Goodbye to the F-14

[CV32]

From Navy Times

 

September 22, 2006

Goodbye to the F-14

By Tom Vanden Brook

USA Today

 

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The Navy today is holstering the F-14 Tomcat, the top gun in its Cold War arsenal and one of the most recognizable warplanes in history.

 

Maintenance costs for the F-14 have soared, and a more versatile, cheaper-to-keep replacement, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, has taken its place.

 

Yet the Super Hornet is unlikely to surpass the F-14’s following. Furiously fast, deafeningly loud and lethal to enemy aircraft, the Tomcat had already attained legendary status by the 1980s. The 1986 film “Top Gun,” in which Tom Cruise portrayed an F-14 pilot in training, cemented the supersonic warplane’s reputation in the popular culture.

 

“There’s something about the way an F-14 looks, something about the way it carries itself,” says Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations. “It screams toughness. Look down on a carrier flight deck and see one of them sitting there, and you just know, there’s a fighter plane. I really believe the Tomcat will be remembered in much the same way as other legendary aircraft, like the Corsair, the Mustang and the Spitfire.”

 

The Tomcat was designed in the late 1960s with one enemy in mind: the Soviet Union. Typically launched from an aircraft carrier, the Tomcat’s twin engines propelled it at twice the speed of sound. Its armaments deterred Soviet bombers designed to fire missiles at Navy ships.

 

“It was intended to do one thing really well,” says John Pike, a military analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, a think tank based in Alexandria, Va. “The Soviets evidently respected it. Their answer was to build bigger and faster bombers. Fortunately, those attacks never came.”

 

After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, the F-14 was something of a stray cat. It had no real enemy in a world with one superpower. Eventually, the Navy armed it with precision bombs and targeting systems and added attack missions to its resume. Tomcats, with their two-member crews of a pilot and a backseat radar officer, flew missions in Desert Storm, in the Balkans and, until February, in Iraq.

 

After today’s ceremony, the Navy will mothball some F-14s in the Arizona desert and ship others to aviation museums. A monument at Oceana Naval Air Station will be dedicated to the 69 Tomcat aviators who were killed while flying the plane, says retired rear admiral Fred Lewis, chairman of the Tomcat Sunset Committee, a non-profit group established to organize farewell ceremonies for the F-14. “That’s the risk we all accepted when we flew the plane,” Lewis says.

 

The only other country still flying F-14s after today will be Iran, Pike says. Starved for spare parts, the Iranians struggle to keep them in flight. Smuggled parts will be even harder to come by after the Navy retires the Tomcat.

 

“Nobody will be sorrier to see them go than the ayatollahs,” Pike says.

 

The Navy’s last F-14s made their final cats and traps from the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in July.

[TonyE]

Just full of depressing news today aren't you Brad . Oh well, the F-14 lives on in my heart and when I become rich and famous I'll buy one out of the boneyards and make it into a jungle gym or simulator. So long Tomcat.

[pmaidhof]

One more big step further away from what was once a proud and progressive aeronautical industry here on long island. The former Fairchild and Republic properties are now either delapidated old shells of what was once hangers and factories, or multiplex movie theaters and eateries. The old Grumman plants have also been sliced up for consumerism and other development. Roosevelt, Curtis, and Mitchell Fields are all shopping malls and community colleges.

 

Bah humbug - gone forever are the days of the "All-Grumman Air Wing" Carrier Air Wing 2 of USS Ranger during DS/DS which made space for two full A-6E Intruder Squadrons by carrying no F/A-18's.

 

[CV32]

Guys, I couldn't agree more with your sentiment that the Tomcat is an awesome fighter and a symbol of firepower, but I'm afraid its time for the Turkey to go ... progress marches on.