Description
Officially Licensed US Navy RVAH-14 Eagle Eyes Squadron Sticker — The Shortest-Lived RVAH Squadron With the Sharpest Talons
Born with the Kennedy, blooded over Vietnam, and gone before the Vigilante era ended — six years of pure reconnaissance fury.
Reconnaissance Attack Squadron 14 — the Eagle Eyes — holds a unique distinction in naval aviation: it was the shortest-lived RVAH squadron in the Navy’s history, commissioned on 1 February 1968 at NAS Sanford, Florida and disestablished just six years later on 1 May 1974. RVAH-14 was specifically created to fill the air wing of the newly constructed USS John F. Kennedy (CVA-67), and the squadron’s first operational act was certifying the Kennedy’s arresting gear and catapults with the RA-5C Vigilante. After a Caribbean shakedown, the Eagle Eyes deployed to the Mediterranean aboard Kennedy in 1969, where they flew supersonic reconnaissance missions across the theater and produced the ship’s first Vigilante centurions — pilots and navigators who logged 100 carrier-arrested landings in the RA-5C. The squadron later deployed aboard USS Independence, and in October 1973, RVAH-14 found itself part of the largest Sixth Fleet task force assembled since World War II during the Arab-Israeli War, providing critical real-time reconnaissance over the Eastern Mediterranean. The Eagle Eyes earned Air Wing Seven’s prestigious Golden Tail Hook Award on their final deployment. But the post-Vietnam drawdown was relentless — rising maintenance costs, airframe attrition, and a shrinking defense budget forced the Navy to begin retiring the RA-5C and sunsetting the RVAH community. RVAH-14, as the newest and last-established squadron, was selected as the first to go, disestablishing at NAS Albany, Georgia on 1 May 1974 before the remaining squadrons even relocated to NAS Key West.
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