A real Savage …

After the atomic attacks on Japan that ended World War II, it was obvious to the U.S. Navy that nuclear bombers would be a major part of America’s defense strategy.

 But there was a problem – long range nuclear bombers were too large to fit on a carrier, and without a nuclear delivery system, the Navy’s role as a major player in national defense would be significantly reduced.

To try and fill this gap, the Navy took a chapter from Gen. Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25 raid on Japan early in the war and began planning on loading long range P2V-3C Neptune patrol planes with nuclear weapons on a carrier deck for launch, though they could not land back on the carrier.

This was an obviously awkward solution, so the Navy began to pursue a carrier-based nuclear bomber that could both take off from and land on a carrier. In June 1946, the Navy ordered the first aircraft designed solely to carry a nuclear bomb – the AJ-1 Savage – from North American Aviation.

Because early nuclear bombs were so large, the Savage was purposely designed around a single, huge bomb bay (16 feet long and 8 feet in diameter) with a single weapon attachment point for one bomb, initially the 10,330-pound modification of the “Fat Man” bomb dropped on Nagasaki. It was aimed using an early radar bomb sight.

The Savage was big – 52,800 pounds – with a length of 63 feet, a wingspan of 75 feet and a height of more than 21 feet. It had a high wing to keep the center fuselage area clear and a box-shaped, but aerodynamically clean, fuselage. The horizontal stabilizers had a great deal of positive dihedral (that is, they slanted up). To keep weight down, there were no ejection seats for the three-man crew.

Because the Savage came in on the cusp of the change from piston engines to jet engines, it was powered by two supercharged 2,500 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-2800 piston engines and a single 4,600 pounds of thrust Allison J33-A-10 turbojet in the rear fuselage for added power on take-off and extra dash speed while in combat. Interestingly, both engine types used the same fuel.

When the first Savage was rolled in natural metal finish, there was a stir in the crowd because the rear fuselage between the wing and the tail section was noticeably wrinkled. North American professed this was normal and the AJ-1 made its first flight on July 3, 1948. Shortly thereafter, the first prototype crashed because the tail tore off in flight, and North American hurriedly redesigned the tail and removed the dihedral in horizontal stabilizers. In 1950, the AJ-1 landed and took off from the carrier “Coral Sea.” They soon equipped a composite squadron, VC-5 in the Atlantic fleet. The next batch was sent to VC-6 in the Pacific

While the AJ-1 fulfilled the “big Navy’s” desire to keep the Navy in the nuclear-strike role, in service they were never popular with carrier captains because they were difficult to accommodate, at best.

The Savage took three times the number of maintenance personnel as a normal aircraft, and while the wings and the tip of the tail folded, it was a slow operation that took more than 15 minutes. Even then it was very difficult to move them and place below the carrier deck.

As a result, Savages were almost always parked on deck and thus had to be “first off” and “last aboard” during flight operations; there were never more than three AJ-1s assigned to a single carrier at one time. Additionally, the nuclear weapons the Savage was to carry were a huge problem on the crowded carrier.

The bombs had to be kept in special, heavily guarded restricted areas and took up to 80 hours to assemble (depending on type), which included inserting the nuclear component, checking out the electrical circuits and then loading them on the aircraft. Downloading and disarming was a similar time (and space) consuming process.

But the main problem with the AJ-1 was the seemingly simple act of flying the aircraft. There were more than 60 changes in the first modification of the Savage, and in 1951, the first full year of operations, they were grounded for various reasons for eight of the 12 months. When they were cleared to fly, maintenance problems meant they were “mission capable” only 30.7 percent of the time.

In flight, there were an inordinate number of accidents, even for the inherently dangerous business of carrier flight operations. The main (but not only) problem was the hydraulic system, and the VC squadrons averaged four AJ-1 crashes a year for the seven years the Savage was in service as an operational bomber.

Despite these shortcomings, at altitude the boxy looking Savage was remarkably fast with all engines firing – more than 460 mph, almost as fast as straight wing jet fighters of that era – and had a range of up to 1,600 miles, which meant it could reach Moscow easily on a one-way trip.

A total of 113 AJ-1 bombers were produced, and they gave the Navy nuclear credibility in the national defense arena for the period it served, albeit at a heavy price. After 1956, the Savage was replaced by the twin jet Douglas A3D (better known in the Air Force as the B-66) and then the supersonic A-5 Vigilante before the Navy gave up on heavy carrier bombers and invested its nuclear role in Polaris submarines.

(Dr. Michel is currently deployed downrange)