Grumman AF Guardian

Rob I can only post by phone at the mo, hence can’t be very allaborative.

The point I made about seeing pics of Guardians in pairs, and not others is that because it was two aircraft that looked the same, but doing two roles.
Grumman and the Navy were trying to make a point about its effectiveness.
As others have said, it was done before, all be it with aircraft that wouldn’t have been specifically designed to do one precise job or the other.
If the call came, Guardians would have had to operate in groups rather than pairs anyhow, note more 2S strikers built than the 2W pickets.
I think a low number of late Guardians were actually built as combined hunter/killers.
The type is interesting as an early type to use ECM and MAD to help in its role of hunting subs.

The concept of pairs was revised with the early helicopter AS operations, where consideration of range and weight effectively meant that one aircraft operated as a hunter and the other as strike.

I would think the reason that the Guardian isn’t more desirable on the display circuit is that it just too much of an unkown low production type for most.

In the final months of WWII, U.S. TBM-3W Avengers were paired with TBM-3S Avengers to form hunter-killer groups and were very successful in the anti-submarine role (ASW). Updated versions continued this role into the nuclear anti-sub role in U.S. service. Japan also flew Avenger hunter-killer teams after that in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thanks. I’ve never seen a photo of these pairs of Avengers operating hence my initial question.

Rob

As a separate question was the Guardian perhaps unique in having two separate aircraft flying together but fulfilling one role as a Sub hunter / killer combo?

Rob

Not totally unique, The US escort carriers in the Atlantic used the hunter/killer airwing concept for looking for U-boats, but agree that the Guardian was the last. Wildcat fighters would patrol and strafe any u-boat they saw, but the avengers would be called over with larger weapons (torpedos, depth charges)

The Wasp helicopter would also be considered hunter/killer but would work with a ship. The ship would locate the submarine and vector the Wasp to drop a torpedo (or We-177 if they really wanted to get your attention :eek:)

In the final months of WWII, U.S. TBM-3W Avengers were paired with TBM-3S Avengers to form hunter-killer groups and were very successful in the anti-submarine role (ASW). Updated versions continued this role into the nuclear anti-sub role in U.S. service. Japan also flew Avenger hunter-killer teams after that in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Skyraider hunter-killer teams never made it into service, although 2 prototypes of each were converted to test the idea. Two AD-3W AEWs converted and designated AD-3E, and two AD-3N Night Attack versions modified and designated AD-3S. I thought the reason they never went into service was that by then the Navy believed that the mission could be filled by a single aircraft.

So in that respect then James the answer to my original question in post #4 is “yes”, as they were designed to operate as a pair (not singularly or in a ‘group’) from the outset.

To echo the thoughts of others though i do agree that the Guardian does seem to of been overlooked as regards airworthy single engined warbirds flying today, when compared to Avengers and Skyraiders.
I read somewhere that it suffered a pretty high accident rate in service, so maybe that has put prospective operators off the type?!

Rob

Well spotted, Sandiego – for some reason I’d always assumed that it was a Guardian, but it just ain’t the right size. However, I do like the picture, only wish I’d taken it.

Walks off, stage left, in embarassed silence…..

No sweat Regal- we’ve all had an occassional miss-identification, perhaps we do not always admit to them….

Gannets didn’t operate in pairs as they, along with the Tracker combined the hunter and the killer roles into one airframe. They were the first examples of this for both the Royal Navy and US Navy, as well as becoming standard across NATO and western Navies.
Fairey had been working on a combined carrier based radar picket and sub striker since the mid 1940s when it was found that existing types were too small and short ranged to lift the newer more effective radar and the weapons – something that the long-range land based types were becoming quite successful at.
The new type would have to be twin engined and be capacious, for the range, power, and weapons uplift requirements, hence why Fairey went down the double engined route.

My understanding is that the Guardian came about as a compromise because Grumman couldn’t come up with a single airframe to house all the kit, especially the large ANS-20 radar, particularly in the time frame required. They would later develop the outstanding Tracker but that, and the Gannet were still a long way off service entry.

My understanding is that as radar equiped sub hunters came along, such as to the Swordfish III, later Avengers and Fireflys etc that they were operated in groups with the radar picket providing information to the strike aircraft, they did have the smaller (and just effective) pod mounted radars.

