Walk up to an A-6 Intruder and the first thing you notice is the nose. It’s huge. Bulbous. It looks like a tadpole that spent too much time at the gym. But once you climb up the boarding ladder and peer into the A-6 Intruder cockpit, the aesthetics start to make a lot more sense. You aren’t looking at a sleek, "Top Gun" style fighter layout. You’re looking at a workspace designed for two people to work in tandem, side-by-side, in the dark, usually while people are shooting at them.
It was cramped. Honestly, if you’re claustrophobic, the Intruder wasn't for you. Unlike the F-14 Tomcat or the F-4 Phantom where the Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) or Weapon Systems Officer (WSO) sat behind the pilot, the Grumman A-6 put the Pilot and the Bombardier/Navigator (B/N) right next to each other.
There's a reason for that. Communication.
Back in the 1960s and 70s, inter-cockpit comms weren't always crystal clear. Being able to look over and see what your partner was doing—or literally tap them on the shoulder—was a massive tactical advantage during high-stress low-level night strikes.
The DIANE System: The Brains of the Operation
You can't talk about the A-6 Intruder cockpit without mentioning DIANE. That stands for Digital Integrated Attack and Navigation Equipment. In an era when most planes were lucky to have a basic ranging radar, the Intruder was a flying computer. It was revolutionary. It was also, quite frankly, a maintenance nightmare for the crews on the deck.
The B/N (the guy in the right seat) was the master of this domain. He didn't have a stick. He didn't have flight controls. He had a set of shroud-covered displays that looked more like something out of a vintage submarine than an airplane. His primary tool was the Search Radar and the Track Radar.
- The Search Radar mapped the ground ahead.
- The Track Radar locked onto specific targets with terrifying precision.
What made it special? The integration. The computer took the radar data, mixed it with inertial navigation and air data, and projected a "path" for the pilot to follow on a Vertical Display Indicator (VDI). It was basically a 1960s version of a modern glass cockpit's synthetic vision. The pilot just had to keep the little "airplane" symbol on the line, and the A-6 would take them right to the target.
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Sitting in the "Pit": Ergonomics and Chaos
If you ever get the chance to sit in a preserved A-6E, take it. But watch your knees. The center pedestal is a jungle of switches, knobs, and circuit breakers. Everything feels heavy. Industrial.
The pilot’s side is dominated by the VDI and the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI). To the right, the B/N is staring into the "boot"—the rubberized shroud around his radar scopes that blocked out glare so he could see the faint green glows of the cathode-ray tubes.
The A-6 was all about "all-weather" capability. It’s easy to say that now, but imagine flying 500 knots, 200 feet off the ground, in a rainstorm, at night, over North Vietnam. You can't see out the window. You are 100% reliant on the boxes and wires inside that A-6 Intruder cockpit. It required a level of trust between the two crew members that few other aircraft demanded.
They called it "The Iron Works" for a reason. Grumman built these things tough. But the cockpit was also where the human-machine interface was tested to its absolute limit.
Key Instruments and Their Roles
The Pilot handled the flying and the "pickle" (weapon release) button, but the B/N handled the "thinking." The B/N had a hand controller—a joystick of sorts—that allowed him to slew the radar cursors over a target. Once he "designated" a bridge or a power plant, the computer calculated the release point.
- The VDI: Provided a "contact analog" display.
- The Search Radar: A 5-inch scope showing the terrain.
- The Computer Control Panel: Where the B/N punched in coordinates using chunky, mechanical buttons.
It wasn't elegant. It was effective.
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Why the Side-by-Side Seating Matters Today
Military buffs often argue about why the Navy moved away from side-by-side seating in attack planes. After the A-6 was retired in 1997, the fleet moved to the F/A-18D and F/A-18F Super Hornets. Tandem seating won out. Why? Aerodynamics, mostly. A side-by-side cockpit creates a wider fuselage, which means more drag. More drag means less speed.
