The Douglas F3D Skyknight was that one aircraft that usually always featured in the shadow of flashier planes, yet it played a very important role during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. During a period from 1950 through 1970, this night fighter jet flew with a U.S. Navy and Marine Corps manned crew consisting of a pilot and a radar operator. According to aviation historian Joe Copalman, up until today, the Skyknight has been “the most unsung hero of its two major wars.”
Twelve F3D Skyknights, more popularly known to their pilots as “Nightmares,” arrived in Korea in August 1952 to replace the F4U-5N Corsair and the F7F Tigercat. The jobs that lay ahead for these planes were hazardous: combat with Korean, plus high-caliber antiaircraft fire. Night fighting tactics had not been practiced in training, so pilots learned the new maneuvers and techniques of night fighting on the job. They learned how not to be used as bait for the MiGs and searchlight traps while flying escort for the outmoded B-29s. Particularly, the Skyknight crews fought off hordes of slow-flying North Korean “Bedcheck Charlie” biplanes.
Two years after the Korean War’s close, the F3D was redeveloped to the F3D-2Q standard and re-designated the EF-10B in 1962. During the Cold War, the jet carried out photographic and electronic reconnaissance against Soviet-designed radar installations in North Vietnam, and the Soviet Far East. The EF-10Bs and MiGs crossed paths often but never fired at one another.
The Vietnam War called for new tactics from EF-10B crews, who deployed as squadron VMCJ-1 to Da Nang in April 1965. Operating over South and North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, the crews tagged the aircraft “Whale” and “Super Whale.” Their primary job was to find and jam North Vietnamese ground-controlled interception sites electronically or with chaff to foil surface-to-air missile launch teams. Overloaded with jammers and carrying maximum fuel, Whale pilots often had to shut down an engine to save fuel and extend their time over targets.
The EF-10Bs also flew escort for Navy A3Ds in straight-and-level, slow-speed bombing missions exercise which one Skyknight pilot described as no different than World War II B-17 raids over Germany. It spoke volumes about the aircraft’s aptitude for accepting new challenges and developing tactics peculiar to them, and volumes about the resiliency and resourcefulness of its flying and maintenance crews as well.
The Skyknight’s story began in 1945 with a US Navy requirement for a jet-powered, radar-equipped, carrier-based night fighter. The first flight of the XF3D-1 prototype took place on 23rd March 1948 at the Douglas El Segundo facility. The design was never intended to be sleek, dogfighting but stand-off night fighting featuring a powerful radar system and side-by-side seating for the pilot and the radar operator.
The F3D-1 had a successful test program, and with the outbreak of the Korean War, the design received serious attention from both the Navy and Marines. The Skyknight’s four 20 mm Hispano-Suiza M2 cannons were fitted in the forward section of the lower fuselage. On November 3, 1952, a U.S. Marine Corps Douglas F3D Skyknight recorded the world’s first jet-powered nighttime fighter kill, going on to destroy four Soviet-built MiG-15 jet fighters.
Douglas produced 268 Skyknights, including several conversions to special-duty variants. After 1953, Skyknights were converted to electronic reconnaissance and countermeasure aircraft that flew in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. The Skyknight was the only Navy/Marine fighter to fly combat missions in both Korea and Vietnam, with the last one retired in 1978.
In 1968 three Skyknights were transferred to the U.S. Army and operated by Raytheon Corporation at Holloman AFB New Mexico for testing at the White Sands Missile Range into the 1980s. These were the last flyable Skyknights.
The Skyknight’s legacy is kept alive in places such as the Edwards Flight Test Museum and the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona. Somewhat unassuming in appearance, the Skyknight became one of the most successful aircraft designs ever to take to the skies in defense of the United States. The service of the plane improved air-to-air radar and missile development, a legacy that survives in many of today’s fighter aircraft.
Dubbed “Willie the Whale” for the unspectacular lines, Douglas F3D Skyknight was nevertheless designed to meet all the Navy requirements: safely bring the crews home. This American-only champion of the sky still now stands for the ingenuity and resilience of its pilots and engineers.