We found this batch of color film clips depicting Douglas Skyraider attack bombers over Vietnam, circa 1967 and '68. The scenes may have been gathered for a production long ago, and now they form a somewhat random, and evocative, window in time showing Skyraiders of the South Vietnamese Air Force and the U.S. Navy.
The Douglas Skyraider was designed for the U.S. Navy, and initially given the nomenclature AD, which soon informally stood for Able Dog. And able the Skyraider was. When the United States initially avoided sending jet aircraft to Vietnam, and especially for the South Vietnamese Air Force, to avoid the appearance of escalating the level of warfare there, piston-engine Douglas Skyraiders were made available to South Vietnam as early as 1960.
Nomenclature for the Skyraider changed to become A-1 in 1962. Single-seat variants in the war in Southeast Asia typically were A-1H-models. Multi-place Skyraiders were designated A-1E. Some of the onboard footage in this film was made from the right seat of an A-1E.
The Skyraider's load-carrying ability and its capacity for loitering in a target area to support friendly troops or downed aircrews made it especially useful in the style of warfare conducted in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and into the 1970s.
Cruising at 198 miles per hour, the A-1H could reach 322 mph at 18,000 feet. Its 15 total hard points could carry a mix of ordnance and external fuel tanks. Mark 82 Snakeye bombs, with extending fins to slow their forward movement upon release, could be carried. Four 20-millimeter cannons in the wings provided suppressive fire when Skyraiders supported friendly forces on the ground. Watch for flashes of smoke as the wing guns are fired in scenes in this footage.
This film, from the National Archives, includes views of USS Ticonderoga, CVA-14, a classic World War II Essex-class aircraft carrier updated with an angled deck in the 1950s. Ticonderoga made five combat deployments to Southeast Asia. Ticonderoga later participated in the recoveries of the crews of Apollo 16, 17, and Skylab 2. USS Ticonderoga was decommissioned in September 1973 and sold for scrap two years later.