F-14s Over New York

[NAVCAD]

Good friend of mine was on the "Sinking Sara" during that time.  He was an S-3 NFO call sign "Mollie".

Oh by the way, Nice shooting on the Greek ship with the Sea Sparrow..LMFAO (and a head shot at that).  You'll be happy to know that there is an existing ESSM (Enhanced Sea Sparrow Missile) program that came out of that little debacle.  It seems that no one knew that the Sea Sparrow could be used in a surface mode..

I was West Coast HSL-47 (SH-60Bs) from 89-93.  1st cruise Nimitz BG for Desert Storm, 2nd with Ranger on her last deployment and Somalia.

[Morpheus]

Originally posted by hornet36
The Tomcat can carry only conventional "dumb" bombs, and has no precision-guided ammunition capability, except when operating in conjunction with a separate laser designator aircraft.

Did you not say here that it didnt have the capability of carrying precision guided munitions?

That gigantic cut and paste (no offence) says it had exactly that. Not to mention its a well known fact that the F14 is known now for its ability to deliver "LGB's" with pin point accuracy. Basicly, everything I've been saying.

Is it an old design? Yep, but so is the F18. The only difference between the two today is the F14 had the funding cut from under it and it fell apart.

Its simple really. when John Boyd and cheney had the pull, and were pushing for smaller cheaper a/c's, it was clear to see that the Tomcat's days were numbered and were to be oversteped by politics. Grummans arrogance in that "They had the cat in the bag" also was said to anger cheney. Which in turn he forced grumman to destroy the tooling for the tomcat.

I'm not trying to fan these flames of another "Tomcat Vs Super Hornet" debate. Its' obvious how great the Tomcat could have been, but its also obvious how great it has been and continued to be up until its recent final deployment.

Throwing out flase facts about how it was not capable of dropping laser guided bombs so it was pulled off the decks in place of somethign that could do it on its own, and do it better... That's kinda silly.

[Morpheus]

A quote from Dale Snodgrass on the upgraded avioncs and LANTIRN.

The GE engines certainly gave the airplane a lot of new life in the dogfight arena, and it brought it up to a level of thrust that the airframe was really designed for.  The older engines were a result of politics and other factors, so the new engines made you feel like you were flying a rocketship!

The avionics upgrade was in the F-14D and that was a significant enhancement in air to air capability.  However, the production was very limited.  Over half the Tomcat community is still flying F-14 A models.

The biggest capability upgrade was the LANTIRN pod and putting the aircraft into a world class precision strike role, and this all occurred at Naval Air Station Oceana while I was there.  We deliberately kept the project away from Washington so they couldn't get control of it.  Martin Marietta, now Lockheed Martin, sent some reps up by invitation, gave us a LANTIRN pod to work with, and contributed some very smart people resources.  I gathered some of my best people to work on the project, and in six months we went from an informal handshake to actually dropping laser-guided bombs from the F-14.  I dropped a bomb from 18,000 ft and 22 miles away that blew the top off a tank at the Vieques range off of Puerto Rico.  We made a short promotional video of those first bombs and then I went around to all the Navy Warfighting CINC’s in Europe and the Pacific and told them to let Washington know that they could have this capability on deploying carriers around the world in as little as six months, for no additional cost.  It was a major jump in capability and in some ways we even exceeded the F-15E, which was designed for that role.  One year after that concept discussion in my office, the LANTIRN capability deployed with VF-103 to the Med and Gulf.

[1Duke1]

the Pheonix was never used in combat thanks to ROE (Rules of Engagement).

NAV, this is incorrect.  It was in fact fired twice (that I know of), but can not go into details as I am not 100% sure about the classification of the information.

The shooter HAS to SEE and positively identify the bogey prior to shooting.

Again, not true.  If that was the case, then why even produce BVR weaponry?

AWG 9 was able to track up to 6 (mabey 9) tracks simultaneously

It could track up to 24 targets, and prosecute 6.  When it was working:aok

Few other tidbits:

Both the B and the D had the GE motors that could allow it to launch without AB.....a real nice kick in the bellybutton

As has been stated, the D recieved a nice avionics upgrade, but never reached potential due to stop in production.

Tomcat's mission legs WAAAYYYY longer than a hornet's.  Hell, Hornets had to hit a tanker immediately after launching just in order to proceed on a mission!

As Morph has pointed out, the Tomcat became one of the best (if not THE best) Naval platform for dropping laser-guided ordnance.  Guess *who* did the majority of the buddy lasing for the Hornets??

If Cheney hadn't killed the Tom by ordering the destruction of all the tooling dies, I don't believe the maintenance problem would be as bad as it is today.  

It's sad....the sexiest, baddesst ***** on the block just got kicked to the curb.  She will be missed.

Tom

[Raptor]

Originally posted by bkbandit
Last of the gunfighters. Was this in Korea?

F8 flew in Vietnam


"The F22 is a whole different ball of wax, and comparing it to the likes of an F14 and the roles it was used for is no differnet than comparing apples to oranges."
They both seem to be designed for Air Superiority. The F-14 carried the pheonix missile to shoot down targets beyond visual range. The F-22 boasts the same capability (though the phoenix missile has longer range).  The main difference in the two designs is the F-14 was a naval platform. As well as a good decade difference in when they were designed, F-14 in the 70's, F-22 in the 80's. F-14 truely is a great plane.

This thread makes me think of the P38 vs P51 thread. Where the F-14 (P38) was a great aircraft, the F-18 (P51) was simply cheaper and easier to maintain.