Believe it or not but the Corps was offered ALL the Air Force A-10's at NO COST.  The Corps spent almost a year debating the possibilities but finally decided to turn it down...Why, you ask?  It is because the A-10 did not have a tailhook nor could it be retrofited for it.  They decided to work on putting a tailhook on the OV-10.  In fact, this program had a lot of success and they did Carrier qual OV-10's for the fleet.  Unfortunately, thanks to the Gulf War, they felt the OV-10 was not survivable in modern warfare so two months after she CQ'd, the OV-10 died.  We lost the A-10 and the OV-10 in one fail swoop. That's ok, we still have the F-18.....yea right! Frumby
Attack Pilot
Major USMC