oyuki

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Scooters Forever

Found this very cool video on YouTube of AF-1/AF-1A Skyhawks of the Brasilian Navy. These aircraft were flown during Desert Storm as A-4KUs and TA-4KUs of the Kuwaiti Air Force seeking to liberate their country from Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The Brasilians seem to really love their Scooters and are part of a rare fraternity, they are carrier aviators who fly off Sao Paolo, formerly the French carrier Foch.



Pretty impressive for an airframe that first saw flight 50 years ago and was thought impossible to build by its customer, the US Navy. But the Douglas, later the MDD, A-4 Skyhawk keeps flying. Brasil, Argentina, and Singapore now are the primary military users. Israel still has a couple, but they are no longer front line like they were during Yom Kippur. While in the US ATSI is the primary user of Heinemann's Hot-Rod, with its mixture of surplus Israeli, New Zealand, and US Navy airframes, in providing training to the US armed forces.

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