(South Dakota Air and Space Museum collection, Ellsworth Air Force Base, Rapid City, South Dakota, USA)

The A-7D Corsair II is a United States Navy & Air Force attack plane made and used in the 1960s and 1970s. It is a single-seat, single-jet engine plane.

From exhibit signage:

A-7D Corsair II

Top Speed - 690 miles per hour Crew - 1 Range - Continental Payload - One 20 millimeter cannon plus 15,000 pounds of mixed ordnance.

Big Little Bomb Carrier

It's small compared to the B-1 bomber in front of the museum, but the Corsair II had a lot in common with that big machine. The A-7D stayed up a long time without refueling, carried a lot of bombs, dropped them with great accuracy, and usually got its pilot home safely. In 12,938 combat missions in Vietnam, only four A-7Ds were lost. That's especially impressive considering they flew close to enemy guns while supporting ground troops.

"[He] and his buddies were badly pinned down and in danger of being overrun somewhere in the jungles of South Vietnam. A couple of Navy A-7s showed up and saved their day. He vowed that he would shake the hand of the first A-7 pilot that he met. I was that lucky man." - Roger Thompson, Contrails: The Memoirs of Pilot, 2004.

Each A-7D could carry the same bomb load as three World War II B-17s.

Originally a Navy plane, the A-7Ds had folding wings, to save space on aircraft carriers.

See info. at: