy sought an attack aircraft to replace the vene­rable Douglas A‑1 Skyraider. The resulting jet fighter was the A2F Intruder, which was designated A‑6 from 1962 on.

The Intruder has a quite unusual design with a wide fuselage allowing the pilot and bom­ber/na­vigator to sit side-by-side. As a result, the nose is quite round. The long, narrow air intakes are at the sides of the fuselage, slightly tilted and in front of the canopy. They feed two engines at the bottom of the fuselage, with exhausts below and just after the wings. These wings go straight through the fuselage, giving a mid-wing configuration. What follows behind is a rather slender fuselage ending in a conventional tail with a trapezium shaped vertical stabiliser. The nose gear has two wheels, while both main landing gears have single wheels. Based on the Intruder Grumman made dedicated electronic warfare versions, including the longer EA-6B Prowler. 

The different versions of the Grumman Intruder and Prowler can be recognised by looking at (amongst others)

• the length of the fuselage
• the length of the canopy
• the shape of the exhausts
• the presence of a bulge on top of the vertical stabiliser

More details will be added later.