TR Traps Last Tomcat from Combat Mission

Official U.S. Navy file photo of An F-14D Tomcat from the "Black Lions" of Fighter Squadron Two One Three (VF-213) catches the arresting wire on the flight deck aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Tony Foster (RELEASED)

By Journalist 2nd Class Stephen Murphy, USS Theodore Roosevelt Public Affairs

ABOARD USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT (NNS) -- A chapter in naval aviation history drew to a close Feb. 8 aboard USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) with the last recovery of an F-14 Tomcat from a combat mission.

Piloted by Capt. William G. Sizemore II, commander, Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8, Fighter Squadron (VF) 213’s aircraft 204 was trapped at 12:35 a.m. and marked one of the final stages of the Navy’s transition from the F-14 to F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet.

www.navy.mil...

Sad day indeed for a great aircraft.

It sure is a nice plane... Pity it didn't fly a couple of more years... but who knows... maybe the F-35 will became a similar legend after a couple of years...

Well, think about Russia, China, Iran, has already known the technology of Tomcat well, although retiring of Tomcat is a nightmare, but let her go, a genuine demoncratic freedom country would be creating more powerful more dominant fighter!

Emile,

>>
Well, think about Russia, China, Iran, has already known the technology of Tomcat well...
>>

FSU/PRC/IRI know the F-14A well. The D is an entirely different ship. One which did not deserve to be relegated to obsolescence of her weapons systems solely to 'prove' that an F-22 which cost four times as much was the only other option.

>>
...although retiring of Tomcat is a nightmare, but let her go, a genuine demoncratic freedom country would be creating more powerful more dominant fighter!
>>

The most dominant fighter is a missile which can be launched from any tom-dick-harry jet and still achieve dominant pole positioning on any other. It is in this that the absence of the _F-14 specific_ AAAM will be most missed as the world laughs at us from the Promontory of Meteor Peak.

The F-14 was never half the fighter that it was made out to be folks. As an Air Superiority jet it just had too much bulk for it's liftin area and thrust. As a Fleet Air Defense asset it was outmoded by the AEGIS and outranged by the AS-4 and 6.

The sadness then being that the aircraft which replace it are even worse.


KPl.


P.S. Being a great democracy has nothing whatsoever to do with one's military prowess Emile. It is a shame that you see us only that way.


F3,

>>
It sure is a nice plane... Pity it didn't fly a couple of more years... but who knows... maybe the F-35 will became a similar legend after a couple of years...
>>

It has style. Whereas the F/A-18 is typical MACDAC: "Open the book of great book of aeronatutical engineering to Chapter ten and copy down verse 5, line 7 from page 325." Bulky and chunky and lumpsummed but never synergistically elegant. Never a 1,000mph standing still.

OTOH, about the only thing I can think to say about this-

www.simulationinformation.com...

Is "Pardon me squire, but don't your knuckles get sore from walking on them?"


KPl.


LINK-
Plastic Airpower On Deck, Yesiree Bob! (Wheres the nozzle for the airpump?)
forum.keypublishing.co.uk...

CH, using big words doesn't get your point across.

I'm sorry, I should be bowing to you, and be sweating in your presence shouldn't I? The almighty and All-knowing Ch, I'm sorry, but all the posts I've read of yours(so few as they may be) is just littered with biased BS.

Like seriously, you just completely degraded the Tomcat by saying "It wasn't the aircraft, it was the missile" yet the Pheonix Aim-54 had a what? 50 percent chance of hitting it's target?

It was the aircraft that was great, you can never outshine the delivery system by the weapon, it's just not logical, the Aim-54 and Tomcat were designed side by side, however the Tomcat became more famous and faster.

You claim to know all of this, yet by using confusing sentences and big words, only shows that you try way too hard to impress us. It doesn't work for the experienced members. This isn't a flaming, it's a correction. The F-14D is an amazing aircraft(now this is just pure speculation, no fact possible, but it's still a pretty good opinion as many people seem to hold it) and it is sad to see one of the greatest Naval Aircraft in US history to be shined out like this.

