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The propeller-driven warbirds were supposed to be dead with the screaming jet engines and the stylish swept-wing designs taking over. Jet fighters were more maneuverable, faster and the way of the air combat in the future. Then, but not expected, came a surprise--prop planes, big thunderous things, that not only gave the jets a battle--they beat them, humiliated them. And it was not just one accident. It was a lesson that speed might be still defeated by force, cunning and muscle. And it started in the smoke-filled skies of Korea.
This DOUGLAS A-1 SKYRAIDER was a giant, single-place attack plane with a giant radial engine that sounded like a thunderstorm as it went by. Already in 1950, when the Korean War broke out, the Skyraider looked like an antique. The sky was dominated by jet fighters like the F-86 Sabre and MiG-15 which engaged each other at speeds that were amazing and in general the propeller-driven aircraft of the world air forces began to be phased out. The Skyraider was not concerning dogfights, nonetheless. It was ruin, pure,pawning, slow-and-low ruin.
The tenacity of the Skyraider or the capability to carry more bombs compared to a World War II B-17 bomber was not the only reason why the Skyraider was a legend. It had done so in the real warfare. Equipped with rockets, napalm, machine guns and sometimes even torpedoes, flying low over the battlefield, the Skyraider was able to loiter for hours and provide extremely effective close air support. Jet fighters might have lived and gone in two seconds--but the Skyraider survived. And when jets flew to attack it, and thought they had an easy prey, they were to receive a cruel shock.
Among the most embarrassing occasions of the jet fighters was in the Vietnam War where the Skyraider confirmed its value once again. The A-1 continued to baldy fly into the midst of the battle in spite of the increasing presence of fast moving jets such as the F-4 Phantom and MiG-17. It was particularly well known in its application in search and rescue where it flew cover to crashed pilots and helicopters. And but in those anxious skies the Skyraider achieved a nearly unbelievable feat: it brought down jets.
In June 1965, Lt. Clinton Johnson and Lt. Charles Hartman, U.S. Navy pilots, were on rescue mission in Skyraiders over North Vietnam. Two North Vietnamese MiG-17s suddenly appeared and attacked. On paper the MiG-17s should have had the edge- jet speed, maneuverability and altitude. But the Skyraiders banked in the MiGs, tore at them tooth and nail, and somehow brought one of them down with the good old fashioned gunnery and guts. It was among the rare instances in history when a prop plane shot down a jet in air-to-air fights.
But that was not even the first time.
In 1966, a year later, another Skyraider, this one flown by Lt. William T. Patton, got into a tussle with a North Vietnamese MiG-17, and survived. Patton took advantage of his turning advantage and surprise to close in on the jet, open up with his 20mm cannon and slam it down to the earth. It is a propeller-driven airplane of the 1940s shooting down a Soviet-made jet cold war plane.
How then did these slow and obsolete prop monsters succeed in doing this?
Tactics were part of it. The jet fighters were designed to fight at high speed- missile versus missile and slashing passes, not low, turning-knife fights. Skyraider, combination of superb low-speed handling characteristics and durable frame, could out turn any jet and take punishment that would shred a faster, thinner aircraft. It might lurk in the valleys of the jungles, raid suddenly, and place its guns where they were wanted.
But it was not simply maneuvering. What these prop monsters lacked in jets they possessed in staying power. Jets consumed fuel quickly and needed to depart. The Skyraider had the ability to orbit for hours. It was ponderous--but there was never any mistake about it, it was always there, always at hand, always dangerous. And in the hands of expert pilots who had nothing to lose, it was even more than a relic. It turned into a predator.
In an age obsessed with speed and modernity, the Skyraider and a handful of other prop-driven aircraft proved that raw power, endurance, and pilot skill could still level the playing field. They humiliated jets not by outrunning them—but by outlasting them, outthinking them, and sometimes even outshooting them.
These were the monster props that refused to die. And for a brief, unforgettable moment, they ruled the sky once more.