From the linked article “The clamshell design could be pulled down, covering the pilot entirely, but allowing them to still see the instrument panel and access the flight controls. The system would not only keep the pilot from being blinded by the super-bright flash of a nuclear explosion, but it would also give them shielding against the high heat that resulted from it, and to a lesser extent, it would lower the overall amount of other forms of radiation the they would be exposed to”
H.P.
My guess it was easier to design that than to try to use curtains as on the B-52. And from what I can tell it blocked radiation from reaching the brain housing group. But that shield would not have stopped Gamma particles.
That was my thought. The Gamma rays would just pass through the aluminum skin and that shield. The Russians added anti radiation cladding to their tanks turret to reduce the effects of radiation and you know the turret is much more protective from gamma rays than the skin of an aircraft.
Sorry Jay, I feel a bit guilty re a mad thread hijack - which now seems to have a life of its own! That said, not uninteresting - well to me at least. 'Hope this doesn’t distract too much.
No worries, my question is mostly answered, I even added to the threadjack and we all learned something new. Everybody wins. 
Jay, this is a good quick reference to Vietnam Skyhawks if you plan on doing any more. Quite cheap too.
Only one profile for a VA-76 A-4 and it’s carrying a pair of Zuni pods.
This sort of begs the question were any other aircraft ever fitted with such anti-radiation hoods? I’m aware of the curtains in the larger aircraft.
Wonder if the A-5 had something similar?
Another design tested on a F-106
“Prototype installation, with the hood drawn closed, of TCTO 1F-106-674, dated 3/16/1962, designed to provide Nuclear Flash and Thermal Radiation Protection to the pilot. With the fully pressurized “space suit” and supersonic ejection seat filling up the cockpit, the modification was deemed impractical and almost impossible to use, thus the modification was cancelled and never installed”
H.P.
Such a device would make sense I suppose given that these aircraft carried Genies; just what one needs - an air- to-air nuke!
We did the same thing with our B-52’s and others. It was call anti-flash white. The Dr. Strangelove B-52 had its underside painted with it.
Edit:
The last ten minutes of that film is about the best ten minutes you’ll ever see.
I’ve always wondered just how effective it would have been. Don’t know if any of the findings from Operation Grapple have been made public yet.
Anyway, being a massive fan of Rik Mayall it does remind of the episode ‘Bomb’ in The Young Ones.
A dud nuclear bomb gets accidentally dropped onto the students house and lands in the kitchen. During the episode Viv is trying to set it off, Rik is tries to blackmail Thatcher with it and Mike tries to sell it on the black market. While this is going on, Neil clutching his Protect and Survive pamphlets, builds a fallout shelter in the kitchen and paints himself white to deflect the blast. Mere feet away it!
Brilliantly written episode.
Well I think that set the thread off on a tangent.
It’s all good! I’m watching the episode now. Tangents are good. Sins and Cosins not so much.
I first watched the film way back when as a young soldier; I was actually on guard duty but the film was on in the Guardroom, so my watching was a bit sporadic. The humour totally escaped me as a fifteen-year-old and the ending was, as you note, a hell of an ending.
Fast forward something like 40-odd years and I was at the then Defence NBC Centre in southern Wiltshire organising a study period for my General. I’d negotiated access to various rooms including a large conference room which was also displaying all sorts of NBC related kit, including a drill WE 177 bomb, resting on chocks on the floor. As the study period got underway there was a break for coffee and everybody assembled in said conference room; amidst the biscuit crumps and chatter I was bemused to observe a Civil Servant inspect the WE 177 and then kick the nose cap. I mean, what did he expect to happen??!!
I hasten to add that “crumps” should read “crumbs”; why is dyslexia kicking in now?
Course the Soviet cladding on one tank probably weighed more than a B-52. The flash shields were more a " See, we care about your survival and safety" (wink-wink!) demonstration.
A-4s carried Genies?
SADM? Would an Iraqi one be a “SADM Hussein”???
Thanks! Downloaded a (legal!) digital version of the book just now. The kit comes with both a centerline tank, as well as two wing tanks. It has a couple of Zuni pods as well, but I think I’ll give it two wing tanks and a MER on it’s centerline hardpoint. I like the look of a Skyhawk with a heavy load.