But it has to be done, with every great aircraft, comes a great end. We can only hope greater aircraft will come later on in the years.

But I don't think I have ever heard anyone ever say "The missile is what made the aircraft". That's just absurd, the missile will never be as good as the aircraft itself, it can't, the missile has to be launched off of a platform, it needs a platform, be it a SAM or and Aircraft, it needs to be launched off of something. As all other weapons do as well, rockets, bombs, bullets, anything, you can't have the warrior outshined by the weapon.

King Auther was never outshine by Excaliber.

Long live the Swordsmen. VF-32.

Shattered OUT...

I HATE and DREAD to see the F-14 Tomcat retiring, I bet replacing it and using this so called 'super' hornet will CRIPPLE the USNs air power.

I suppose the F-35 will be a great jet but i will always LOVE the F-14 Tomcat

Wouldnt an F-15/Naval ATF fulfill the Tomcats role?

It was said about the 14,
(para)
There are jets that can fly faster,
and there are jets that can fly slower,
but not both.

Goodbye to the F-14, it was a great fighter plane!!! And it really kicked ass in the Iran-Iraq War.

But it simply is not necessary anymore.

Originally posted by emile
Well, think about Russia, China, Iran, has already known the technology of Tomcat well, although retiring of Tomcat is a nightmare, but let her go, a genuine demoncratic freedom country would be creating more powerful more dominant fighter!

"demoncratic" freedom country!!

I'm quite sure that was unintentional, but.. oh the IRONY!!

It is a real shame the navy opted for the F/A-18 E/F instead of the ASF-14 Super Tomcat IMO. It would have been great to see what I believe to be one of the finest looking aircraft to be flying well into the new millennium.

Well now the only country in teh wrold flying teh type is :


Iran



and the AIM-54? did its job very well thank you - designed to engage Soviet Badgers and Blinders who were vectoring in to fire there kingfish at the CBG.

And CH - from all of your replies , i can now see you dislike EVERY US weapons sytem , be it , aircraft , tank or ship.

S2

>>
CH, using big words doesn't get your point across.
>>

Please don't ever tell me what you consider to be 'words of adequate size'.

>>
I'm sorry, I should be bowing to you, and be sweating in your presence shouldn't I?
>>

Only if the post had been directed at you and you're into submission games (jeering your disgust to gain the sympathy of a mob is so jejune) as an alternative to facing up to someone in direct debate. As is, I would say the psychology behind your words is passive-aggressive at best. And more likely rosey-tinted defensive of a pet rock suddenly called a lodestone.

>>
The almighty and All-knowing Ch, I'm sorry, but all the posts I've read of yours(so few as they may be) is just littered with biased BS.
>>

So let me get this straight, I don't claim godhood but you're bound and determined to bestow it upon me despite limited experience in reading what I've written. Here too we see a psychology by which you deliberately restrict the mean level of YOUR knowledge so as to ensure I fail YOUR min specifications for Deification.

Bwaahahahahahahhahahah, Reverse Omniscience, I like it! Not.

>>
Like seriously, you just completely degraded the Tomcat by saying "It wasn't the aircraft, it was the missile" yet the Phoenix AIM-54 had a what? 50 percent chance of hitting it's target?
>>

It depends. Later AIM-54C+ was a pretty decent weapon and where you are already saturated with a thousand other concerns trying to fly the OCA/DCA mission, it is possible to miss the threat call or the RWR indicator that says the weapons are inbound. Indeed, many passive systems 'screen' those illuminators which are not within specified range bounds.

Similarly, not all Phoenix shots are defined by a glaring smoke trail across the sky. Nor do all shots come from the distance at which they appear to suddenly start to guide. Those two capabilities alone should tell you something about how the Phoenix generates 'fighter dominance'.

