NAVY FLIERS REMEMBER 'THE WHALE' BIGGEST BOMBER ON CARRIER DUTY.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

VAN NUYS - Aircraft-carrier crewmen would run for cover when A3D Skywarriors lurched in toward the flight deck, former aviator Ruben Munoz recalls.

The biggest plane ever meant for carrier duty, a Skywarrior would line itself up with the narrow flight deck, touch down, bounce on its wheels, then catch onto an arresting wire - which sometimes broke, letting a plane skid off the ship's side and into the ocean.

``You would actually see people running for their lives,'' said Munoz, who from 1982 to 1985 listened for Soviet-design radars from the back of aging Skywarriors off Lebanon and Libya. ``They called it the whale dance. It wasn't as smooth as other airplanes.''

Munoz, now a 44-year-old Los Angeles County firefighter paramedic, adds: ``Everyone who flew in that plane had their share of close calls.''

More than 300 former Navy fliers are gathering this weekend to talk about old times and the plane they loved and sometimes feared: the A3D Skywarrior, otherwise known as ``The Whale'' - for its vast size and bulbous shape - or ``A3D - All Three Dead'' - because it had no ejection seats.

Marking the 50th anniversary of the carrier jet's first flight at Edwards Air Force Base, this weekend's reunion in Van Nuys is the first large-scale gathering of the A-3 Skywarrior Association. Former pilots, navigators, tanking operators and other crewmen came from all over the country.

``We've got everybody from rear admirals down to enlisted men,'' said association President Al Rankin, who had flown in Skywarriors in the 1960s - from the carrier Ranger off the Vietnamese coast. ``That was one of the things a little unique about the A-3. There were a lot of enlisted men ... bomber-navigators could be enlisted men.''

The gathering at the Airtel Plaza hotel will include a display of the last flying Skywarriors. Raytheon has a half-dozen at Van Nuys that it fits with new fighter-jet radar sets - or straps missiles to for testing. The organizers were trying to get permission to fly one Monday morning for a special 50th anniversary re-enactment.

``I got out of the Navy in 1970, and I haven't seen one since. It's going to be a treat to get up close to one again and see one flying,'' said Rankin, now an assistant scientist at an atomic research laboratory at Kansas State University, which he attended after the Navy.

A memorial service Sunday will remember the 150 or so A-3 crewmen who died during the craft's 35 years of service. The organization filed Freedom of Information Act requests with Navy history and safety offices to try to compile a complete list.

``There are still some accidents that are classified,'' Rankin said.

Built in El Segundo, the first Skywarrior was trucked to Edwards for its Oct. 28, 1952, flight over the base's wide smooth dry lake beds, which provided a vast ready-made landing strip if something went wrong.

The plane entered Navy service in 1956 and stayed until 1991, serving through Vietnam and the Gulf War.

The twin-engine bomber was big - 35 tons loaded, a 72-foot wingspan - so it could carry the bulky nuclear bombs of the 1950s. One time, a story goes, an A3D making a practice bomb drop off the Virginia coast hit a suburb instead. The concrete practice bomb smashed a garage and dug a 20-foot hole - but was mistaken for a meteorite.

When the Navy dropped the idea of bombing the Soviet Union from aircraft carriers, the big Skywarrior began carrying fuel to replenish other carrier planes or infrared cameras for reconnaissance or electronic gear for eavesdropping on enemy radios and spotting radar. Some dropped conventional high-explosive bombs in the early days of the Vietnam War.

Rankin, a hydraulic mechanic in the Navy from 1966 to 1970, sometimes flew in the third seat on A-3 tanker missions off the coast of Vietnam.

``We were far enough out they didn't specifically shoot at us. I saw some surface-to-air missile tracks off in the distance.''

When the A-3 was used for electronic surveillance, the originally bomb bay was sealed up and turned into a compartment for the electronics operators and intelligence specialists.

Munoz rode in the back of an A-3 with three other men, plotting the location of radar sites and listening to radio traffic during the early 1980s, when the United States sent Marines into Beirut and later bombed Libya.

``My specialty was looking for Soviet-type radar,'' he said. ``The communications guys kept their ears open to whatever they could hear.''

The planes - the newest built in 1961 - by that time were about as old as crewmen like Munoz. When they had seven men crammed aboard, the crewmen weren't confident they could all get out the hatches if their plane were headed down.

A legend developed around a pilot who told a clumsy ensign that he carried a revolver loaded with poisoned bullets and would shot him if he didn't get out fast enough if the crew had to parachute.

``You knew if you went down you were in trouble,'' Munoz said. ``We had the back end full of tuners and tape recorders. If you were in an emergency it was almost impossible to get out - to actually stand up with your parachute and get out.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- ran in AV edition only) Raytheon workers position an A3D Skywarrior alongside the Van Nuys Airport taxiway Friday, adjacent to the Airtel Plaza.

(2 -- ran in AV edition only) Former Skywarrior navigators share stories Friday: from left, Bill Johnson of New York; Don Muir of Washington; Jim Crisp (partially hidden) of North Carolina; Ken Scee of Maryland; and Perry Mullinix of Walnut Creek.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer