Carrier air wings faced a practical management and deck-space ceiling of roughly ninety aircraft while adding large F-14 fighters and S-3 anti-submarine aircraft. Reconnaissance pods allowed fighters to cover the RA-5C's mission imperfectly without requiring five or six dedicated airframes, their stores, and their maintenance chain. The resilience calculation also favored multirole types: losing one of five specialists cuts that capability by twenty percent, whereas losing one aircraft from a force of dozens has far less effect. That arithmetic outweighed the Vigilante's superior performance in its primary role.
Chapter · 29:09-34:23
Why carrier air-wing arithmetic retired the specialist Vigilante
The RA-5C remained effective at reconnaissance, but scarce carrier deck space favored more flexible multirole aircraft.