Of course then there's the seal-clubbing exercise of PGW-I in which event doing a dork threat almost makes it more of an injustice to waste the weapon than murder from afar.

>>
It was the aircraft that was great, you can never outshine the delivery system by the weapon, it's just not logical, the AIM-54 and Tomcat were designed side by side, however the Tomcat became more famous and faster.
>>

Actually, I believe it was the engines which first drove the configuration of the Tomcat as the USN was looking to beat the F-111's notorious stall problems on the temperamental TF30. Grumman failed miserably in this endeavor, though it was by no means exclusively their fault.

The second consideration (quoting the chief designer, Mike Pelehach) however was indeed spacing a 'wing between' the nacelles sufficiently wide to accept a pair of Phoenix. And sufficiently long to tandemize them. This along with the size of the radome necessary to accomodate the AWG-9 more or less set the rest of the airframe. And his words have been used ever since, by everyone from Heater Heatley to various Historians to denote that /yes/ the F-14 was specifically 'designed around' the LRAAM weapons system.

That said, the AIM-54 and AWG actually has roots going back through the ASG-18/GAR-9 to the APQ-81/XAAM-10. Though the original source manufacturers (Westinghouse and Bendix) changed the fact remains that the AIM-54 _as a Hughes development_ predates the F-14 by nature of it's application to the F-111B.

Which still doesn't say much because what worked in 1958 on the F6D facing lonewolf intruders only just beginning to use >
You claim to know all of this, yet by using confusing sentences and big words, only shows that you try way too hard to impress us. It doesn't work for the experienced members. This isn't a flaming, it's a correction.
>>

Sir, you can't even /spell/ Phoenix. Don't talk to me about correcting my vocabulary, grammar or diction in 'confusing' sentences. The difference between talking down to a person and flinging yourself into the mud pit of their own locutionary shortcomings is that of watching the pigs squeal from atop the fence and trying to catch one in it's element.

OTOH, taking the time to comprehend complex phraseology being the method by which we understand our own rationality of belief in any given topic as much as others'.

Either way, I won't go swimming in the ick for the likes of you.

>>
The F-14D is an amazing aircraft(now this is just pure speculation, no fact possible, but it's still a pretty good opinion as many people seem to hold it) and it is sad to see one of the greatest Naval Aircraft in US history to be shined out like this.
>>

No, it's pretty much FACT that the USN lied through it's teeth to make the F/A-18E/F look like a modification instead of a new design and thus a 550nm bomber ('10-15 percent better than the Tomcat') when they had little or no hard data to back up the claim.

Indeed, when in point of truth, the F/A-18A's achieved OPEVAL radii were upwards of 50nm short. And the E's equivalent distances are often less than competitive with what was demonstrated on it's predecessor.

E: Required 393nm. Achieved 363.
A: (Land based liepower) 580nm _flown_ by the F/A-18A during 1978 or so between Grumman Bethpage and the Castle ranges.

Since OPEVAL is a pass fail graded test, there is no reason for the F/A-18E/F to be in the fleet today but for the fact that there is no other choice.

OTOH, the F-14 in all flavors has the gas and the warload to beat the F/A-18 and has finally been allowed to prove it, from OEF onwards.

>>
But it has to be done, with every great aircraft, comes a great end. We can only hope greater aircraft will come later on in the years.
>>

Oh please, aerospace engineering is never a function of /hope/.

The simple fact of the matter is that that USN did what the USAF tried to over the Raptor and B-2, lowballing upgrades to the point where Congress didn't believe they were serious about having a backup plan in the pursuit of a wonder jetten that the Navy 'hoped' would be all that they knew from their own studies, physics would not support.

Being the slimeballs they are, the Armed Farces acquisition system works on a mafia like blackmail 'protection' system whereby failing to achieve a (known to be too high) spec buys you 'points off the top' of development and acquisition costs. Something which the contractor then buys back over the length of the (inflated costs) production program.

