"Dudley Henriques" wrote...

The Blues bolted 'um shut. Can you imagine what would happen in a tight
diamond with an A4 if a wing position got an asymmetrical slat extension
with roll induced....say in a barrel roll? Not a pretty thought!! :-))

In over 1700 A-4 hours, I never had an asymmetric slat extension that I could
not quickly and easily control. After about 1000 hours, few of them were even
unpredictable... Careful preflight of the slats would give a VERY good idea of
which one would come out first, and any preflight "stickiness" was grounds for
rejecting the airplane or having the Airframers work on it before flight. I
believe too many TA-4s were lost in the Training Command due to students'
unfamiliarity with the airplane and instructors' failure to teach and emphasize
both preflight and recovery techniques.

That said, I fully understand why the Blues bolted them in -- their 36"
wingtip-to-fuselage clearance in some of their formation maneuvers gave quite a
bit less room for error than our nominal 3-5' wingtip-to-wingtip clearance in
the fleet.