- Hi, I'm Matthew Burchette,
and this is Behind the Wings. Get it? Behind the wings? Oh come on, it was funny. (intro music) Today's episode is on the A-7 Corsair II. In 1962, the Navy knew
that they needed to replace their aging A-4 Skyhawk, so they came up with what was known as
the VAX competition. Now, if you don't speak Navy, VAX stands for
heavier-than-air, experimental. Now the big deal was to keep costs down. Everybody that was a
part of a VAX competition had to plan for an existing aircraft so that they could put
it into the competition. Well Vought came up with
a chubbier and stubbier version of their awesome F-8 Crusader. Now pilots had a much different nickname for this little guy,
they called it the SLUF. Which stood for Short Little Ugly Fellow. The A-7 made it's first flight in 1965 which put it right in the
middle of the Vietnam war. This thing was chock-full
of groundbreaking technology and a lot of
it was in the cockpit. I even think there's a guy in the cockpit who might even be an A-7 pilot. Let's go talk to him. All right, so I'm here with Bob Beabout, who actually
flew this very A-7 with the Colorado Air National Guard. He also flew F-100s
which is super awesome. Bob, thank you so much for being here. So tell us a little bit what it was like flying the A-7, you
were telling me earlier that this thing was kinda heads and tails above the F-100. - Well, yeah, you know,
it didn't go as fast but this was built primarily
for close air support, and with the system that they had in here, the Initial Measurement
System, there we go! It had all kinds of good stuff. If you were delivering something it would do all the
projection of the speed and release the bomb automatically and it just was very accurate, compared to what the
F-100 was, for instance, which we had to use a
lot of Kentucky Windage. I dunno if anybody knows
what Kentucky Windage is but you had to judge if
you were a little fast, yeah, you had to do a lot of eyeballin'. - So Bob, I understand when
you punched out of an A-7, you actually kept the
parachute and we've got it here in the museum, how cool is that? - What happened was it
was a brand new engine that was in there, only
had five hours on it. And I got a warning right in here and the next thing that happened was the oil pressure went down to zero and then my wingmen said
hey, you're on fire! - (laughs) That's never
something you wanna hear. - And the airplane started
rolling over and he said get out, and when he
said get out, I'm already halfway out (laughs) you
know, reached up here and pulled this down over
me and boom, I came out. Actually, that happened out
east here and I came down in the ditch next to interstate 70. - I bet that was an exciting ride. - Oh yeah, that was an
exciting ride, and I didn't get hurt so everything worked good. - Bob, thank you so much for being here. It's been awesome talking to you. It was kind of a chore to get you in here, you okay with spending the night? - Oh, that's all right,
yeah I don't mind spending the night, I'll sit here and play with all of these gadgets and dream again. - Awesome, well hey,
that's what pilots do. Okay, I'm gonna go do a
walk around of the plane and I'll be back in probably
20 minutes, is that all right? - Oh, that'll be fine, yeah. - All right, thanks, we'll be right back. (music fades in) - When we were in the cockpit with Bob, he was telling us about the groundbreaking armament system that the A-7 had. And I'm standing right behind something that these guys carried
a lot of in Vietnam. The Mark 82 Snake Eye. I'm actually standing behind the fins in the deployed position, they didn't look like this when
they were on the plane. They actually folded forward, but as soon as it came off the rack, these things sprang out like this and what it did is it slowed the bomb way down which allowed the A-7 pilot to get down low and slow and into
the weeds and drop their ordinance right where they needed to in conjunction with that
super cool bomb system. Not only did this thing carry Mk 82s, it also carried something even scarier. This may look like a bomb, but it's actually a cluster-bomb. It's a CBU-58. Now what does that mean? It means that this is
actually nothing more than just a tube filled
with 650 smaller bomblets. About the size of a baseball. And so what you would do when you drop this weapon, it would
actually split apart and all those 650 bomblets would
scatter around a huge area. It was a great way to
attack troop concentrations or lightly skinned vehicles
like jeeps or trucks. The A-7 could carry eight of these guys, that's a ton of firepower. You want more firepower, you say? Come with me, my friends. Boom! I mean, bam! You wanted more firepower,
you got more firepower. That is the AIM-9 Sidewinder. A little heat-seeking missile, an air-to-air heat-seeking missile. Now what does that mean? What it means is when this
guy comes off of that rail, it's gonna home in on any
heat signature it can find. Now hopefully, it is the
massive heat signature of that big jet engine in the enemy plane in front of you, because
when it senses that, pow! No more plane. This unassuming panel
right here actually holds something super scary, the
M61 Vulcan Rotary Cannon. That's a 20 millimeter
cannon that can spew out 6,000 rounds a minute. That is scary. Now, considering that you're only carrying about a thousand rounds in here, if you really hold down the trigger, you're gonna go through
your ammo really fast, so you wanna shoot in bursts. Now let's go see what made
this thing go so fast. All right, I know what you're thinking. This SLUF didn't go fast. Well, it didn't, but let's go see what at least got it off the ground. (music) Here we are at the go-fast part. All right, so we talked about it earlier, the SLUF didn't go that
fast, but did you know that the Navy A-7s were
actually equipped with the same engine that the
F-111 and the F-14 were? That's the TF30. There's a huge difference
between this engine and those. Those guys had an
afterburner, this guy did not, which means womp, womp. The SLUF couldn't go super-sonic, how sad. But he could go 700 miles an hour and that's still a heck of a ride! Another amazing thing,
this guy flew with the Colorado Air National Guard. Bob, the pilot we interviewed,
flew this very plane. It is so awe-inspiring to be standing this close to history,
this is why I love my job. Unfortunately, since we're
at the end of the plane, we must be at the end of the episode. If you guys have questions or comments, hit us up on Facebook
and our YouTube channel and we will be sure to get back to you. Until then, adios! Boom! Boom! Boom! Rubber baby buggy bumpers,
rubber baby buggy bumpers. Hello? Hello? Can you at
least send up craft services? (outro music)