Unfortunately, when the Cold War strip poker contest folded early for want of 'further participation' and the A-12 came in exactly where Squiddian weight:cost studies showed it would, the combination of reduced inventory buy and escalating development costs made it a lose:lose situation for GDFW/MACDAC even if they took out the loans on their future to finish FSD.

Since it was FRAUD IN THE INDUCEMENT on the part of the government and specifically the Navy which kept the companies from having the same dataset to work with as the Navy kept as a hidden ace, Federal Courts awarded those companies FIVE BILLION DOLLARS for work achieved to date. Of course no one in the /Navy/ had to pay for what amounts to some test-shot composite ribs and a wooden mockup. We Did.

The correlate to this business-is-not-based-on-hope stupidity is that nobody will invest in upgrades to a non-production airframe because the total money and thus risk:return ratio just isn't as stable for want of 'urgent need' (replace airframe X or have no airpower, really comes down to the services wanting a new toy for all their young boys).

The jet which started all this being the A-12 of course. While the underfunded alternatives which Cohen killed in a fit of spite after the Squids embarrassed him in front of Congress were the A-6F/G and F-14D.

Aircraft which had been building at a sloppy 10-12 per year for just about forever.

By comparison, the F/A-18 is nothing but cheap in all areas but they hadn't yet destroyed the program economics of it (and were not in process of destroying the tooling) solely to create an artificial lack of airframe as much as systems attrition.

Add to this a significantly bigger schwing in the WDC party circuit and the 'imminent collapse' of their aerospace business in the wake of the A-12 and MD-80/90. And MACDAC made it possible to avoid ditching the Bug for what should have obviously been the selection of ONE airframe (the Tomcat) to functionally emulate the F-15E.

As a _self_ escorting weapons platform. Enabled as a penetrator entirely by munitions (HARM, AMRAAM, JDAM+SWAK).

Result? Now the Navy has a sphere of influence of roughly 350nm around the boat. At a time when their own doctrine: 'From The Sea, Forward' requires them to acknowledge responisibilities BEGINNING 400nm inland.

And since they cannot do it because the /weapons systems/ of the F-14 were never developed to be adequate to the task of assuring penetration by standoff, it doesn't matter that the F/A-18 is no better for want of inadequate aeros performance.

Because the USAF owns Deep Strike.

>>
But I don't think I have ever heard anyone ever say "The missile is what made the aircraft". That's just absurd, the missile will never be as good as the aircraft itself, it can't, the missile has to be launched off of a platform, it needs a platform, be it a SAM or and Aircraft, it needs to be launched off of something. As all other weapons do as well, rockets, bombs, bullets, anything, you can't have the warrior outshined by the weapon.
>>

Oh please. In addition to what I've already said, _look_ at Cope India. In which you have AIM-120s being used in pure parent-tethered mode, all the way to impact, over engagement distances of less than 40km.

With hamstring ROE'd BVR, the F-15 and 16 both are cripples against even a /mildly/ BVR-parity capable opfor and their stupid pilots got the drubbing their deserved going into WVR thinking that 'talent and experience' would make a single iota of difference against a WVR -and numbers- dominant opfor.

There is no greater illustration of the STUPIDITY OF MAN than that you pretend pilots are anything more than monkey-presses-button morons or that their airframes, on a 20 year replacement cycle (if not longer) will ever be able to keep up with changes in ordnance development on cycles one-quarter as long.

>>
King Auther was never outshine by Excaliber.
>>

Which might have some meaning if I thought I was King Arthur. If King Arthur ever existed outside the Canterbury Tales or LMdA. If Excalibur could prevent a bowman from cutting 'The Great Tom' down like any other assassin's victim. Or if indeed ONE MAN made a difference to the outcome of late Roman/early Dark Age battle. Anymore than he does today.

