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The US Navy Says Goodbye to the Tomcat
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Sep 21, 2006 09:47 PM
from the off-into-the-wild-blue-yonder dept.
from the off-into-the-wild-blue-yonder dept.
jonerik writes "Though it's not being widely reported, this week marks the end of the line for the F-14 Tomcat in US Navy service. First flown in 1970, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was easily one of the world's most powerful, advanced, and deadly aircraft for many years, capable of flying at Mach 2.3 and firing its half-dozen Mach 5 AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles at targets as much as 100 miles away. Having been gradually replaced during the last several years by the newer F/A-18E/F, the last of the aircraft in US service will be officially retired on Friday, September 22nd in a ceremony at Virginia's Oceana Naval Air Station. However, at least a few F-14s will continue to fly for a few more years: Iran — which took delivery of 79 aircraft before the overthrow of the Shah — still flies the plane, though only a small number (perhaps ten or twenty) are believed to still be in service due to a lack of spare parts and attrition."
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Thank God (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention we won't have to think of "Danger Zone", "you've lost that loving feelin'" (when he sings it), and we won't have to think of Navy training jets as MIGs anymore!
Re:Thank God (Score:4, Interesting)
But we'll never forget Sega's 2-degree-of-freedom arcade game After Burner II [wikipedia.org].
It came out one year later, had the same sprite-scaled love that Space Harrier great, and it had a soundtrack better than the movie that indirectly inspired it. When the enemy fighter appeared behind you, you could indeed "hit the brakes, he'll fly right by me" and blow the guy away. Suicide in any actual air-to-air encounter, but it made for great coin-op lovin'...
The pattern is full... but negative, Ghostrider, neither is the coin box in my basement arcade. Don't ask how I got it down got there, and I won't tell you you have to land until Stage 23.
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thank God (Score:4, Interesting)
Most older aircraft, yes, but it was possible and did happen with an F4:
Once again, he met the MiG-17 head-on, this time with an offset so he couldn't fire his guns. As he pulled up vertically he could again see his determined adversary a few yards away. Still gambling, Cunningham tried one more thing. He yanked the throttles back to idle and popped the speed brakes, in a desperate attempt to drop behind the MiG. But, in doing so, he had thrown away the Phantom's advantage, its superior climbing ability. And if he stalled out
The MiG shot out in front of Cunningham for the first time....
from this source [acepilots.com]
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Funny)
The last F-14 flight (Score:4, Funny)
Tomcat (Score:4, Funny)
On a related note:
Last time I checked, our country only had 4 italian training jets for our air defense. Maybe they're going to donate those things
Anyone else think Apache? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone else think Apache? (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid Reporter (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AI
The Grumman F-14D Tomcat is a twin-engine, two-seat supersonic airplane that in the years since the early 1970s was the Navy's primary fighter. Its battles with Russian-built MiGs over Vietnam made both planes famous.
Clearly he confused the F-14 with the F-4...
Yay (Score:4, Funny)
Reading between the lines... (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, not having enough attrition is a big problem in the Tomcat business.
On a more serious subject, were these the ones with the foldy wings? Man, I have a Micro Machine that I'm somewhat sure is a Tomcat and the wings amaze me every time I play with it.
Er, you know. Every time when I used to play with it. Because...I'm too old for Micro Machines now...of...course...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most carrier aircraft have wings that fold. Usually
they fold *up* and not back. Storage is at a premium.
Re:Reading between the lines... (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Virginia Beach and F-14s have flown here for many, many years. They are cool planes, more so than the F-18s, and will be missed.
I bet some hydraulic techs are happy about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice idea eh? The problem is there are six hydraulic actuators on each wing to make this happen. When one breaks, there's no way to tell which one is bad without pulling all six from the wing and putting each one on a test bench. Testing a single actuator takes about an hour... and Murphy states the bad actuator is the last one you test.
