Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt Wiser
Existing A-6 airframes could be rewinged at two other locations to bring them up to SWIP standard (which, IRL, was the Navy's plan after the A-12 was canceled): NADEP Alameda and NADEP Norfolk. They also did rewing work at Grumman's plant in St. Augustine, FL.
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For the A-6, I have the following inventory numbers:
According to official Navy inventory numbers, there were 342 A-6s in the inventory in March 1988. I'm using an attrition rate of 1.5% per year, the rate the Navy used in the 80s for budget planning purposes for tactical aircraft. Consequently, 12 aircraft are purchased each year as attrition replacements from 1989-1995.
I have the Navy taking a dual-track approach with the delays in the A-12 program, converting 52 A-6s to A-6F annually until 1994, when the entire fleet has been converted. In 1996, with war on the horizon, the Navy receives 72 new production aircraft (72 being the maximum economic production rate, basically the rate that 2 shifts can turn out from existing equipment and suppliers without expanding the production base).
That gives an on-hand inventory of 487 aircraft (none are sold to the Chinese; the determination is made at some point that they are too sophisticated for the crews to make full use of). 308 are assigned to air wings (10 aircraft each on Coral Sea and Midway, 16 on each of the other carriers except Enterprise, which has the first A-12 squadron). The other 179 are in readiness squadrons, at Pax River and other test/evaluation sites or are in maintenance.
Overall losses in the Battle of the Norwegian Sea approached 50 percent, so of the 80 A-6s in the CVW's about 40 were lost. About that many were lost in the first two months of the war in the Pacific, eating up the entire output of the Calverton plant for the year. There isn't enough time for a second production line to be made operational (assuming that the suppliers could keep the flow of components coming) before the TDM.
I hope this helps! (I also have similar analysis for the remainder of the Navy/Marine Corps air fleet if you're interested, I'll be happy to share the spreadsheet!)