Aircraft are nothing more than bus' for munitions. The farther you can go, the longer you can stay and to an extent _the better you can see while avoiding being seen_, the more opportunities to optimally and/or unexpectedly employ those weapons you will have.

But it's still the guided arrow not the clueless archer who determines the majority of the SSPK.

>>
Long live the Swordsmen. VF-32.
>>

And affirming a preexisting bias does nothing to give you more credibility.


KPl.


P.S. The 'optimum fighter' remains one which can penetrate to a distance just short of his opponents detection threshold, shoot missiles -across- the WEZ. And guide them using an offboard source which is itself sufficiently agile and/or LO as to be able to rapidly leave the seeker cube of prediction on counterfire from S2A threats like the Triumf or Aster or SM-3/6.

Such an airframe might well have been the A-12, firing AAAM. With guidance from an E-2, RQ-4 or RJ-99 type platform.

Either way, it is the RANGE and SPEED of the munitions (A2A and S2A) which sets the engagement factors which determine missionization (critical design elements) of the launch platform. Not the latter's speed, maneuverability or even radar aperture size which 'enable' the former.

Certainly not the 'almighty' air crew who only add ridiculously to the weight/volume bloat and thus price of the final design.

There have been NO kills using BVR missiles at anything beyond WVR ranges. ever.


And , the Aim-120 STILL needs 2 mid course updates from the parent aircraft in SARH mode , which it STILL uses for the first 60% of the weapons mission profile.

CH, interesting stuff.

Are you a pilot?

Just curious, no insults or the like forthcoming.

As an aside , if the AIM-120 does NOT have the mid course updates then its performance is comparable to the sparrow and WORSE than the british Sky Flash.

Do you know actually that 50% hit is high for a missle? Even today? Today sidewinders still only hit 30ish % of the time.

On the plus note, if the US follows the example of Russia, we may be able to buy these suckers in a few years Then folks could open businesses like this one, and we could learn to fly and take joy rides in F-14s without having to fly across the planet!

Would shoving F-15 engines in F-14 Tomcats improve its performance/reliability?

Anyone?

Originally posted by Browno
I HATE and DREAD to see the F-14 Tomcat retiring, I bet replacing it and using this so called 'super' hornet will CRIPPLE the USNs air power.

I suppose the F-35 will be a great jet but i will always LOVE the F-14 Tomcat

Wouldnt an F-15/Naval ATF fulfill the Tomcats role?

man this really sucks, ive always like the F-14s since i was little(im 16 now) and i even have a model of one and ever since i got it, it has always been my favorite fighter model.

But i guess technology is getting advanced now so we have to retire it, but it would be cool if they used it for patrols over cities like NYC and places like that just as a reminder that it isnt useless

I'm going to miss them alot.
George "Dizzy" Gillespie. AT3. VF-41 Black Aces, 1992-1996.

41 had A's at the time, I'd seen B'd and D's.

the planes in our squadron were manufactured in 1973-1974.

We were the first on many things. Flir, Bombs in combat, some may have heard of the su-22 thing. They also went to the F-18 Replacements first and moved from VA to Cali somewhere.

As much as I LOVE the Tomcat, Bombcat and the future of it....
It was literally created to shoot down soviet nuke bombers. Long range first strike. In my 4 years I, even with the bosnia combat and all, I only saw 1 tomcat take off with 1 Aim-54. and it was a test flight. if you've never seen one....the damn thing is huge!

Granted it could do so much more than just be a soviet deturrent.which pushed it through for years.

The role has changed.
Do I think the fag can take the mission of a tomcat even today? Nope. I think it was a bad call.

We also use the 5.56 while the rest of the world is using 7.62.

They say and we do.

We can back chair it all night, but it's fact. The tomcat is now a big hornet.
(I just puked a little in my mouth I hate the f-18 so much)

Hoops, Easy, Fox, Zayas....good luck with the big hornet...your going to need it.

-Dizzy.