AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 141 / 250

Plate 141 of 250 · Second World War · Carrier airborne early warning aircraft

Douglas Skyraider AEW.1

Skyraider AEW.1, WT121 ‘415/CU’, painted as WT121, code ‘415/CU’, a Douglas Skyraider AEW.1 of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, built at El Segundo as AD-4W BuNo 124121 and allotted the Royal Navy serial WT983, though ‘WT121’ was painted on in error and kept, which flew with No. 849 Squadron and then the headquarters flight at RNAS Culdrose: the Royal Navy’s first carrier airborne early warning aircraft, a big low-wing single-engined monoplane with an eighteen-cylinder Wright R-3350 Cyclone radial, a four-blade propeller, a bulbous APS-20 search radar radome under the centre fuselage, two radar operators’ stations in the rear fuselage behind a side door with a porthole, and auxiliary finlets on the tailplane, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: Glossy Sea Blue overall, Type D roundels on the fuselage and above and below the outer wings, white ‘415’ on the fuselage, ‘ROYAL NAVY’ over ‘WT 121’ ahead of the tailplane, white ‘CU’ on the fin, a large white ‘WT121’ under each outer wing, a yellow dashed ring round the porthole, and a black propeller with yellow tips (shape from a published Skyraider three-view, radome and markings checked against photographs of WT121 and other AD-4Ws); the museum keeps it with its wings folded in the Cobham Hall reserve store, and also holds a second AEW.1, WV106.

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as WT121, code ‘415/CU’, a Douglas Skyraider AEW.1 of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, built at El Segundo as AD-4W BuNo 124121 and allotted the Royal Navy serial WT983, though ‘WT121’ was painted on in error and kept, which flew with No. 849 Squadron and then the headquarters flight at RNAS Culdrose: the Royal Navy’s first carrier airborne early warning aircraft, a big low-wing single-engined monoplane with an eighteen-cylinder Wright R-3350 Cyclone radial, a four-blade propeller, a bulbous APS-20 search radar radome under the centre fuselage, two radar operators’ stations in the rear fuselage behind a side door with a porthole, and auxiliary finlets on the tailplane, shown standing tail-down on its wheels and tail wheel with its wings spread: Glossy Sea Blue overall, Type D roundels on the fuselage and above and below the outer wings, white ‘415’ on the fuselage, ‘ROYAL NAVY’ over ‘WT 121’ ahead of the tailplane, white ‘CU’ on the fin, a large white ‘WT121’ under each outer wing, a yellow dashed ring round the porthole, and a black propeller with yellow tips (shape from a published Skyraider three-view, radome and markings checked against photographs of WT121 and other AD-4Ws); the museum keeps it with its wings folded in the Cobham Hall reserve store, and also holds a second AEW.1, WV106. Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.0 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (SB2C Helldiver, Skyraider AEW.1); engine, crew and dimensions are for the Skyraider AEW.1, WT121 ‘415/CU’ modelled here.

History

The Skyraider AEW.1

Ed Heinemann’s team at Douglas designed the Skyraider in 1944 as a single-seat carrier dive and torpedo bomber to replace the Dauntless and the Curtiss Helldiver, the US Navy’s main dive bomber at the end of the Second World War. Douglas threw out an earlier design and drew a new one overnight in a Washington hotel room, built round the big Wright R-3350 Cyclone radial. The prototype XBT2D-1 first flew on 18 March 1945. The war ended before it reached the fleet, but the navy kept it, renamed it the AD Skyraider, and it entered squadron service in December 1946.

The Skyraider’s large, simple wing had fifteen hardpoints that could carry some 8,000 lb of bombs, rockets and drop tanks, and it was a mainstay of US Navy and Marine Corps close support in Korea. Its size also made it a good host for other jobs. The AD-3W and AD-4W airborne early warning versions carried the APS-20 search radar in a bulbous radome under the fuselage, with two radar operators in a cabin in the rear fuselage, and small extra fins on the tailplane to make up for the radome’s effect on stability. Douglas built 3,180 Skyraiders of all versions before production ended in 1957, and the type flew in Vietnam until 1972.

The Royal Navy had no carrier radar picket of its own, and under the Mutual Defense Assistance Program it received 50 AD-4Ws from November 1951 as the Skyraider AEW.1. No. 778 Squadron trained the crews at Culdrose, and No. 849 Squadron, formed there in July 1952, sent flights to every operational carrier, including those off Suez in 1956. The AEW.1 could see low-flying aircraft and ships far beyond the reach of a ship’s own radar. The Fairey Gannet AEW.3 replaced it from 1960, and several of the survivors were sold to Sweden as civil-registered target tugs.

This airframe

Skyraider AEW.1 WT121 (WT983) ‘415/CU’

WT121The airframe modelled

WT121 was built at El Segundo as AD-4W BuNo 124121 and flew with the US Navy’s VC-11 and VC-12 before being refurbished for the Royal Navy. It was allotted the serial WT983, but WT121 was painted on in error and has stayed, so the gazetteer lists it as WT983. It joined No. 849 Squadron in March 1954, and after modernisation in 1958–59 flew with the headquarters flight at RNAS Culdrose as 415/CU, the code it still wears. Retired in 1960, it has been at Yeovilton since 1972 and is kept with its wings folded in the Fleet Air Arm Museum’s Cobham Hall reserve store; the museum also holds a second AEW.1, WV106. The model shows WT121 with its wings spread, as photographed at Yeovilton in 1973, in Glossy Sea Blue overall with Type D roundels, white ‘415’, ‘ROYAL NAVY’, ‘WT 121’ and ‘CU’, a large ‘WT121’ under each outer wing and a black propeller with yellow tips. Only starboard-side photographs were found, so the port markings mirror the starboard ones. The shape follows a published Skyraider three-view, with the radome and finlets checked against photographs of WT121 and other AD-4Ws.

See it at Fleet Air Arm Museum

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the Skyraider AEW.1 in 2 UK collections. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 250 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.