The F-18 may look like a lawn dart from hell, but at least it's relatively easier to work on.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I bet some hydraulic techs are happy about this (Score:5, Interesting)
While your about it you might as well mention the negative experiences of the F18 down under, such as the double control inversion points (controls reverse themselves - a real oh shit moment) due to the fact that the damn thing twists longitudinally and laterally at speed. Not to mention the mods added to stop the damn tail ripping off during low altitude maneauvres that the aussies are so fond of. I hope the JSF isn't a dud. The F1-11 has been pretty good. Any piece of high tech has it's problems, you just need the right maintenance schedule.
To keep on topic, I think the F14 was a beautiful piece of Aviation history and it was designed in a time where thing got accomplished. The current state of the development of such things has reached a point where I'm amazed that anything actually ever gets achieved.
Re:I bet some hydraulic techs are happy about this (Score:5, Funny)
As a money saving "common aircraft" plan shared between the Air Force and Navy (like the F-4 before it) the F-111 was originally intended to also fill the role of fleet defense fighter for the Navy (a role later filled by the F-14 instead). There was exactly one carrier landing in an F-111, by a test pilot early on. Due to poor low speed handling, heavy weight, and large size it was nigh impossible to land safely. The pilot was asked afterwards "if you had the choice between the F-111 and any other airplane for making a carrier landing, which would you choose?" His answer was, famously, "Any other airplane".
Re:I bet some hydraulic techs are happy about this (Score:5, Funny)
Well, yeah - because once you've found the bad one you don't test any more, right?
Re:I bet some hydraulic techs are happy about this (Score:5, Funny)
Most famous hardware in the military. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell yes, I admit I would love to fly at Mach 3 with my hair on fire, and have the call sign "Maverick." While over all I felt the military would be a poor choice of career for me due to my disrespect for authority, I always had a small fantasy to be able to fly an F-14.
I will briefly lament it's passing by wearing Axe body spray, putting on a navy uniform, and going out to bars to sing "She's Lost that Lovin' Feeling" to women who won't sleep with me.
Flying an F-14 may be a fantasy, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely you jest. I saw it, and being in the Navy at the time, hated it, since it was nothing like the real Navy, and apparently a chick-flick. There are emotional issues, a love conflict, (boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-again story line,) the men-playing-volleyball scene, and the ending with the protagonist confronting personal demons and finding self-actualization. Take away the F-14s, and it is your stereotypical chick-flick. I would say all it needs is Meg Ryan, but she's already there.
To be fair, I am kind of biased. Most (definitely not all) of the Navy (and other military) pilots I have known followed orders to the tee to safely complete their mission, and would never act like Maverick, so the whole screenplay is bull. Even the pilots who were bigger-penises-than-supernovae-would-require-to-r
End of an era. (Score:4, Interesting)
Rather like the F-4 "Phantom," in the late '60s and the '70s, the F-14 was probably the most idealized fighter for an entire generation of kids in the '80s. Something about the design - the graceful lines, or the swing wings, perhaps - just made it more romantic than either the F-15 or F-16 to my mind. I got to see one at an airshow once, afterburners on and all, which was a treat given that I don't live on the coast.
Children of the '90s have their F-22s, and F-117s, to admire, I suppose. For the rest, the postively ancient B-52 still lives.
I was sad to see the F-4 fade away over the course of the '80s, though I wasn't around for its heyday. The same with the F-111 - the last true fighter-bomber (as opposed to strike fighter) in U.S. service. I have to wonder if the "Tomcat" won't be the last pure air-combat-fighter/interceptor ever put into production for the U.S. armed forces.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Lets Have a Round of Applause! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lets Have a Round of Applause! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lets Have a Round of Applause! (Score:5, Informative)
History and stats on the F-14 [att.net]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I see no reason for us all to feel sentimental for something being "retired" (anthropomorphism anyone?) that existed on this earth for the sole reason of killing human beings.
Pure fighter aircraft are defensive weaponry, not offensive weaponry. They are
The horrors of killing can not be measured... (Score:5, Insightful)
... but they can be compared. Kind of like the cardinality [wikipedia.org] of infinite sets.
It sucks to have to kill people, but you must be prepared to do it to prevent other killings and/or misery — deemed greater by some measure or another.
