Matt, the following is information that my friend, Fred Sanders, sent me this morning. He flew with VA-46:
The speedbrake on the A-7 was huge, and when deployed, you could really feel the deceleration. Useful in air to air combat scenarios when you wanted to slow down and have the guy on your tail speed on by you. Or, useful on an approach when you wanted to slow to approach speed and lower the gear and flaps. But, when the rollers came down, the speedbrake came up.
Landing approach was 21.5 units Angle of Attack. Actual airspeed depended on configuration, weight, et al, and was controlled, as you said, with throttle and stick. Stick maintained the attitude (AOA) and throttle controlled rate of descent. Really easy, actually.
The A7 was reputed to be hard to bring aboard the boat because of no speedbrake. The difficulty lies in the fact that you have a turbine engine, and landing engine speed is relatively low (rpm). Turbines don't produce a ton of power unless turning near max rpm, so to throttle back for landing on the boat, you are pretty far down on the power curve. If you bolter (which I did alot), you have to wind that engine up quickly, thus when the wheels hit the deck, the throttle goes forward. Every time. If you catch a wire, you'll stop. If you don't, you'll be near or at full power by the time you get to the end of the deck.
Speedbrakes allow the pilot to carry more power (engine rpm) to compensate for the aerodynamic drag induced by the speedbrake, thus having more thrust available if the approach turns brown in a hurry. A-7 drivers didn't have that luxury.