munities. Skywarriors were modified and updated throughout their service lives and in many cases received entirely new designations fitting their modifications- sometimes more than once. Sprouting various lumps, bumps, and blades as their installed electronic equipment required, I wouldn’t be surprised to find there was a NREUTVKA-3BD in service at one point or another.
Although they disappeared from carrier decks in 1987, Whales served with the two Navy reserve aerial refueling squadrons, VAQ-208 (later VAK-208) Jockeys and VAQ-308 (later VAK-308) Griffins, tanking Navy and Marine aircraft into the early 1990s. EA-3B Electric Whales of VQ-1 World Watchers and VQ-2 Batmen provided detachments of their Whales to deployed Carrier Air Wings for decades and some of them served during the 1991 Gulf War. Finally retired from Navy operational use on September 27th 1991, Whales proved to be some of the most versatile and adaptable aircraft in Naval service. But the Whale had not quite yet become extinct.
Navy research and development organizations wanted to retain their Skywarriors used for aerial testing but it was not to be. However, Navy Whales had been used for years by companies like Hughes, Raytheon, and Westinghouse for development of radar, missiles, and electronic warfare systems to be used in newer tactical aircraft like the General Dynamics-Grumman F-111B, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat, and the McDonnell-Douglas (Boeing) F/A-18 Hornet. When the Navy retired the Whale a total of five civilian contractors acquired the remaining A-3 airframes and continued to use them for their development efforts.
Whales flying around with the nose sections from other aircraft grafted on them and other strange bulges and shapes attached to noses and tails were fairly common occurrences until the mid-1990s when most of the remaining Skywarrior airframes went into storage. Except for an Air Force F-15 Eagle radar project, the Whales were grounded. Things went on more or less like that, with the Whales being displayed at airshows and compared to more modern designs (usually quite favorably for the Whales), until June 30th, 2011. On that date, after a short tour of former Whale air stations, the last flyable civilian EA-3D Skywarrior arrived at Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola in Florida for display at the National Naval Aviation Museum.