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***image1***As World War II came to a close, the U.S. Navy began a drastic reevaluation of what kind of aircraft would be needed on its carriers post-war.
The standard carrier aircraft force for most of the war had been a mix of dive bombers, fighters and torpedo planes, with long-range reconnaissance missions carried out by dive bombers and anti-submarine operations being carried out by hunter killer teams of torpedo planes and fighters. But as the war ended, one of the most pressing new priorities became anti-submarine warfare.
Anti-submarine warfare had moved up as an important mission with the discovery that the Germans had developed a class of advanced, high-speed, long-endurance submarines as the war ended and that the Soviet Union had taken the designs and was developing a huge, modern submarine fleet. At the same time, Grumman Aircraft had been working on a new mixed-power strike aircraft – designated the XTB3F – with a radial engine in the nose and a small turbojet in the tail, carrying a two-man crew sitting side-by-side and an internal ordinance load of 4,000 pounds.
The aircraft did not fly until December 1945, several months after the war was over, and at the end of the month the Navy asked Grumman to convert the XTB3F into an anti-submarine aircraft called the AF-2.
Up until that time, carrier based anti-submarine aircraft had small radar sets,
usually carried under the wing, but the Navy asked Grumman to fit the AF-2 with a huge AN/APS-20 ocean search radar mounted in a large ventral radome as well as seats for two radar operators. The only way this system would fit was if it was put in the bomb bay, which eliminated any ordinance loads, so Grumman suggested designating this aircraft the AF-2W and building a second aircraft – the AF-2S – based on the same airframe as a “killer” aircraft.
The AF-2S would keep the bomb bay and add a short-range, wing-mounted radar and a wing-mounted “Leigh Light” searchlight for the final phase of a night attack. The idea was that the AF-2W would locate the submarine with its large, long-range radar and vector the AF-2S “Killer” to the attack, and the AF-2S would take over and finish the job. The two were the first purpose-designed U.S. Navy anti-submarine aircraft.
The two aircraft were of conventional design –“tail dragger” monoplanes with large, mid-mounted wings and a conventional tail, except for small vertical fins on the horizontal tail surfaces for stability. The only unconventional aspect was their huge size. The AF-2 had a 60-foot wingspan, was 43 feet long and more than 16 feet high. And it was heavy – the “Killer” AF-2S fully loaded weighed 25,000 pounds and the “Hunter” AF-2W weighed more than 22,000 pounds. As a comparison, the Navy’s standard dive bomber at the end of World War II, the SB2C Helldiver, weighed about 13,600 pounds fully loaded – and it was considered very heavy!
The Guardians’ size and weight made them slow to respond to power increases and heavy on the controls, two characteristics which are highly undesirable in carrier aircraft. But despite a high accident rate, they continued in production until 1953 and flew missions throughout the Korean War protecting the fleet around the peninsula. But the large Guardian two-plane team took up valuable space on the carrier and required twice the maintenance of a single aircraft, and in 1953 the Navy and Grumman developed a twin-engine aircraft, the S-2F Tracker, that could perform both roles.
The AF-2s were sent to the Navy Reserve and flew for many years on anti-submarine patrols off the East Coast, and later did yeoman service in civilian service as “water bombers” fighting forest fires.
Questions or comments, contact Dr. Michel at marshall.michel@ramstein.af.mil.
