| Submit your comments on this article |
| Science & Technology |
| The short, difficult career of the F-14 Tomcat... |
| 2021-10-14 |
| [Sandboxx] In the 1970s, the United States had three revolutionary fighters enter service in the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and F-16 Fighting Falcon. Today, two of these platforms remain not only in service, but in production, with only the Top Gun F-14 relegated to museum duty. Today, plenty of airplane nerds (like this author) still count the F-14 Tomcat among their favorite aircraft of all time... so what gives? Why was Maverick’s ride not only retired early by very literally being fed into the industrial shredder while the Eagle and Viper continue to roll off assembly lines to this day? Whenever someone starts in with "It was the bestest, most capablest airplane ever and the people who retired it should be shot," there's probably more to the story than that. The truth is, the F-14 Tomcat was a highly advanced fighter that was really purpose-built for a world-ending nuclear conflict. When you look back on the program, its challenges, and subsequent solutions, the image becomes a bit clearer. The F-14 made sense when we were on the verge of World War III... but without a Soviet boogeyman to keep Uncle Sam’s pocketbook upturned and shaking, it became an incredibly expensive and sometimes problematic solution to a problem nobody had anymore. And to make matters worse, only a portion of the F-14 fleet was ever as capable as most of the world believed. But to be completely clear, it was still one hell of a jet. |
| Posted by:M. Murcek |
| #12 Enough about Maverick, what about Iron Eagle, the only story that shows how the F-16 performance improves with the right music. |
| Posted by: ruprecht 2021-10-14 19:03 |
| #11 No, we're not. |
| Posted by: Omomolet Phutch9064 2021-10-14 13:00 |
| #10 The F-14 made sense when we were on the verge of World War III... And we're currently not? |
| Posted by: Matt 2021-10-14 12:57 |
| #9 Short life span? Well, compared to a B-52. Are there any flying with their any of their original parts? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2021-10-14 10:29 |
| #8 Nope Raj, it was the F-14. The Top Gun 2 he flew a F-18 super hornet |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2021-10-14 10:04 |
| #7 Wasn't Top Gun / Maverick's primary plane an F-15 Eagle? |
| Posted by: Raj 2021-10-14 09:37 |
| #6 Tomcat sacrificed on the Altar of the Hornet, along with the Intruder and Prowler. While at Strike, we had 2 Delta Toms that were Bombcats; very impressive and were in high demand for various projects. Sadly, we also had 2 very low-time A models that did not have the fuselage damage typical of fleet units (engine bay area cracks). The pentagon chose to part them out for fleet squadrons rather than pay to rework/rewire as D’s. How about maybe 300 hours with only 1 or 2 ( field) traps and 0 cat shots? |
| Posted by: USN, Ret. 2021-10-14 09:05 |
| #5 I remember when the F-14 was looking for a mission in the mid-90s. We called them Bomb Cats when they tried to get in the Close Air Support business. Short-lived venture but I have some cool pics.. |
| Posted by: Bangkok Billy 2021-10-14 05:21 |
| #4 F-4 Phantom was in prodiction from 1968-1981. It had a short, difficult career too, I guess. Sure saw a lot of them at work though. |
| Posted by: Fred 2021-10-14 02:25 |
| #3 There was a C-SPAN video explaining it: A Carrier Air Wing composed of F/A-18 "fighter-bombers" has more flexibility/effectiveness than a composite Air Wing of F-14s and A-6s. IIRC there were also mounting problems with the reliability of both the stored AIM-54 Phoenix missiles (why we had a F-14 in the first place) and the complicated F-14 airframe. |
| Posted by: magpie 2021-10-14 01:50 |
| #2 The short, difficult career of the F-14 Tomcat... I'm having a hard time seeing a thirty-two year career as 'short'. Mike |
| Posted by: Mike Kozlowski 2021-10-14 01:49 |
| #1 The F-14 was not a fighter. It was an interceptor. Its entire purpose was not to turn and burn in the furball, but to shoot down incoming Soviet nuclear cruise missiles at maximum distance from its carrier. If it could shoot down the bombers that launched them, so much the better, but that wasn't its primary job. It was an anti-missile platform. |
| Posted by: Omomolet Phutch9064 2021-10-14 00:14 |