Douglas A-1 SkyRaider Specs

Back in the day when I was taking flying lessons at a small airport (unicom
only) with only Cessna 150s and small Pipers, a Naval pilot flying his A1
Skyraider landed to show off his plane to a friend at the landing strip.

I watched him land and taxi to the parking area and the asphalt was so thin and
his plane so heavy, the wheels sank about 8 inches into the asphalt when he came
to a stop.

Trying to blast his way out by reving the engines at max, the prop wash started
to literally rip off chunks of the light weight asphalt, hurling them into the
planes behind him.

It took a fire engine with a heavy chain to pull his planes stuck wheels out of
the holes.

His comment as I remember was "Sorry...I didn't mean to break your airport".


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_A-1_Skyraider

The Douglas A-1 Skyraider (formerly AD) is an American single-seat attack
aircraft that saw service between the late 1940s and early 1980s. The Skyraider
had a remarkably long and successful career; it became a piston-powered,
propeller-driven anachronism in the jet age, and was nicknamed "Spad", after the
French World War I fighter.[2]

It was operated by the United States Navy (USN), the United States Marine Corps
(USMC) and the United States Air Force (USAF), and also saw service with the
British Royal Navy, the French Air Force, the Air Force of the Republic of
Vietnam (VNAF), and others. In U.S. service, it was finally replaced by the LTV
A-7 Corsair II swept wing subsonic jet in the early 1970s.

The piston-engined Skyraider was designed during World War II to meet United
States Navy requirements for a carrier-based, single-seat, long-range, high
performance dive/torpedo bomber, to follow-on from earlier types such as the
Helldiver and Avenger.[3] Designed by Ed Heinemann of the Douglas Aircraft
Company, prototypes were ordered on 6 July 1944 as the XBT2D-1. The XBT2D-1 made
its first flight on 18 March 1945 and in April 1945, the USN began evaluation of
the aircraft at the Naval Air Test Center (NATC).[4] In December 1946, after a
designation change to AD-1, delivery of the first production aircraft to a fleet
squadron was made to VA-19A.[5]

The AD-1 was built at Douglas' El Segundo plant in Southern California. In his
memoir The Lonely Sky, test pilot Bill Bridgeman quotes a production rate of two
aircraft per day, describing the routine yet sometimes hazardous work of
certifying AD-1s fresh off the assembly line for delivery to the U.S. Navy in
1949 and 1950.



General characteristics
Crew: One
Length: 38 ft 10 in (11.84 m)
Wingspan: 50 ft 0¼ in (15.25 m)
Height: 15 ft 8¼ in (4.78 m)
Wing area: 400.3 ft² (37.19 m²)
Empty weight: 11,968 lb (5,429 kg)
Loaded weight: 18,106 lb (8,213 kg)
Max. takeoff weight: 25,000 lb (11,340 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × Wright R-3350-26WA radial engine, 2,700 hp (2,000 kW)

Performance
Maximum speed: 322 mph (280 kn, 518 km/h) at 18,000 ft (5,500 m)
Cruise speed: 198 mph (172 kn, 319 km/h)
Range: 1,316 mi (1,144 nmi, 2,115 km)
Service ceiling: 28,500 ft (8,685 m)
Rate of climb: 2,850 ft/min (14.5 m/s)
Wing loading: 45 lb/ft² (220 kg/m²)
Power/mass: 0.15 hp/lb (250 W/kg)

Armament
Guns: 4 × 20 mm (0.79 in) M2 cannon
Other: Up to 8,000 lb (3,600 kg) of ordnance on 15 external hardpoints including
bombs, torpedoes, mine dispensers, unguided rockets, and gun pods.