Official US Navy VAH-4 Four Runners Squadron Decal

Description

Officially Licensed US Navy VAH-4 Four Runners Squadron Sticker — The Whale Drivers of Whidbey Island

Before the Growler, before the Prowler, there was the Skywarrior — and VAH-4 flew it into combat.

Heavy Attack Squadron 4 — the Four Runners — stood up at NAS Whidbey Island, Washington in 1956 as one of the Navy’s dedicated nuclear strike squadrons, flying the massive A-3 Skywarrior, the largest aircraft ever routinely operated from aircraft carriers. Nicknamed ‘the Whale’ for its sheer size and the headaches it gave flight deck crews trying to maneuver it on crowded carrier decks, the Skywarrior was the Navy’s long-range heavy attack bomber designed to deliver nuclear weapons deep into Soviet territory. VAH-4 received its first Skywarriors in 1957 and spent the next decade operating detachments aboard USS Hancock and USS Independence, deploying forward to NAS Cubi Point in the Philippines and Da Nang Air Base in Vietnam. When the Vietnam War escalated in the mid-1960s, VAH-4 was among the Skywarrior squadrons pressed into conventional bombing duty, dropping iron bombs on targets in Southeast Asia before transitioning to the aerial tanker and electronic countermeasures roles that kept strike aircraft fueled and protected over North Vietnam. On 1 November 1968, VAH-4 was reorganized and redesignated as Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 131 (VAQ-131) — the Lancers — beginning a new chapter in electronic attack that continues to this day with the EA-18G Growler. This sticker honors the Four Runners and the heavy attack era, a time when naval aviation’s mission was nuclear deterrence and the men who flew the Whale carried the weight of the Cold War on their wings.

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