In the 1970s, the United States operated three revolutionary fighters: the F-14 Tomcat,
the F-15 Eagle, and the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Currently, two of these platforms are not only
in operation but still in production, leaving only the Top Gun F-14 to the museum's services.
Even today, many plane geeks list the F-14 Tomcat as their favorite plane ... so what's the point?
Why didn't Maverick retire early, as Maverick was fed into an industrial shredder when Eagle and
Viper rolled off the assembly line to this day? The truth is that the F-14 Tomcat was an advanced
fighter specially made for a global nuclear war. The illustration becomes more apparent
when you look back at the program, challenges, and solutions. The F-14 made sense because we were on
the brink of World War III ... but without a Soviet bugbear turning Uncle Sam's wallet and
shaking it, it became an expensive and sometimes troublesome solution to a problem no one else had.
And to make matters worse, only a portion of the F-14 fleet was as capable as most people thought.
But to be clear, it was still a great jet. Welcome to Forces Cast; today,
We talking about the F-14 Tomcat; A Nice Aircraft but Powered By Two Pieces Of Junk not Really like
in the movie? The
target of the F-14 Tomcat was a Soviet bomber. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was a decent plane,
and for a good reason. In the run-up to the conversion of the Intercontinental Ballistic
Missile (ICBM) into a nuclear weapon, the Tomcat was designed to defeat the Soviet Union's most
powerful tool for deploying nuclear weapons on American soil. Their fleet of strategic bombers.
The idea of ​​a foreign bomber flying over the continental United States seems virtually
impossible, thanks to the vast American footprint, advanced detection technology,
and the current geopolitical climate. It was not the case at the height of the Cold War.
The threat from long-range Soviet bombers was so significant that before air-to-air missiles became
popular in the 1960s, the United States developed a rocket-propelled grenade launcher that would
destroy all formations in a single unit Adjust. With the threat of Soviet bombers armed with
nuclear weapons or anti-ship missiles at the forefront of their minds,
Grumman designed the most powerful and heaviest carrier fighter in history, with a fair amount of
that weight dedicated to the new Phoenix missile and the onboard systems required to leverage it.
When fueled up and ready to go, the F-14 weighed in at 61,000 pounds, which is almost twice that of
the future F/A-18 and quite a bit more than twice the weight of a fully-fueled F-16 Fighting Falcon.
Despite that heft, the Tomcat needed to be fast, so Grumman paired the F-14 with
Pratt & Whitney’s TF30 engines initially fitted to the F-111B they had failed to sell the Navy on.
Each machine could produce 14,560 pounds of thrust under military power, with the
afterburner kicking output up to 25,100 pounds. All told, the F-14 could use that combined
50,000+ pounds of thrust to push the aircraft to a great Mach 2.3,
and its variable-sweep wing design gave it excellent handling at both the low speeds required
for carrier landings and the high speeds needed to intercept Russian Fighter before it could deploy
his anti-ship missiles toward an American carrier. This variable-sweep wing design allows the F-14 to
rotate more firmly than most of its competent 4th generation competitors, including the small
and agile F-16, under the right conditions. That meant not only was it able to cover the ground to
attack Soviet bombers immediately. Tomcat can also participate in dogfights and win when prompted.
“A nice aircraft powered by two pieces of trash.” For all its abilities, Tomcat can also be tricky.
TF30 engines are powerful but can also be more sensitive to work.
It was designed for heavier use than the F-111B weighing 80,000 pounds, but this platform is more
of a bomber than a fighter. Bombers need potent engines to transport cargo at combat speeds,
but they also fly envelopes other than fighters. When propelled at a high angle of attack or when
the pilot quickly adjusts the throttle position (the two most common functions of air combat
jets are produced but not common in bombing missions), the engines were transferred soon
to compressor steels. This problem has led some to call the Tomcat "a beautiful
aircraft powered by two pieces of trash." Even more complex, with the engines being
placed nine feet apart to allow for better lifting and more space in the armored truck,
a fall on the machine can throw the plane into an ever-irreversible flat rotation.
These problems lead to the loss of a total of 40 F-14s.
But it wasn't just the blockage problem that hit the engine while Maverick was driving.
Also, the turbine blades in the engine can quickly fail before the end of their expected life,
causing catastrophic engine damage and endangering pilots' lives.
Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. went on to say the TF30 engine “in the F-14 is probably
the worst engine-airplane mismatch we have had in many years. The TF30 engine is terrible and has
accounted for 28.2 percent of all F14 crashes.” Today, we may look back on the F-14 with wistful
awe, remembering how it was the only fighter that could stand toe-to-toe
with the (fictional) MiG-28. But when it was in service, not everybody loved the Tomcat.
