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out, the Marines dropped out of the development program before the first prototypes were ready for flight.
Because the Mohawk was an exception to the Secretary of Defense's memorandum on weight limitations for Army aircraft and because it had inherent capabilities for armament, the Air Force had opposed its development from the beginning. There is no doubt that certain Army extremists viewed the Mohawk as the "nose of the camel within the tent of tactical air support." The Army was to suffer for their enthusiasm for years to come. The manufacturer, Grumman, did not help by publishing carefully placed brochures which showed the Mohawk in a variety of attack roles.
The Mohawk was originally designed as a visual reconnaissance aircraft with better survivability than the L-19 of Korean vintage. In addition, it was to have an integral camera system for spot photo coverage. Above all, it was to land and take off in the same distance as the L-19 which it was to supplement. It was not long, however, that "improved" versions of the Mohawk were visualized carrying sophisticated sensor systems developed by the Army surveillance agencies such as infra-red and side-looking radar. Weight, space, and power provisions had not been made for these systems in the original design. As a result, the gross weight increased and performance declined. These growth versions of the Mohawk were coming off the drawing board before the first "A" model had even been tested throughout its entire flight envelope and subsequent tests were to prove that major engineering modifications to both wing and power plants would be necessary in the latter versions. Furthermore, the addition of all this sophisticated sensor equipment not only raised the unit cost significantly but, in the view of many, watered down the Army contention that this was truly a front line low echelon aircraft.
Turning to the Caribou, this aircraft came into the Army by the sheer persistence of a few perceptive representatives of deHaviland Aircraft Corporation of Canada and a few equally perceptive Army aviation enthusiasts who recognized the natural affinity of the deHaviland aircraft to the Army environment. Starting with the Beaver—which was designed as a "bush pilot's dream," and progressing to the reliable, but somewhat clumsy Otter—the Caribou seemed a natural to those Army planners who saw a significant gap between the Army's organic capability and the C-130 Air Force transport.
The Caribou was the second exception by the Secretary of Defense to his memorandum on the weight limitations for Army fixed-wing aircraft. Its very size threw down a gantlet to the Air