RAN Skyhawks of 805 Sdqn climb out over HMAS Melbourne at sunset

No matter how demanding the operational sortie from HMAS Melbourne, a pilot of a Skyhawk had to finish the flight with the mentally bracing task of putting their high-speed jet down on her tiny deck. This could be in dirty weather on a heaving flight deck and, if you took off at sunset, as Marshall's painting shows, you would be landing-on again at night. As one experienced RAN pilot said, “The first six-hundred deck landings were frightening. Then you settled down, but night landings were always terrifying”.

Night landing a Skyhawk on HMAS Melbourne

For the Royal Australian Navy, the Skyhawk era was unforgettable. The service was at its peak of efficiency at that time with the A-4’s operating off the tiny deck of Melbourne with Grumman Trackers and Westland Sea Kings.

The first Douglas A-4 Skyhawk was flown in America in 1954 and entered service in the US Navy in 1962. In its original assessment of the specifications of a carrier-based aircraft, the US Navy had estimated that they would need a twin-engined machine with an all-up weight of about 13,600kg. The diminutive A-4 tipped the scales well below that and still fulfilled the brief.

The Skyhawk was the brainchild of Douglas design genius Ed Heinemann who, in a brilliant exposition of weight saving and design economy, started, it is said, with a fuel tank and hung the rest around it. The A-4 was so small that the wings didn’t need to fold to be stowed below decks on a carrier and her performance so spectacular she was called “Heinemann’s Hot Rod”. Powered by a Wright J65 turbojet, she created a new record for the closed-circuit 500km with a spritely 1,118km/h and was later to become very popular with her pilots. The Royal Australian Navy first took delivery of the first Skyhawks in 1967 to operate with 605 Sqdn aboard HMAS Melbourne on its new commissioning in 1968. 724 Sqdn Skyhawk Operational Training School flew out of HMAS Albatross. The final batch of the twenty ordered went into service in 1979 and operated until 1983/4.

The A-4G, operated by the RAN had a wingspan of just over 8 metres and a length of about 12 metres. Armament consisted of 2x20mm cannon with provision for two underwing Sidewinder missiles and five storage points. Max speed was 1,065km/h or .088 Mach at sea level, .085 Mach at 30,000ft (9144m) and the service ceiling was close to 50,000ft (15,240m). She could be ferried 3,926km while the combat radius was 400km with 4,000 (1,812kg) aboard. Four two-seat trainers were included in the twenty machines operating with the RAN; they were not flown from HMAS Melbourne.

At the end of June in 1984 came the saddest day for Australian Naval Aviation; the idea of buying a new carrier was abandoned and the very effective and skilfully flown A-4s were sold to New Zealand. Ironically, some of those same aircraft returned to their old base at HMAS Albatross at Nowra, NSW in the dark green finish of the RNZAF to help with RAN fleet support functions, but they never went to sea on a carrier. And the RAN has never seen a jet fighter since.

One of the ex-RAN Skyhawks in the livery of the RNZAF. This particular aircraft operated out of HMAS Albatross, Nowra, NSW, until early 2002.