The EA-3B Skywarrior served for more than three decades in the U.S. Navy’s secret reconnaissance war against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Conceived at the dawn of the Cold War as an aircraft carrier-based nuclear bomber, the A-3 Skywarrior was the largest aircraft ever designed to operate from an aircraft carrier and became known as “the Whale.” Beginning in 1956, it also served around the globe as an electronic reconnaissance platform. Designated the EA-3B in 1961, the aircraft and its crew of seven gave the fleet unique electronic reconnaissance capabilities that the Navy used in numerous Cold War-era conflicts and crises, including the Vietnam War. The U.S. Navy retired its last EA-3B in October 1991. EA-3B Bu No 144850, Ranger-12, assigned to Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron (VQ-2), crashed during an operational mission in the Mediterranean on 25 January 1985 while landing on the USS Nimitz, killing all seven crew members: LT Stephen H. Batchelder, LCDR Ronald L. Callender, AT2 Richard A. Hertzling, LT Allen A. Levine, CTI3 Patrick T. Price, LT James D. Richards, and CTI3 Craig H. Rudolph. The aircraft is associated with the memory of all U.S. Naval aircrews who died in secret electronic surveillance missions around the world in defense of freedom.
