Lots of interesting discussion here. Folks have brought up a few planes which I had not become familiar with.
I was expecting you to write eloquently of the A6. Another of my favorites since reading Stephen Coonts' novel 35 years ago. Although the craft would be prohibitively expensive to maintain and fuel in civilian hands.
I was trying to keep it focused on cold war and transonic so the F-11F Tiger, barely supersonic in a shallow dive, filled that bill. As well, I had a professor at Navy PG school that flew them and he said it was a dream to fly with balanced controls, great visibility and pretty much no faults other than very short legs.
Coont's book, Flight of the Intruder, came out when I was in college and right after I had been accepted to AOCS so that clearly made me focus on it as where I wanted to go as an NFO. It was all going that way through flight school and I ended up in the right track as a Tactical Nav then came winging day. #1 guy got his first choice, Intruders in Oceana and the rest of us (13) got sent to Prowlers to fill a class at Whidbey (via three months at Corry station for basic EW training). Turned out to be a great platform and career but one can never say the Prowler was great flying airplane. The nose extension for two more crew for the mission as well as the ALQ-99 pods and such made it a nasty beast to bring aboard the ship (the Tomcat was perhaps worse) and if you flew it to the edge of it's envelope, especially high AoA los speed, it would bite. We lost a lot of them, almost half that were built, in various mishaps.
