A-26 BRIDGE BUSTER

Courage under fire in North Vietnam

- JAMES P. BUSHA

MY FIRST CONTACT with the Grumman A-6 was in the early spring of 1963 off the coast of Virginia on the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), when an A-6 flew out from the Naval Air Test Center, Patuxent River, Maryland, for carrier-suitability tests. I was a catapult officer on the "Big E." We conducted all sorts of flight-deck ops, with emphasis on different-weight "cat" shots. It also was my first real intro to the aircraft nose-launch system. What a giant leap forward! No bulky bridles or holdbacks.

The Intruder looked good on launch and really stable on approach and landing. It had one ugly feature, though: a fixed in-flight refueling probe forward of the windscreen. The plane had lumps and bumps and pylons under the wings and belly. It was obvious the A-6 would never go supersonic.

My first tour of duty, after I received my wings in 1955, was to a West Coast fighter squadron: VF-191. I made cruises in the FJ-3 Fury and the FIIF-1 Tiger. Next, I went to Pensacola, Florida, as a flight instructor. Three years later, I was due for sea duty with orders to Catapult and Arresting Gear School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and then to the Enterprise. Upon graduating, I was to report to the Big E, but the problem was that it had just departed Norfolk, Virginia, because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I joined the ship by COD (carrier onboard delivery) aircraft.

The next three years were spent making Med cruises, and in early 1965, we came out of Gibraltar and turned "port" to get to Norfolk, Virginia. We started around the world as part of Nuclear Task Force One. I think the cruise took six weeks, with a few stops along the way: Karachi, Sydney, Rio, and finally Norfolk. During this transit, I received orders to Attack Squadron 42 (VA-42), the A-6 training squadron, with further orders to VA-65, which was to be the third fleet A-6 squadron.