F3D Skyknight in Action
by Alan C. Carey, Squadron/Signal, Carrollton, Texas, 2012, $18.95 softcover, $28.95 hardcover.
Designed by a team led by Edward Heinemann at Douglas Aircraft, the F3D Skyknight was meant to be the U.S. Navy’s first carrier-based night fighter. It needed to be big, robust and a little ugly to accommodate the clunky air-to-air radars of its era.
Mercifully spared the worst of the engine problems that plagued most Navy jets designed in the 1940s, the Skyknight never operated in squadron strength from aircraft carriers, although small detachments made 10 cruises. As a land-based warplane, the Skyknight shot down MiGs at night over Korea in the hands of Navy and Marine pilots and radar operators. Redesignated as the EF-10B, the Skyknight flew electronic warfare missions in Vietnam. The bulky, twin-engine, straight-wing Skyknight— don’t ask why Marines called it the “Drut”— was important in early efforts to counter North Vietnamese SA-2 surface-to-air missile batteries.
Alan C. Carey, a yeoman historian of Navy and Marine Corps aviation, follows the rigid and workmanlike format established for this series decades ago by Squadron/Signal’s Jerry Campbell. It’s hard to believe the first book in the series appeared in 1971. These volumes—most, like this one, with eyecatching cover art by Don Greer—serve as essential reference sources for historians, enthusiasts and modelers who want a quick glimpse at variants and oddball modifications. The books, available in both hard- and softcover, are still priced reasonably, which makes them accessible to young enthusiasts. It seems that Squadron/Signal has dispensed with its past practice of including color profiles by Greer, but increases in the number of color photographs and in the page count are ample compensation.
Originally published in the November 2013 issue of Aviation History. To subscribe, click here.
