(Kirk Stant) wrote in message . com...
Cub Driver wrote in message news).

Kirk, you must read Campbell's book The Warthog and the Close Air
Support Support, from Naval Institute Press. He was an A-10 pilot (and
A-7s for the Navy before that!) and he certainly lays out the case
that only the power of the U.S. Congress forced the A-10 down the
throat of the Air Force brass, and that the brass spent the next 20
years trying to get rid of it.

I'll have to get his book and read it. However, that position is not
reflected in the actual operational use of the A-10, which has been in
the limelight of every conflict we have faught since we got it - not a
good way to make a plane look bad!

Not quite. It missed Grenada, where the only CAS missions were flown
by the USN and USAF AC-130's, and it was also not used in Panama,
where IIRC the only fixed wing CAS missions were flown by the ANG
A-7's that were down there on rotation (and that strange F-117
mission...).

Brooks
snip