But if you talk to old Intruder crews, they’ll tell you the tandem layout in modern jets feels "lonely." In the A-6 Intruder cockpit, you were a team. You could share a map. You could see the B/N's hands moving, knowing exactly when he was about to lock a target. That "shared situational awareness" is something modern engineers try to replicate with datalinks and fancy helmet displays, but the A-6 had it naturally through proximity.
The A-6E TRAM (Target Recognition and Attack Multi-Sensor) upgrade added a small joystick and a screen for FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) to the B/N's station. This allowed them to see heat signatures. Suddenly, they weren't just looking at green blobs on a radar; they could see the heat coming off a truck engine through the clouds. This changed everything for night interdiction.
Realities of Life in the Cockpit
It was loud. Really loud. The twin Pratt & Whitney J52 engines were right behind you. The air conditioning was notoriously "binary"—either you were freezing or you were sweating through your flight suit.
And then there was the ejection system.
The A-6 used Martin-Baker seats. In an emergency, the canopy didn't always jettison first; the seats were designed to go right through the plexiglass if necessary. There's a famous story—and this is a real, documented event—of an A-6 B/N, Lieutenant Keith Gallagher, whose seat partially fired during a flight in 1991. He was stuck halfway out of the canopy, exposed to the windblast, while the pilot managed to land the plane back on the carrier. He survived. That’s how rugged the airframe was, but it’s also a reminder of how "tight" that cockpit environment really was.
The Evolution to the EA-6B Prowler
The Intruder's cockpit eventually grew. The EA-6B Prowler, the electronic warfare version, stretched the fuselage to add two more seats in the back for Electronic Countermeasures Officers (ECMOs). This turned the two-man "pit" into a four-man van. It kept the side-by-side arrangement for both the front and back rows, cementing the "Intruder family" as the kings of side-by-side operations.
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Misconceptions About the Intruder
A lot of people think the A-6 was a bomber like the B-52. It wasn't. It was an "attack" aircraft. The difference is the mission profile. The A-6 was designed to weave through valleys and pop up over ridges.
Another myth? That it was easy to fly because of the computer.
Total nonsense.
The early DIANE systems were incredibly temperamental. Pilots and B/Ns had to be experts at "dead reckoning" and manual backup procedures because the electronics failed constantly in the salt-spray environment of an aircraft carrier. You had to be a master of the A-6 Intruder cockpit manual just to get through a standard mission.
Actionable Insights for Aviation Enthusiasts and Simmers
If you’re a flight sim enthusiast or a history buff looking to understand this aircraft better, focus on the workflow. The A-6 is a lesson in CRM (Cockpit Resource Management) before that was even a formal term.
- Study the B/N Role: If you’re using a simulator like DCS World, don't just fly from the left seat. Learning the B/N’s radar logic is where the real "soul" of the Intruder lives.
- Understand the TRAM: Look for diagrams of the A-6E TRAM cockpit specifically. The addition of the FLIR screen shifted the workload and is a great example of how "analog" cockpits adapted to the digital age.
- Visit the Surviving Airframes: Go to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in NYC or the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola. Seeing the scale of the cockpit in person changes your perspective on what "cramped" really means.
- Read "Flight of the Intruder": While a novel, author Stephen Coonts was an A-6 pilot. His descriptions of the cockpit light logic and the "feel" of the DIANE system are technically grounded and highly accurate to the period.
The A-6 Intruder cockpit was a transition point in history. It bridged the gap between the purely mechanical "stick and rudder" planes of WWII and the "glass" fly-by-wire jets of today. It was a place where human intuition and early computing power met in a noisy, vibrating, high-pressure environment. It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done when nobody else could see the target.
To truly appreciate the A-6, you have to stop looking at the plane as a whole and start looking at the workspace. It was a masterpiece of functional design, built for a specific, dangerous job. Even now, decades after its retirement, the layout remains a testament to a time when flying meant sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with your partner and trusting the green glow of a radar screen to lead you home.