Why do you see pics of pairs of Guardians, possibly because they were designed in that siamese way they were shown off as such, I would think a pair was sufficient for pinpointing and attacking one sub, but more substantial battles would require a radar picket and several strike aircraft.

Wyv-F, the Skyraider ,and before that the Avenger could operate as ` pairs,one with radar ,other with torps/depth charges.

Yep i understand that sycamore, but did a ‘could operate together’ manifest itself into a ‘did operate together’ as pairs in service?

I have seen many service photos of Guardians flying together as a hunter / killer combo – but not pairs of Gannets, Avengers, Skyraiders etc.

Rob

91Regal, not sure if you are implying the picture you show is a Guardian or not- but that photo appears to show an Avenger and a Skyraider (likely a AD-5) in formation, not a Guardian.

Well spotted, Sandiego – for some reason I’d always assumed that it was a Guardian, but it just ain’t the right size. However, I do like the picture, only wish I’d taken it.

Walks off, stage left, in embarassed silence…..

I heard that the Skyraider was purchased by Jim Slattery from Danny Summers in 2011. I don’t know what it looks like today. Not sure what happened to the Avenger.

http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=39147

Here’s some old info on the TBM:

http://www.warbirdregistry.org/avengerregistry/avenger-69325.html

The picture below was taken by a friend of mine while on an ‘enthusiasts’ tour in the U.S.A. I have no firm idea when it was taken, but was probably late 90’s or early 00’s. The Avenger may help to identify the location – it looks more Washington State than Florida to me.

91Regal, not sure if you are implying the picture you show is a Guardian or not- but that photo appears to show an Avenger and a Skyraider (likely a AD-5) in formation, not a Guardian.

This picture was probably taken sometime during the Gathering of Warbirds in Olympic, Washington in June of 2006.

Air Station out of Arlington, WA. Wasn’t that Jeff Thomas operation?

T J

The picture below was taken by a friend of mine while on an ‘enthusiasts’ tour in the U.S.A. I have no firm idea when it was taken, but was probably late 90’s or early 00’s. The Avenger may help to identify the location – it looks more Washington State than Florida to me.

Edit: As Sandiego points out below, the aircraft behind the Avenger is a Skyraider and not a Guardian – I’m thinking of changing my user name to ‘Imustpaymoreattention’…

Wyv-F, the Skyraider ,and before that the Avenger could operate as ` pairs,one with radar ,other with torps/depth charges.

I’ve had a liking for the Guardian ever since reading an article in Air International on the type way back in the early 70s as my teenage interest developed beyond Spitfires and Tiger Moths. A great looking aircraft, muscular and purposeful in the typical Grumman style, yet quite sleek. To me, it looks a lot like a modernised Avenger – sleeker and with one of those oversize tail fins beloved of so many designs in the late 40s. 🙂

Nice to see such relatively obscure types getting coverage and attention.

I believe that all of the survivors were fire bombers or at least used as fire bomber spares before they were finally retired. The AZ. wing of the CAF is restoring theirs to static.

Leeward’s Grumman Guardian was still sitting in Florida when I was down there in December. An impressive beast. I still have some hope that it will fly again. For such a rare type at least there are a lot of really good pictures of the last few survivors in various states of disrepair and restoration. So that makes 3 on static display at museums, 1 with a current registration that was airworthy recently, and 1 that could be made either static or airworthy with the right budget. Any more I’ve missed?

Some Guardians survived to serve as fire bombers which must have helped their long term survival.

Probably the only thing that led to survival.
IIRC, even the ac at the Navy museum is ex-fire fighter.
Preservation wasn’t always done in the 50s. Several postwar small production USN aircraft were scrapped to near extinction…and some are extinct (Bell HSL).

But did others fly together at the same time James, rather than one at a time?

Rob

No, it was the last of that concept.
The Gannet and the Grumman Tracker introduced the idea of decently equiped combinations of search and strike roles into one carrier based airframe.
It possibly stands out as the AF-2W was so obviously the radar picket with its large APS-20 radar and the AF-2S the striker, where as previous anti-submarine aircaft (still relatively few at that time) had been operated in a similar way but didn’t look that different from each other.

Some Guardians survived to serve as fire bombers which must have helped their long term survival.