If you’ve ever looked at a Grumman EA-6B Prowler, you probably noticed the bulbous, gold-tinted canopy first. It looks like a greenhouse grafted onto a fighter jet. But stepping inside that glass bubble isn't like climbing into an F-16. It’s cramped. It’s noisy. Honestly, it feels more like a flying electronics lab from the 1970s than a high-tech war machine.
While the Prowler officially retired from U.S. Navy and Marine Corps service back in 2019, the tech inside that cockpit defined electronic warfare for nearly five decades. Most people think "cockpit" and imagine a pilot and maybe a guy in the back. The EA-6B Prowler cockpit actually squeezed four people into a space barely bigger than a mid-sized sedan.
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It wasn't just about flying. It was about "the music"—the massive, invisible wall of electronic noise they threw at enemy radars to keep strike packages alive.
Four Seats, Two Canopies, and Zero Room to Stretch
The Prowler layout is weird. Unlike the A-6 Intruder it was based on, which had two seats, the EA-6B was stretched to accommodate a crew of four. You’ve got the pilot in the front left. Next to him is ECMO-1 (Electronic Countermeasures Officer 1). Behind them, under a separate canopy, sit ECMO-2 and ECMO-3.
There's only one set of flight controls.
That’s right—if the pilot gets knocked out, the guy in the front right can’t just grab a stick and fly the plane home. He’s got a tiny auxiliary control for some systems, but he isn't a backup pilot. This created a unique, high-stakes psychology inside the cockpit. You're a team, or you're nothing.
The Front Office: Pilot and ECMO-1
The pilot’s side of the EA-6B Prowler cockpit is surprisingly "old school" Grumman. You’ve got the round steam gauges, a vertical display for the radar, and the standard stick and rudder. It was a heavy plane to fly. Pilots often described it as "truck-like," especially when carrying five ALQ-99 jamming pods and a couple of HARM missiles.
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ECMO-1, the guy in the front right, was basically the mission commander. While the pilot focused on not hitting the ocean or the tanker, ECMO-1 handled:
- Navigation: Keeping the jet on the "station" (the specific orbit where they could best jam the enemy).
- Communications: Talking to the carrier, the strike leads, and the "heavies" like the E-2 Hawkeye.
- HARM Management: The High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile. If a SAM site dared to turn on its radar, ECMO-1 was the one who sent a missile down its throat.
The Back Seat: Where the Magic Happened
If the front seat was the "bridge," the back seat was the engine room. ECMO-2 and ECMO-3 sat side-by-side in the rear cockpit. Their world was a chaotic mess of green-phosphor screens and switches.
Their job? Jamming.
They operated the AN/ALQ-99 Tactical Jamming System. It was their responsibility to look at the "spectrum"—a visual representation of every radar pulse in the area—and decide which ones to drown out. Imagine trying to find a specific person whispering in a stadium full of people screaming, then shouting over them so they can't be heard. That’s the back seat of a Prowler in a nutshell.
The Evolution of the EA-6B Prowler Cockpit
The cockpit didn't stay the same from 1971 to 2019. It went through several "Improved Capability" or ICAP phases. Each one added more screens and fewer knobs, though it never quite became a "glass cockpit" like a modern F-35.
- ICAP-1 & II: These versions were the workhorses of the Cold War and Desert Storm. The displays were mostly analog with small, specialized CRT screens for the jamming systems.
- ICAP-III: This was the final, most advanced version. It finally gave the crew large-format displays and the "selective reactive jamming" capability.
Before ICAP-III, the ECMOs had to manually "set" the jammers on a frequency. It was tedious. With the later upgrades, the computers could see a threat and automatically "hand off" the jamming assignment to the pods. It saved lives.
That Gold Tint Isn't Just for Show
You might have noticed the Prowler's canopy has a distinct gold or tea-colored hue. That’s actually a thin layer of gold film.
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It’s not for aesthetics.
Because the Prowler emits massive amounts of radio frequency (RF) energy from its jamming pods, the crew would literally be "cooked" by their own equipment if the cockpit weren't shielded. The gold film acts as a Faraday cage, reflecting the RF energy away from the four humans sitting inside. It also kept the enemy from "seeing" the electronic reflections of the crew's helmets, which helps with a tiny bit of stealth—though nobody would ever call a Prowler a stealth jet.
The "Ejection Order" Nightmare
The EA-6B Prowler cockpit had a very specific, and frankly terrifying, emergency procedure. If the pilot pulled the handle, you couldn't just have four seats fire at once. They’d collide.
Instead, the system was sequenced.
- First: ECMO-3 (Rear Left)
- Second: ECMO-2 (Rear Right)
- Third: ECMO-1 (Front Right)
- Fourth: The Pilot (Front Left)
The whole thing happened in about two seconds. If you were the pilot, you had to sit there and watch your entire crew blast out of the jet before you even started moving. Talk about a lonely couple of seconds.
Why the Cockpit Design Still Matters
Even though the EA-18G Growler has replaced the Prowler, the lessons learned in the EA-6B cockpit are still used today. The Growler only has two crew members. To make that work, the Navy had to automate about 80% of what the three ECMOs used to do manually in the Prowler.
The Prowler was a "human-in-the-loop" machine. The ECMOs weren't just button-pushers; they were analysts. They could tell the difference between a real radar and a decoy just by the "sound" or the visual "jitter" on their screens. That level of intuition is hard to code.
Looking Forward: How to Experience a Prowler Today
You can't fly them anymore, but you can see exactly what I'm talking about if you visit the right museums.
- The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: They have the last Marine Corps Prowler (VMAQ-2 "Death Jesters").
- The USS Midway Museum: Located in San Diego, you can get a very close look at the cockpit layout from the gallery walkway.
- Prowler Sims: If you're a flight simmer, look for high-fidelity modules in DCS World or MSFS. While "study level" Prowler modules are rare, the community-created assets are getting better at replicating the ICAP-II cockpit.
If you ever get the chance to stick your head inside a real one, do it. Just don't expect it to be comfortable. It’s a cramped, tactical workspace built for one purpose: making sure the guys with the bombs got home safe.
To really understand the complexity, I'd suggest looking up the original NATOPS flight manual for the EA-6B. It's hundreds of pages of "if this light turns red, flip these five switches," and it's the best way to appreciate the sheer mental workload those crews handled every time they catapulted off a carrier deck.