The A-4 Skyhawk in Australian Service 1968-1984. By Peter Greenfield and David Prest. Avonmore Books, Kent Town, South Australia, 2023. ISBN 978-0-645-70041-1
Reviewed by David Hobbs
Peter Greenfield, a former Skyhawk pilot and David Prest, a former aircraft artificer who maintained them, both have enduring memories of the years they spent in the RAN with the Skyhawk community and formed friendships which have endured to the present day.
They have worked together to create an excellent book that is essentially a history of A-4G Skyhawk in Royal Australian Navy described by a number of individuals who knew it well. The sixteen years that the type was in service with 724 and 805 naval air squadrons each have a chapter comprising a brief description of major events during that year and this background is enriched by recollections from a number of pilots and maintainers who recall aircraft operations ashore at RANAS Nowra, HMAS Albatross, and embarked in HMAS Melbourne. The result is a particularly well edited account of an effective and tight-knit community that gave outstanding service to both the Navy and Australia. The foreword is written by Commodore John Da Costa RAN who was the first commanding officer of the operational unit, 805 NAS, and the first pilot to deck land an Australian Skyhawk. The range and variety of inputs give this very readable book an almost ‘family-like’ feel as they progress.
I have always admired the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, a product of designer Ed Heineman’s genius, and thought how much better off the RN might have been procuring it or something very like it. As soon as this book became available, therefore, I was keen to read it in order to find out how well it had performed with the RAN. It did not disappoint and as I turned the pages it struck me that I knew many of the characters involved. As a sub lieutenant serving in HMS Hermes,part of the Far East Fleet, during 1968 I watched John Da Costa carry out the type’s first arrested landings and catapult take-offs off the east coast of Australia. I met David Ramsay when I was the project officer for Sea Harrier deck trials in Hermes and Invincible and he was in the UK flying Sea Harriers and in later appointments I flew and formed friendships with a number of former A-4 pilots who had transferred to the RN.
This book is beautifully printed on high quality paper with a large number of excellent photographs, both colour and black and white. A significant number were taken by individuals who contributed written material and have not been published before. It succeeds on several levels; first as testimony to a dedicated team of professionals determined to get the best from their aircraft in both its fighter and strike roles. Just as importantly, it explains how important integral fixed wing operations are for a blue water fleet that must defend the airspace above its operations and one of the later chapters quotes Steve George, a former RN air engineer officer, who has an international reputation for the wisdom and knowledge contained in a series of essays he has written on carrier aviation. Politicians might believe that a remote, land-based air force might be able to defend the fleet with air-to-air refuelling and pilots flying sorties of 10 hours duration or more but anyone who understands the reality of air operations will know how impossible such aspirations would be in practice. Air forces have their uses but the air defence of a fleet far out at sea is not one of them.
After the main text there are photographs of all sixteen pilots’ operational flying school courses, a list of every Skyhawk pilot with their callsign and secondary qualification and a list of every RAN A-4G and TA-4G Skyhawk with a note about what happened to it. There are brief histories of the two Skyhawk squadrons. The individual inputs are a mixture of anecdotal, historical, technical and amusing. One of the latter was provided by Joe Hattley, together with a photograph, describing the preparation of the aircraft for their flight to New Zealand after they were sold to the RNZAF in 1984. He and his colleagues were understandably sad at seeing the aircraft they had cared for so long sold off and they ‘inadvertently’ spray-painted the kiwi device on the aircraft’s new national insignia facing backwards looking wistfully, perhaps, towards its former home on the delivery flight across the Tasman Sea. Having had some of the naval aircraft I flew and cared for deleted by political decree I know just how Joe Hattley and his mates felt.
In summary, this is much more than just a unit history; it captures the role of an outstanding aircraft that was not recognised by successive governments for giving the nation a capability beyond mere numbers when deployed in HMAS Melbourne. It is a book that deserves to have a place on the bookshelf of anyone interested in the RAN and its Fleet Air Arm and it certainly has a valued place on mine. I recommended it highly.
