But it sometimes sucked up a lot of your attention if it went bad at the wrong moment, and that was attention you really didn’t want to divert from your basic duties to get safely to the IP, ID the target and drop on it. A degraded system could lead to decreased accuracy in both navigation on bombing, although we trained from the first day in the Sim at the RAG in systems degradations, for obvious reason. A very tight system in the Intruder was a wonder to behold.Īgain, as a BN, when the inertial system or the weird analog/digital memory unit would go stupid on you, it would cause a raft of headaches. The IMU (Inertial nav system), working with the radar (Unless we were not radiating to avoid being ESM’d by the bad guys) to generally identify a target, then rolling out the FLIR to confirm identifying the target, locking it up in the system, then lazing it to get absolute precision and then letting the ACU tell the pilot exactly when to commit the system to automatic bomb release was pretty damn slick. With the digital Armament Control Unit, ACU, we could deliver huge varieties of dumb bombs and PGM’s. Working together, along with the pilot’s display which was also part of the terrain avoidance and the bombing system, we really had a very robust capability. “From a bomber/ navigator ( BN) point of view, the overall radar/terrain avoidance/TRAM (Target Recognition Attack Multi-sensor (FLIR/Laser) system absolutely rocked. What was the best and worst features of the aircraft? When briefing the Intruder to guests, I would say ‘When it’s a dark, cold, stormy night and the bad guys are all hunkered down inside, trying to keep warm and dry, we’re there to ruin their night. “Most of the people who fallaciously claim I owe them money know me as ‘Comjam.’ (And a few remember an even earlier callsign ‘Dirty Duck’)” Niemyer about his time on Grumman’s ‘Iron Tadpole’, an impressively effective all weather attack aircraft. We spoke to Bomber/navigator Captain Andrew ‘ ComJam’ S. Ugly and formidable, the A-6 Intruder was a lethal enforcer of US foreign policy for over a third of a century.
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