VA-195 Tiger & Parrot

VA-195 "Tigers" / "Dambusters" (Attack Squadron 195) · USN · 1949-1953

Attack Squadron 195 adopted this tiger-and-parrot device on 18 April 1949, replacing the lion cub that comedian Bob Burns had donated — as a live animal — to the squadron in its wartime days as Torpedo Squadron 19. The torpedo beneath the tiger's paws proved prophetic: on 1 May 1951, eight AD Skyraiders off USS Princeton, five of them from VA-195, made low, flak-raked runs on North Korea's Hwacheon Dam and put six Mark 13 aerial torpedoes into its floodgates after B-29s, 2,000-pound bombs, and Tiny Tim rockets had all failed to bring it down. Few of the pilots had ever dropped a torpedo; one ensign had never even seen one. The strike stands as the last combat use of aerial torpedoes by the U.S. Navy, and it traded the squadron's old nickname for the one it still carries — Dambusters.