“The sooner we are out of it, the happier I will be,” Lehman told Congress in 1984. “I
guess the good news is that all the Iranian F-14s have the TF30, too.”
In 1987, F-14s began receiving new engines in the General Electric F110,
which offered more thrust and eliminated many reliability problems associated with the TF30.
These improved F-14Bs and the subsequent F-14Ds were very much the Tomcat of Top Gun fame,
and as a result, you’ll often find Tomcat fans dismissing
the TF30’s woes as a problem specific to the F-14A in the early days of operation.
In fact, the yoyo's budget made the transition from the TF30 to the F110 a slow one. By 1996,
nine years after the F110 entered service in the F-14, the Navy F-14 fleet included just 126
Tomcats with the new GE engines, while the other 212 were still flying on the troublesome TF30.
F-14A’s running the TF30 were still scrambling for the Navy until as late as 2004.
Problem with the construction of wings with variable inclination
The variable design of the F-14 wing is one of the most striking visual elements of the aircraft, and
there is no denying that the starting point behind it is reasonable. The wingspan can vary from 20 °
to 68 ° when flying in the wind, which allows for the maximum possible flight characteristics at
both low and high speeds. The placement of the wings is automatically controlled by a central
air data computer on board, which ensures that the wings are positioned for the best possible
lift-to-sleep ratio for each situation. However, they can also be controlled manually by the pilot.
As you can imagine, a capable and advanced system is not only complicated and cumbersome
but also requires a little care. The Navy estimates that the F-14 Tomcat requires
30 to 60 hours of maintenance in the air. The high costs associated with maintaining complex
sweep-wing systems are often cited as one of the most critical factors in Tomcat's early retirement
compared to other American fighter peers. But while maintenance costs are probably
the biggest problem with F-14 wings, price isn't the only thing people fear.
While wing position adjustments were quick and automatic, training pilots against the Tomcats
on the F-15 and F-16 soon began to report that changes in wing position helped them find them
more easily. Just as a boxer telegraphs his strike, the F-14 Tomcat telegraphs his maneuvers,
making it easier for savvy and experienced opponents to read and predict.
Thanks to the F-14, the F-35 looks like a thief When we hear the discussion that the F-14 is an
expensive aircraft, it sounds like almost a trillion fighter programs,
such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from Lockheed Martin. However, just as it is
challenging to compare film box office revenues that have been published separately for decades,
inflation has a way of capturing the shock value from data numbers. In context, therefore, we
convert these F-14 price points to 2021 figures. The first batch of Navy F-14A cost $ 38 million
per aircraft in 1973. That seems cheap compared to today's about $ 88 million for the new F-15EX,
but if you adjust that number to reflect nearly five decades of inflation, you'll get an awful
amount of more than $ 234 million for the F-14 Tomcat. Initial F-35 production per unit was
also relatively high, but more than $ 10 million less than Tomcat, $ 221 million per jet. In 1988,
13 years ago, the F-14D cost $ 74 million per aircraft, which, after adjusting for inflation,
brought Tomcat's price to $ 171 million per aircraft in current dollars. Last year,
13 years passed since the first production batch of the F-35, with the F-35A unit price
now $ 78 million per aircraft - $ 93 million less than the F-14 per jet.
When you look at these numbers, one realizes how strong the United States is seen through Soviet
bombers. These prices are considered reasonable as a way to prevent the end of the world. However,
after the fall of the Soviet Union, the apocalypse seems to have stopped in the foreseeable future.
The F-14 Tomcat also had a troubled development run and sometimes got beat up by America’s
other fighters in wargames, but like the F-35… it was built to do things no other
fighter was capable of doing at the time. When the F-14 first took to the skies,
it was bigger, heavier, and could carry more ordnance than any carrier fighter in history.
It could track and engage enemy bombers from triple-digit ranges when many national Air
Forces were still focused on guns and cannons for air-to-air fighting. It was on the cutting edge of
avionic systems through subsequent upgrades and eventually picked up respectable air-to-ground
capabilities like its multi-role peers. But reaching so far ahead is expensive,
and ultimately, it’s dollars and cents that dictate the makeup of America’s fighter fleets.
Could the F-14 have been modernized, upgraded, and improved to fly today still? Of course,
it could. But like the bringing the F-22 Raptor back from the dead… sometimes it
would cost more to keep a good older fighter than it would cost to design and build a great
new one. The F-14 may have had a short shelf-life compared to some of its sister jets of the 70s,
but there’s no denying… the mighty Tomcat’s presence had lasting effects on Naval aviation
and foreign relations worldwide. The F-15 and F-16 may have gotten to
stick around longer, but the F-14 will always be the Top Gun for some of us.
Comments below for your feedback! and watch another video