Scooter!

Few modern military aircraft can claim the longevity and success of the legendary Douglas A-4 Skyhawk. First flown in the mid - 1950s, the A-4 Skyhawk achieved combat fame in the Falklands and Vietnam wars and saw service with the air arms of seven foreign countries including Israel and New Zealand. It is still in use today in South America. The A-4, also known as the Bantam Bomber and Scooter, was a small, subsonic aircraft which was originated during the 1950s. The A-4 dramatically bucked the trend toward ever bigger, faster, and more complicated tactical jet airplanes in favour of simplicity and low cost. Although originally optimised for the delivery of a nuclear bomb, it proved to be far more versatile in service and as a consequence the A-4 enjoyed a 25-year production run and operation for many more years by not only the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps but in the service of the foreign air forces to whom it had been supplied. For several years the U.S Navy's famed Blue Angels aerobatic team employed it for their air show demonstrations, a role for which it was ideally suited given its performance and maneuverability. Those same characteristics were utilised as a challenging adversary in the training of fighter pilots for air-to-air combat - A-4s flown by both the U.S Navy and the Israeli Air Force shot down faster Soviet-built fighters in combat operations.  This is a fully revised and updated edition of the definitive history of the A-4 written by one of the leading authorities on U.S. naval aviation.

"As with the majority of titles from this publisher, this is very much a supreme effort, using photos from many varied sources, and there are quite a fair good number of them in this excellent volume."-- "Large Scale Planes"

Now retired, Tommy H. Thomason doesn't remember when he didn't want to be a pilot. He received his Private Pilot License a few days before his 21st birthday and subsequently graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a Bachelor of Aeronautical Engineering, earning graduate degrees from the University of Southern California and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. His 40-year career in the aerospace industry included assignments as a flight test engineer, manager, and executive. He has an Airline Transport Pilot certificate; been a flight instructor for airplanes, gliders, and instruments; and flown more than 3,000 hours in 80 different airplanes, helicopters, and sailplanes with one guest-pilot flight in the Goodyear blimp and another in the XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft. Although thwarted by poor distance vision in becoming a Navy fighter pilot, he has maintained a very active interest in carrier aviation, authoring numerous articles and blog posts, five books, and seven monographs on U.S. Navy aircraft.

This is a fully revised and updated edition of the definitive history of the A-4 written by one of the leading authorities on U.S. naval aviation.

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