People have always been fascinated with things beautiful, weapons included — consider the swords and the firearms collections, for example. The fascination with a fighter plane is perfectly legitimate too.
Re:Lets Have a Round of Applause! (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing the Tomcat was intended to "kill" were enemy bombers. They were built as super fast planes with weaponry that could reach out and touch air targets (bombers, specifically). They initially had no ground capability whatsoever. Their primary offensive weaponry couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, let alone a highly manueverable fighter aircraft. However, they could swoop in quickly, unload on large bomber groups (taking down huge numbers of bombers), and then run like hell from the escort aircraft.
The purpose of the Tomcat was to take down Russian bombers before Russian bombers carpet-bombed and/or dropped nuclear weapons on American cities. It wasn't a killing machine; it was a tool of deterrence. Without reason to believe their bombers would never make it to American shores, the Soviets would have felt a lot more comfortable launching a crippling first attack on America. ICBMs can only do but so much damage. Bombers, on the other hand, could cripple our counter-attack capability and nullify MAD.
In other words, the Tomcat served to help prevent what could have easily been the bloodiest and most destructive conflict in all of human history.
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because slamming them into carrier decks and parking them in salt water spray incurs no maintenece cost. Those things could just be used forever, if it weren't for that damn Military Industrial War Complex.
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, it's possible that if we'd never built these weapons of war to fight the Soviet Union, people like Brezhnev wouldn't have taken the opportunity to conquer Western Europe or at least extort from it money to prop up the Soviet Union, and accordingly the only reason we built them was to fund a military-industrial complex. It's similarly possible that, had Danzig been handed over to Hitler when he demanded it, World War II would have been averted, and the only reason Chamberlain stood up to Hitler in 1939 was to please Britsh armaments manufacturers.
Never had a chance? (Score:5, Informative)
Not true [wikipedia.org].
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, there's a fair amount of evidence that the Russians never did have intentions beyond holding the WarPac line, and the main reason for their massive arms spend was an utter refusal to fight the Great Patriotic War again. I don't follow it terribly closely, but just as the US would claim it never intended to start a war, the Russians can quite plausibly make the same claim.
There's also a fair amount of evidence that prior to the Great Patriotic War Stalin was hoping that Nazi Germany and the UK would beat the shit out of each other so that the Soviet Union could pick up the shattered pieces of Western Europe.
You think they would have stopped at Berlin if we hadn't had a few million troops in Europe when Germany surrendered? You are dreaming. Ask Finland or the Baltic States what it was like to be nextdoor to Stalinist Russia.
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know! My locks at home have prevented ZERO thefts by last count so I'm having them all removed! What a waste!
Also, I'm not fat, which makes all my exercise and healthy eating REALLY pointless. I'm wising up and switching to TV and twinkies!
4 jets, 1 helicopter, and the entire USSR airforce (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, some folks and even some nation-states occasionally decide "Eh, the Americans were probably kidding about actually using that whole military machine thing". Hiya, Saddam, tell me: how did that invasion of Kuwait go for you again?
Let's not forget Iran.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently the Iranians added substantially to that score during the first Gulf war. Ironically enough, and if your information on Tomact air victories in US service is reliable, that means that the majority of F-14 Tomcat victories were achieved by the air force of the Islamic Republic of Iranian. It took Iran a while to recover their capability to operate the Tomcat after the revolution but when they did the Tomcat had an easy time especially vs. Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s and assorted helicopters since the Iraqis only got pretty low grade export variants from the Soviets and had nothing capable of matching the Tomcat on any level until they got MiG-25 and Mirage fighters with good radar warning receivers, modern intercept radars and the all important long range missiles. Of course all this happened while Saddam was still America's friend and <sarcasm> before he joined the axis-of-evil </sarcasm>. What is really amazing is that Iran still manages to operate the Tomcat today 27 years after the revolution without manufacturer support.
