Were the US Navy ever really keen on the Bucc?

I don’t see the problem.

He confirms what I said… that the physical and design main-mission replacements were A-1>A-6 and A-3>A-5.

That one of the A-3/A-5 missions was later transferred to the A-6 changes nothing. I already mentioned that several of the EA-3/KA-3 missions were transferred to the EA-6B/KA-6K… this is just one more post-design mission shift.

We are saying basically the same thing… it is just that your earlier assertion was that the A-6 was designed to replace the A-3, which is not correct, and your friend confirms this.

Folks,

I don’t want this to become a cat fight. The following is a reply I received from a Vietnam War USN combat pilot. It is FYI for those interested. Some of the comments are a dig at one retired forum USN pilot member who literally hated the A-5 and they are good friends when not trying to kill each other when one makes the mistake of making fun of the Skywarrior pilots.

Jack E. Hammond

Jack:
.
Kind-of-sort-of-both. The A3J program was developed as the nuke delivery aircraft to follow onto the Whale. We also needed an “bomb truck” that also had a nuke secondary mission to follow on to the AD and thus was born the A2F program. But as development showed the A3J/A-5 wasn’t going to work as a nuke (or at least very well) the A2F/A-6 became, defacto, the replacement for the Whale’s nuke mission in the SIOP.
.
That being said, never let anyone claim the the words “Navy” and “flexibility” go together. The plan was that the A-5 would replace the A-3 in the Heavy Attack squadrons (VAH) and that the Intruder would replace the Spad in the Attack squadrons (VA) and thus it came to pass. To add to the fun, not all attack squadrons are created equal and only the A-1 squadrons became A-6 squadrons, the A-4’s were replaced by the A-7. So when a bubba said they were an attack guy, you had to figure out what they flying. Oh, and the Intruder community poached a lot of A-3 B/N’s when they started, as no one else was available who knew how to do the right-seat mission.
.
So, the A-6 took the nuke mission on top of the all-weather mission from the A-3 and the heavy iron delivery missions from the A-1. The much-beloved Viggie became a recce asset and SLUF’s became flak-magnets.
.
The Whale, of course, became a real jack-of-all-trades workhorse, flying tanker, mining, bomb delivery over lightly defended targets, tanker-jammer, ELINT/SIGINT and photo recce as well as OPFOR missions to 1991. The Intruder’s legacy is heroic. The Viggie looked good. Former Viggie aircrew frequently refer to themselves as “survivors.”

.