Two-seat Thunderbolt II and the night mission role.

Airpower, January, 2006 by Neubeck, Ken

According to most A-10 pilots, you know you're getting too low while flying in combat when dirt starts blasting out of the cockpit air vents! This is the story of close air support and one manufacturers' vain attempt to breathe new life into an attack aircraft reaching the end of its production run. Although this particular attempt ended in failure, a down-and-dirty desert war showed the Air Force that the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II was here to stay.

The single-seat A-10 has been living on since its introduction into the USAF inventory in 1975. What many aircraft buffs may not know is that there was actually a two-seat A-10 prototype constructed, designed for nighttime flying and adverse weather. There were also serious considerations toward...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.