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Have it, and hope you don't need it is a LOT better than Need it - and don't have it
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:5, Informative)
One of the biggest problems with those old jets is the massive number of ground service hours required for every hour of air time. The F-14 was one of the worst. Not to mention that maintaining a certain level of air superiority might require X of an older type of jet, versus 1/4X of a newer type of jet [strategypage.com].
Often you can save money buy spending money.
And those old F-14s aren't immediately ground up into Bender sandwiches -- They usually go to a graveyard [google.com] to sit around in a state of somewhat possibly potentially close to readiness, just in case a really big war breaks out.
Re:And so marches on the.... (Score:5, Interesting)
A miniscule percentage for buying weapons (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, $438 Billion is all weapons, right? Well... no. Depending on the year, Defense spending [whitehouse.gov], is about 23% for personnel (pay, benefits), 31% for operations and maintenance (fuel & parts), and 15% for R&D. Procurement is a stunning 18%. That is about 3% of the total Federal budget. But not even all of that 3% goes to buying weapons. A sizable chunk of it goes to ship building for the Navy, for example. Another chunk goes to buying ammo. There are plenty of other things, like fire fighting equipment, periscopes, and pollution control equipment, night vision gear, and construction equipment.
The Federal budget also doesn't include state income taxes for which an even smaller percentage is going to go for defense related expenses. City and county taxes don't contribute anything either.
Overall, a minute percentage of American taxes goes to new weapons.
(I guess protest signs wouldn't look so scary if they complained that the US spent 1.6% of its Federal budget on weapons.)
Re:A miniscule percentage for buying weapons (Score:4, Insightful)
Except in order to ensure our safety you need to be willing to use those nucular warheads. And we all know the likelihood of that. So our enemies do *just enough* damage to inflict pain, but not incur the wrath of a full nucular response.
So with conventional weapons, however, you now have a way of responding without a full-out nuclear response.
And we need 13 CVBGs and 24 B-2s to respond to, what exactly? Terrorism? No other nation-state is going to attack the United States. The nuclear deterrent seems to be pretty effective when dealing with them. And terrorism can be solved by a combination of better security, human intelligence, and *gasp* addressing the underlying issues that make us unpopular with "John Q. Public" in the Muslim World. Like our one-sided support of Israel and our past transgressions with supporting ruthless dictatorships.
None of those things can be addressed with more M-1 tanks, Nimitz class carriers or F-22s.
BTW: It's nuclear Mr. President.
Re:Hey, you've got to spend income taxes somehow (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Worse is better (Score:5, Informative)
It had two main roles. First was the BARCAP role. The USA kept carrier groups on patrol in case the Soviets launched bomber strikes, and the F-14 was the first line of defense against them. The idea was that it could catch up with a Soviet bomber group before they reached launch range, lock onto the big bombers, fire its AIM-54s, and get out once the missiles went terminal. It wasn't supposed to mix it up with the escorting fighters, that was the job of escorting F-14s or the F-15s from the USAF. Once the USSR collapsed, BARCAP wasn't such a big deal, so that's when they decided to give it ground attack capability.
It was also tasked with Fleet Air Defense, meaning to protect the carrier air group from airborne threats - bombers dedicated to anti-ship strikes, cruise missiles, fighters scrambled to attack Navy bombers. In this role, it was obseleted by the AEGIS cruiser as much as the F/A-18.
I apologize in advance if I got any of the facts wrong - this is just as I remember it as a plane geek.
Grammar Nazi... (Score:4, Funny)
I wasn't aware that the Hornet or the Intruder were capable of carrying(?) laws or regulations. The word you're looking for is ordnance.
Re:Oh say can you... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wither, Aim-54 Phoenix? (Score:4, Informative)
* second-sourced motor safety made incorrectly by the morons at Raytheon at fault there. I have almost as many stories about dumbfuck engineers from Raytheon "reinterpreting" design drawings to save money on manufacture and thereby delivering unusable missile parts. Now Raytheon has bought up all the US missile designers/manufacturers, Hughes included. One wonders how a company that's run so badly ends up owning the whole show, but I'll save rants about congressional lobbyists for another time...
Re:Why is tracking 6 targets still a big deal?