Prowler 907 heads to the boneyard

Thirty-four years ago this week, Gerald Ford was president, the U.S. and Soviet Union signed the Helsinki Final Act to revive detente, and an EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare jet, number 907, began service.

Recently, Prowler 907, based at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station with VAQ Squadron 129, became the first Prowler to retire.

It's the passing of an era, kinda like seeing Huey helicopters fade away.

The Vietnam-era Prowlers, older than some of the aviators who fly them and crew who maintain them, are slated to be replaced in coming years by the EA-18 Growlers, a variation of the F-18 fighter.

But the taxpayers got their money with the Prowlers, which remain the electronic warfare workhorses for all branches of the military. The Navy will hang onto them until 2013, the Marines until 2019, when they are finally expected to be phased out.

The radar jamming, electronic warfare planes continue to be considered top priority in the U.S. arsenal -- scarcely any combat happens without one in the air.

Petty Officer Second Class Tucker Yates, a Navy journalist, chronicled 907's final flight in the region's Northwest Navigator online newspaper.

Yates said Capt. Tom Slais, deputy commodore of Electronic Attack Wing, U.S. Pacific Fleet, along with Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Jackson, flew 907 on July 22 from Whidbey to the “boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Ariz., for reclamation and preservation.

At the end of its life, Prowler 907 and those who flew her served the nation by attaining more than 11,000 hours of flight time, more than 18,000 landings, 7,019 field carrier landing practice landings, 9,069 field landings, 1,651 catapults, 1,656 ship arrested landings and 1,706 total arrested landings.

Yates calculated it all averaged 147 catapults and 152 arrestments per 1,000 hours.

The twin-engine Prowlers, originally developed in the 1960s for the Marine Corps, are a modification of the old A-6 Intruders. A more advanced version began being developed around 1966 for the Navy. The planes entered service in 1971 and have undergone modifications over the years, and carry top secret electronic warfare equipment to perform their missions.

More than 170 Prowlers were built at a cost of over $50 million each; around 120 remain in service today, still maintained though some of the contractors have long gone out of business. Several years ago the fleet was grounded when cracks were found in parts of the airframe. In 2003, Congress and the President authorized $85 million for needed wing repairs.

A few years ago while with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, I wrote about efforts to keep the jets flying which you can find here.

The Prowlers continue to serve from aircraft carriers and land bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. A few years ago, I and other news organizations reported that the Prowlers electronic warfare capabilities were being used against improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, the homemade bombs that have caused so many casualties among military members and civilians alike. Apparently the planes can jam the devices used to detonate IEDs, like cell phones and garage door openers.

A personal note here -- my late father, a career soldier who at one time was the Army's top electronic warfare technician during the height of the Cold War, was unsurprised by that fact, but wondered why it couldn't be carried out by ground based equipment. He seemed familiar with the concept but wouldn't tell me how or why he was.

Meanwhile, Yates reported that a former enlisted member of Prowler 907's ground crew, Aviation Structural Mechanic 3rd Class Donnavin Brown, returned one more time to send the jet on its way. Brown, according to Yates, was the plane captain from August to December 2008.

“It’s sad that my aircraft was the first to go to the boneyard, but I couldn’t have asked for anything better,” Yates quoted Brown as saying. “I was glad that I got to do this.”

Slais said, “The thing about this is that it’s 2009, and we’re currently scheduled to fly this aircraft until 2013 so we still have [a few] years of flying EA-6Bs out of Whidbey Island right now, and the Marines will be flying them until 2019. We still have a lot more work to do with this aircraft.”