AF was the largest single recip-engine a/c ever built.
They worked in pairs because they had different roles.
The 'W' was the 'hunter'' Long range RADAR with large dish.
The 'S' was the 'killer'. Localization equipment and weapons.

"Mike Henley" wrote in message
g.com...

"Alan Erskine" wrote in message
...
"Steven P. McNicoll" wrote in message
m...
Alan Erskine wrote:

Oops. ;-) I meant, why wasn't there an S-1? Was it due to the 1960's
nomenclature change?


The first purpose-built ASW aircraft was the Grumman AF Guardian, it
preceded the S designation for such aircraft. The second purpose-built
ASW aircraft was the Grumman S2F Tracker. It was designated S2F because
it was the second ASW aircraft built for the Navy by Grumman. With the
Tri-Service designation system the S2F became the S-2. Why not S-1?
Probably just to keep things as simple as possible.

I think the AF was already out of service in the USN by the time the
designation system was changed; that might explain the abscense of the
"S-1". Thanks Steven.
The Grumman SF-1 was a version of the Grumman FF-1 fighter built in
1932-33. It had a 2 man cockpit that was reconfigured to make it a scout
plane (SF), instead of a fighter (FF). After WW2, Grumman built the TB3F
for ASW work. They worked in pairs AF-2W (hunter) and AF-2S (killer)
because the equipment was too large and heavy for 1 aircraft. In 1953 they
began replacing the AF with the S2F (because there had already been an
SF). In 1962 when DOD started renumbering the aircraft to have a common
number in all services, the Navy aircraft stayed with the number the
aircraft already had (P2V-5 and P3V-1 became P-2E and P-3A). If two
aircraft had the same number, one was changed (F3D and F3H became F-10 and
F-3; F4D and F4H became F-6 and F-4).