What happened to the Vigilante??

The Vigilante has been a plane of mystery and I know they turned it into the RA5C Vigilante for recon missions, but was it ever really active other than that??
I love the look of it, but it seems sort of shrouded in mystery??

Any help......Peace Mondo

The A-5 was abandoned as a bomber fairly quickly.

It's longitudinal bomb bay that dropped bombs out the rear of the aircraft apparently never worked very well.

On the other hand, it was a great airframe, and continued to serve in the recon role for quite a while. Apparently it had extremely impressive acceleration and high-speed performance, to the degree that the Navy never had a fighter that could catch it.

In some ways it was a design ahead of it's time, influencing later aircraft like the F-15 and Mig-25.