The first flight of the North American A-5A Vigilante nuclear attack aircraft was on 31 August 1958. The initial fifty-five service examples of the A-5A Vigilante began to enter Navy inventory at NAS Sanford, FL on 16 June 1961, fifty years ago this month.

As the Navy's carrier-based nuclear attack role was relinquished in favor of the SSB(N) fleet, the Vigilante was used as a highly sophisticated reconnaissance aircraft. The airborne component of the Integrated Operational Intelligence System (IOIS), the RA-5C's sensor suite included vertical cameras, oblique cameras, and horizon-to-horizon scanning cameras. Also included was Side Looking Airborne Radar (SLAR), radio and infra-red sensors and low-light television. Input to these systems was data-linked to a surface-based tactical data system.

Correction 1 April 2016-I wrote the lhe last sentence in the paragraph above because of the following statement in the 1967-1968 Jane's All the World's Aircraft, Pg. 319: "Data obtained by these reconnaisance systems are fed to a surface-based tactical data system."
I have been assured by Emerson S. Conrad Jr., a member of the RVAH community from 1969-1974 that "Nothing was data-linked, we had to get back aboard to download the film from cameras, side looking radar or infrared scanner & the tape from the PECM (Passive Electronic Counter Measures system). All this was processed in the IOIC (Integrated Operational Intelligence Center). I thank Mr. Conrad for his input.

EDIT 1 April 2016-The following paragraph has had information added from Emerson S. Conrad Jr. and Wikipedia: As a photographer living in the Northeast, I only saw a couple of these advanced aircraft. Following their time at Sanford, the Vigilante fleet was stationed at NAS Albany, GA., (formerly Turner AFB) from 1968-1974, then moved to NAS Key West until RVAH-7, the last Vigilante squadron, stood down in early 1980.

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