Back in 2019, while editing Carlos Guillermo Canosa’s “Skyhawk Forever” two-part story for Gaceta Aeronáutica (see Por siempre Skyhawk: De California a El Líbano, Vietnam y Medio Oriente), it occurred to me that Ed Heinemann’s “Hot Rod” was an ideal subject for a dedicated data base documenting its rich visual history.
Even though a diversity of sources contain a wealth of information and tons of images illustrating many of the 2,960 Skyhawks built, none of them provides a unified nor complete collection of illustrated individual aircraft histories.
After pondering and discarding a printed version due to cost and completion issues, I decided to test the concept in a digital version which can be instantly available on a global scale as the project evolves and let me exploit its flexibility and lower comparable costs.
Rules of engagement
In order to make the project viable, rules had to be straightforward, so each individual history will consist of two basic and simple components: History description text and illustrations.
The text component will contain a brief summary highlighting each individual aircraft’ history (150/200 words maximum) and three lists enumerating all its known variants, identities and operators as well as a simple description of their ultimate fates (write-off, last sighting, preservation on monument observation, scrapping, etc.).
Illustrations will be implemented into a photo gallery illustrating each individual history, with aviation art and embedded videos being used when available and suitable.
All images will be sized to 1,024 pixels (wide or tall) for uniformity, quality and definition and will be as fully documented as possible by indicating location, date and legitimate author (as shown in the preceding sample gallery), while usage of images not in the public domain will require explicit approval by their authors (or copyright holders) to prevent copyright infringement issues.
Given its length and volume (as summarized in the table to the right), the project is open to authors, researchers, photographers and artists who may feel willing or interested to produce additional individual posts.
This project is launching close to the 67th anniversary of the XA4D-1 prototype’s first flight and will be releasing further contents as soon as they are made available for publication.
Individuals interested in participating should contact our project coordinator (yours truly), in a message titled “Skyhawks Illustrated #” (clic to activate e-mail application to automate communication) indicating the c/n of the A-4 they want to portray and summarizing information and illustrations at their disposal on that particular aircraft.
Once an individual history is allocated to a given author, a reply message will be returned within three to four weeks providing further instructions and, as soon as a detailed preparation and translation are completed, publication will proceed at the earliest possible date in Gaceta Aeronáutica’s two editions (English and Spanish).
Skyhawk fans from all over the world, both professional and amateur, are cordially invited to join forces and start researching individual A-4 histories and collecting images, aviation art and videos to illustrate this series.
Internet sources: Air Britain Photos, Airliners, Air Fighters, Air History, Aviation Corner, JetPhotos, Joe Baugher, Perfiles en Detalle, Plane Pictures, Scramble and Skyhawk Association.
Alexandre Guedes: Can you please elaborate on the “proportion errors”?
All profile drawings in this illustration are in proportion errors. But your project is interesting!
As an aviation photographer and Skyhawk historian……what do you mean by “images not in public domain”? I certainly hope you don’t intend on using image “foubd” on the internet without proper credit given. I would ove to contribute but not if this us the plan.
An interesting project!