Good story, couple weapons nitpics
The US doesn't use SNEBs, they use FFARs. SNEB is Franco-British and 68mm. FFAR is 70mm. --
The ones compatible with the F-86 were no longer in manufacture. The French were still making the SNEBs. When you're outfitting a 30+ year jet, you do what you can.
Air-to-air rockets just don't work. You might want to read about the
Battle of Palmdale --
Again, desperation maneuver here. Working with what you have. As I wrote, it was a fifth choice, but they were barrel scraping for the worst-case scenario.
If you had given him another F-86 model I would suggest Zuni Mk.63s with VT heads, as the combination of heavy warhead (15lb HE) and proximity fuze would give much better results against bombers.
Actually you can only carry 28 Mark 82s, the inboard rear station on the MERs on Station 2 and 4 have to be kept clear for the landing gear to retract. Also you get 13x Mk.83 and 5x Mk.84. I corrected the Wiki page based off the SAC semi-recently. --
This has been another episode of The More You Know.
Why on earth would you leave your dedicated SEAD birds behind? No reason they can't just fly from Florida. --
They stayed behind to be jammers if any raids came in while the carrier was out.
All the A-7s should have Sidewinders, they can only carry two of them and the cheek mounts can't take anything else.--
Noted.
Also A-7s do not dogfight well and those loaded with Shrikes would do well being loaded with chaff Zunis (Mk.84-yes, same as the 2,000lb bomb-loaded with 12 RR-182/AL chaff cassettes) to better suppress SAMs. Really fun thing is that the chaff warhead's fuze has a max time of 80 seconds, or somewhere about 30 miles standoff range according to some very crude math of mine. --
Working with what they had. A-7s may not be the carrier plane they wanted, but as a (more or less) reserve carrier for in-line shore defense, they took what they could get (it is also very close to the real-life air wing on Indy in that timeframe). As far as the armament, that's a good argument.
Don't feel bad about not knowing this, I only tracked down the original Zuni manual last year (National Archives yeah!) and the updated one last month.
What are you going to use Mavericks for against an airbase? Killing AA from standoff ranges maybe, but you'd be better off with either all Zuni or Rockeye clusters. --
That was exactly the point. The Soviets had loaded up Cuba with SAMs and AA, so why sacrifice planes unnecessarily? The Navy were aiming for as much standoff as possible.
As has been pointed out, A-6s do not have internal guns. External gun pods are not an authorized store, and by the early 1980s few if any gun pods would be in service. --
OOPS. My bad.
SAMs are not going to fire into an ongoing dogfight. Friendly fire isn't a "if" or a "maybe", it is a "will." --
The Soviets actually had this issue a lot. What you're saying is logical. In reality, Soviet systems accidentally shot down MiGs in Vietnam, Egypt and Afghanistan multiple times. Their doctrine was quantity over quality, so the SAMs stayed on in all situations. That would be even more important when trying to protect a bomber force on the ground in wartime.
This is all quite nerdy, I realize. I'm fairly obsessed with rockets.
-- I appreciate the information and feedback, even if some of my answers may not reflect it. I always enjoy picking up new info for further writing.