When I was in training to be an Aviation Ordnanceman in the US Navy, I learned how to arm an A-7, even though there may have been all of 2 of them left in the fleet at that point.
I thought it was a waste of our time, but they were relatively easy to work on, and when it comes down to it, there isn’t much difference between loading bullets in an A-7 vs any other aircraft.
Did the A-7’s use Martin-Baker seats? Wish I had a GRU-5 from the A-6A’s I worked on - (the Aircrews were always nice to us who made sure their ‘last resort’ would work as advertised.)
PRANG’s A7Ds were in the unenviable position in the term of public optics of being bracketed in the history of 198 TFS by hot and sleek pieces of equipment – F104s before and F16s after. However they had a most eventful service life for the unit, as they incurred a loss of 8 aircraft to hostile action, being destroyed on the ground by terrorist attack in 1981 with no human casualties.
Sometimes rendered as Slow Little Ugly … as well. At a time when everything had to be supersonic they … weren’t.
The A-7 community was much relieved when the A-10 came along and took both the slow and the ugly prize and ran all the way to the bank with both of 'em.
If you look carefully at the Google Maps imagery of the Warren Grove Range in NJ, you’ll notice an A-7 parked in the dirt, on the *very *extended centerline of Runway 15.
I put it there with a CH-53E*, back in 2000 (I was the crewman in the cabin, calling the load).
I have some pics of the lift; I’ll have to figure out how to link them here if enough folks are interested.
In my era a lot of the target aircraft were F100s or occasionally 102/106s. Plus a few F-4s. The 100s were mostly aircraft shaped piles of aluminum shreds by the time I got to them, but the 106s & F-4s were much more intact.
You can’t upload pix to SDMB. But you can use any photo sharing site you want and post the url to your upload gallery here.