The Prowler Is Retiring
USMA EA-6B Prowler over Afghanistan (Photo by Senior Airman James Richardson/USAF)
After supporting combat operations for the Marine Corps in nearly every conflict throughout the past 40 years, the Marines’ electronic attack aircraft, the EA-6B Prowler, will fly its final flight mid-March.
A deactivation ceremony for the Corps’ final Prowler squadron, Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 2, or VMAQ-2 is set to be held Friday.
Some retired Prowlers are making their way to the Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, commonly referred to as “the boneyard.”
But a few of the EA-6Bs will rest at the air museum in Texas and the Smithsonian near our nation’s capital. – Article
The full article is here: https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-corps/2019/03/08/the-saltiest-warfighter-in-the-marine-corps-the-ea-6b-prowler-retires/
Per the article, the last two official Prowler flights will be March 12 at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas and March 14 at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at the National Air and Space Museum in Virginia, said 1st Lt. Samuel Stephenson, a spokesman with 2 Marine Air Wing.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Marine Corps
Navy sure got it’s moneys worth out of that airframe; sad to see it go. Early in my govvie contractor days I was working with a former A-6 B/N. Good guy, even if he was an Academy grad. I suppose flying into places where the locals are trying their level best to kill you puts a new perspective on things. Anyway his favorite sayings were, he got that million dollar education jammed up his ass a nickle at a time, and my favorite, “Fighter’s make movies. Bombers make history.”
So fair winds and following seas to the Navy’s workhorse, the A-6 in all her iterations. I’ll hoist a glass tonight.
Built by Grumman Aircraft, often referred to as the “Ironworks.” Quality aircraft made by quality people.
For what it is worth, I don’t recall any posers on the pages of TAH claiming they were a Prowler pilot.
Aside from Bat*21, there aren’t many films that the average person can reference that involve any sort of clear cut explanation about what electronic warfare is. Probably for the best, since the field gets into the deep end of security clearances. Besides, you can’t peddle for drinks or impress women with your knowledge of phase differentiation or range gate pull-off.
Good follow up from the posting last week. I wonder if the Navy is “dropping the ball” by retiring this proven workhorse airframe for a very expensive kinda untested high dollar jack of all trades aircraft? Just saying. Navy Academy attendees have been know to drop a ball or 2 during a certain athletic competition. (gabn)
(dodges a thrown by AW1Ed beer bottle, runs out the door laughing like hell)(private note to AnotherPat; that there is funny as hell I don’t care who you are….rtr/hbtd)
Note to 5th:
The Navy throws beer bottles at the Army?
Is that the best they can do?
Course, we catch em and hoard them to pour over Coach Monken’s head at every victory game when armybeatsnavy…
😎
muleskicksgoats
Air Force drinks the beer first then throws empty bottle. Course if you are in my neighborhood, anything with drinkable alcohol is emptied then the empty is thrown. No need to waste good booze.
Beg pardon, Ma’am. Any alcoholic beverage containers thrown by Navy will be by tradition rum jars.
That being said, the EA-6B Prowler has run its course. The fact the Marines were still flying it gives great credit to the Marine maintainers, who kept them flying with 100mph tape, parts from the 100 year locker, and guts. Time to put the old war bird to pasture, as it were. And welcome in the new.
EA-18G Growler
Same with old cannon cockers that are too slow to dodge flying rum bottles.
Flying rum bottles are caught, hoarded and added to the collection. Unlike what Middie wanna be receivers do to footballs….you know…miss.
One or two will turn up at Oshkosh’s EAA fly-in. They’ve had rebuilt Junkers, the Concorde, the world’s smallest jet aircraft, and a bunch of truly experimental things that can sort of get off the ground now and then.
Don’t give up on the plane yet as they might reincarnate it into something else as the air-frame has lots of air miles left on it as the Navy took them everywhere aboard ships on the ocean. Us worthless ones managed to keep the WWII C-47 going many years as just about every configuration except a bomber, The C-130 is still doing what it is called to do but looks like it is soon to leave, then you have Buff that is being refitted to last some more years to add to its service.
That’s what I thought of the Hoovers as well. Now the only S-3s left are with NASA. Who knows, maybe they’ll come up with a use for the platform. If you saw the IR videos of the SpaceX Crew Dragon reentry, those were from their WB-57. I suspect that no one at the drawing table back in the late 40’s could imagine they were building something that would be around 75 years later and flown by pilots in pressurized astronaut suits at an altitude 50% greater than what they were designing for.
Are the Marines going to transition to the Growler or not?
Article didn’t say. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
Question for the group:
What is it with Grumman’s apparent obsession with bug-eyed aircraft? The A-6 and OV-1 both have that googly-eyed look. Was the side-by side arrangement in both aircraft a Grumman design or a contract requirement?