A-6 Intruder

During my research for this book, I was hanging around the VA-65 maintenance spaces a( NAS Occana when one of the Senior Chiefs came up with a quote, which says more about (a) the remarkable A-6 Intruder and (b) the current state of the U.S. military, than the thousands of words which have been written about both subjects. He stated. "I have been working on this airplane half my life, and now we are getting rid of it, just when it is better than it has ever been!" The Chief was about thirty-five years old, so it is doubly ironic to consider that the A-6 Intruder was born about the same time as he was!