Mr. Ward, the Tomcat is the sexiest and most versitile fighter in history without a doubt. But as a retired infantryman, the A10 is my Angel and will forever hold that place in my heart!
@@ILSRWY4 suspect F16's are way more common to drop ordnance as air support to groudn troops then Eagles. There are way more F16's, way more countries/allies flying em.. and they are cheaper to run operationally so I'm pretty sure if not for A10's.. it was the F16's that did most of the work in the field.
As a former A-10 Crew Chief… the F-16 can NOT do ALL that the A-10 can. Each job has its own special tool. The Warthog was made specifically for taking hits… while the F-16 can do some parts of ground support… NOTHING ELSE … not the FX-15… F-16 can get as low and slow as the A-10. In the Air Force… even though we did not think much about Navy and Naval Aviation…. Most of all maintenance troops in the USAF would agree that the Tomcat was a BADASS bird… almost tied with the F-15 Eagle
I was at the clinic waiting room one day. I was wearing my Navy shirt and a gentleman across the way had on an Army shirt. He struck up a conversation and told me that he and his unit were forever grateful to the Navy. He said in their area of ops, 9 times out of 10 when shit went down it was a few A-6 Intruders that reigned hellfire upon the North Vietnamese and saved their asses. Navy proud.
In the early 1990's I was working as a stability and control aero engineer for McDonnell Aircraft. Even though Grumman was a competitor, I/we thought it was a complete travesty to not strengthen the F-14 line. The F-14 swing wing was well implemented after Grumman's lessons learned with the Jaguar and F-111. And a swing wing aircraft is the only really practical way to realize both the loiter and dash capability required for the long range fleet air defense mission.
A delta wing can work too, with more modern designs; the Rafale seems like an extremely capable aircraft, made possible with modern tech and materials.
The F-14 Tomcat is one of the sexiest planes ever. Others for me include the F-22 Raptor, the F4U Corsair, the P-51 Mustang, and the SR-71 Blackbird. It's a shame that we never got the Super Tomcat 21, and that the Tomcat is no longer in service in the United States Navy.
Any aircraft that stayed with the navy for more than ten years was a good looking machine. Even the helicopters had their own special panache for getting the job done. Snap a crisp salute to the aircrews, maintainers and designers that made it happen with or without the politicians' support.
Sorry to hear that. I think the F/A-14E you guys were working on in the Super Tomcat 21 program would've been superior than this "Super" Hornet. As a former Navy avionics tech (2016-2020) the hornet is cool, but I still feel like I missed out on something better and cooler.
I was an engine mechanic in VF-142 in the mid-'70s and transitioned from the F-4 to the F-14 (around 1974). Our squadron was attached to the USS America. I found this video by accident, but it was really interesting.
As a Prowler maintainer, I hated that the Navy turned its back on Grumman. If they could figure out how to put a dish on a lawn dart, the E2 would be gone too. 😥
@@ramosel I used to enjoy that phrase “I’d rather hunt with Dick than ride with Teddy!” I still wouldn’t ride with Teddy if he was still with us, but I know a lot more about Dick nowadays!
The F-14 was one of the most iconic aircraft to ever grace our skies from a military sense...among so many others...but the Tomcat just had that something else about it...its swing wing format...its awesomely mean looking stance from the front...and its kneel when shuttled up and ready to pounce on any poor bastard that had the unfortunate pleasure of coming up against it...it was just a pure beast of a plane, in every facet...loved it when I first got into military aircraft many many moons ago...and still love it for the most beautiful of carrier aircraft I believe there has ever been...LONG LIVE THE TOMCAT!!!!!
I was working for Northrop Grumman in the 1990’s when the program was canceled. A lot of scuttle but at the time corroborated your sentiments. In final analysis, the Armed Services Committee had more constituents in St Louis than in Bethpage. What a shame, the F-14D was an incredible warplane.
They merged after they Lost the cointract to build the YF-23 was lost by Northrop. MCD was bought by Beoing, and Grumman merger with Northrop, because Northrop wanted the "Joint Stars" program
It was just Grumman back then until the company went under because of bad leadership in the government 95% of the employees were gone because of it (at least that's what I was told). Northrop Grumman was born after it but the program was lost, and the 4.5 gen interceptor we needed to replace the Tomcat that was retired.
Great history presentation, Ward. I work for Navair, and spent several years doing depot level work on the Tomcat in Norfolk. My specialty was the environmental control systems, which provided cooling for the weapons systems, and the cockpit ECS. (I spent hundreds of hours in the nose wheel well, where all the lines intersected) In addition to the A models, some of the B and D conversions were done. The wing gloves were riveted closed, and the plumbing for the cooling system for the Phoenix was omitted. The early 90’s was a glum time for naval aviation. Scores of squadrons across the spectrum were being decommissioned. Intruders were rolling fresh off the overhaul line and straight to the scrappers. Dozens of Tomcats were being stripped of useful parts so as to scrap the airframes. It was a sad time. But the pilots who were still flying the Tomcats loved them. Pilots who would arrive at the depot to fly Tomcats back to Oceana told stories of how the hornet pilots on the boat were constantly calling for a tanker while the F-14 guys could stay aloft for hours. With the hornet’s short legs, the joke was that the hornet would make a fine attack plane as long as you were bombing Argentina. I was at the FRC at Jacksonville for the ceremony commemorating rollout of the last Tomcat in 2005. The following year they were retired completely. I have been with the Super Hornet for 16 years now, and it has matured into a very capable platform, but there will never be another combat aircraft like the mighty Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
My friend, Bill Judd, worked for Grummond since late 1970. This was right after he got out of the US Navy. He was in Iran training the Shaw's mechanics on F-14 maintenance. Bill claimed (and I believe) that he had worked on every Tomcat ever made except the first one (model 001) which crashed. Bill and I were at the Reagan Library in 2018. We went to see the F-14 they had gotten. The name on the side was a man that Bill knew; the last aviator to be assigned to that plane. Bill loved the Tomcat. He retired from Pt. Mugu as a civilian contractor (Northrup-Grummond) in 2008.
If he knew the F-14 so well then he should of worked for Grumman. Was he buddies with the Ayatollah. I had several Grummans myself. Even had a double ender and so didn't the girls at my stag party
That name sounds familiar, was he in the avionics field? I was with Grumman at Pt. Mugu in the early to late seventies, had tha opportunity to make that trip to work on the Imperial Iranian Air Force's Tomcats but didn't take it. I'd done enough traveling over eight years in the Air Force. I was involved working with the NMC techs when the Iranian pilots came through to do missile system training at the Pacific Missile Test Center out of Mugu. I on't think any of us were really fond of their safety concerns taxiing with loaded weapons.
Politics, inter-service rivalry, and a host of other noise. The F-14 and its crews have written themselves into history as the best Naval fighter ever fielded. The Tomcat was pure BADASS.
@@cycloneranger7927: The Hellcat was good for it’s time. But the tomcat was even better. The tomcat was so good, that nobody wanted to challenge it. Libyans foolishly tried twice. Got splashed twice. The Japanese And North Korea didn’t hesitate to challenge the hellcat. Even the Iraqis hesitated to take on the Iranian tomcats.
The F14 was (imo) just one of those "lucky hit's" which progressed from the drawing board to production and it just all went well. Same as the F15 [overengineered] and F16. In the late 60's , a lot of enginerding was done properly. Take a motorcycle like the Honda VTR1000 "Firestorm" : they never changed/evolved it because they got it right first time (craptastic tank range on 27mpg though). However : the F14 *_was_* truly a pain in the derriere in terms of maintenance (like the Harrier) - esp. being at sea.
@@sparrowbe4k802 No F-15 has ever been shot down in 42 years by an opposing force thanks to Aeronautical Engineering. In the world of first strike all weather Air Superiority there is no such thing as "over-engineered."
I fly the Super Hornet. I love it, but recognize its limitations. I do believe a Super Tomcat would have been a more capable aircraft; even now.If they had truly made it modular and upgradeable like the Super Hornet we would have a great asset in the 2020s and beyond.
Takes a brave Super Hornet pilot to admit that! Most Hornet jocks I know who never flew the F-14 tend to shit all over the Tomcat as you'd expect from sibling rivals! :)
39 years Air Force and was a F-111 crew chief in the early 80's, started on O2-A's n the late 70's and ended on F-16 C/D's in 2019 and I still believe the Tomcat is the best looking aircraft of the modern era.
Air Force brat, here...while I thought, and still think, the Tomcat was a really good looking airplane, NOTHING we've ever built is even close to as sexy as the Phantoms, in all its' variants! That thing could be sitting on the tarmac, and looked like it was already doing 1000 mph and was looking for something to kill!
I'm still watching old episodes on this channel, just catching up on my education, and what jumps straight out at me is a saying we have of "Penny wise, pound foolish." But politicians rarely admit their mistakes, and the rest is history. A fascinating video, thanks. 👋
So energizing, and then the reality of military aviation acquisition and related politics. You can't fix stupid. Thanks Ward, it's a privilege to hear your stories, and analysis.
As a retired Army guy, I understood the value and appreciated the design of Grumman aircraft and admired the thinking behind it all! But, how to forgive those terrible politicians who imposed their 'better judgment' on the Troops, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen?
Something about the Cheney family !!!! If he's not costing men and lives in the military??? She's costing US taxpayer money on socialism!!!! Tomcat was an amazing plane it should still be in service, according to some of the pilots I know!!
It's no worse than other branches making one another keep machines around that they didn't want. See the Navy and battleships and the Air Force and the A-10.
I'm a former member of the USAF RF-4C community. I'm impressed with your knowledge of aircraft and your ability to present the information. This video answered a lot of questions that I had about the reasons the F-14 was retired so soon.
It's ironic that the Air Force wanted a tandem aircraft and got a side by side one and the Navy wanted side by side and got tandem. The other navalized feature the F-111 inherited was the escape pod, which had it been included in the Tomcat would have saved Goose.
Even though it's gone, when I think Naval Air Capability I think of the F14. And while it's an arcade flying game, the F14 will always be one of my favorite planes to fly in Ace Combat.
For me, it is a tie with the Flanker. Then again, the Flanker looks a lot like a fixed wing version of the Tomcat, which makes sense as plenty of the requirements behind it are similar (flying over the vast expanse of Siberia in winter may not be perlustrating the Pacific, but it isn't all that different either).
I have only recently discovered this channel, and have watched maybe half a dozen videos going back several years. I have to say that the writing for this channel is a cut above. Certainly it is personally informed by actual experience, but not everyone who has done the thing can describe the thing so well. I can only assume that communication plays a large part in US naval aviation. Thank you for sharing your observations and analysis so clearly, in a way that enhances their value, both in terms of history and entertainment. A rare feat, and one which you can apparently execute on a weekly basis.
Ward: Very interesting discussion on “Why We Didn't Get the Super Tomcat-21.” There is one more very important program development that weighed heavily in the evolution that was not mentioned. From 1979 through 1983 I served as a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the same squadron in which you later served: VF-102 Diamondbacks at NAS Oceana. Following VF-102, from 1983 to 1986 I was at VX-4, NAS Pt. Mugu, CA. After the Navy went to work for Northrop (now Northrop/Grumman) in 1987. At the time, Northrop was teamed with McDonnell Douglas in development of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) and the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF). The two of us - Northrop and McDonnell Douglas - were in competition against Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics to design and build two replacement fighters for both the Air Force’s F-15 and the Navy’s F-14. Both teams built two flyable vehicles - the Lockheed team built and flew the YF-22 and we built and flew the YF-23. What is not widely known are the details involving the Navy variants the public never saw. I was the senior RIO on the program for the Northrop/McDonnell team. While the public saw our YF-23 we built for the Air Force, the details for our Navy ATF were never publicly released and I assume remain classified. I can tell you, though, our aircraft looked similar to the YF-23 the public saw. The big design drivers at that time were low observability, interoperability with the AAAM missile - the Phoenix replacement, the ability to super cruise, sensor fusion both internal and external, and a significant reduction in maintainability costs. Our Navy ATF resembled the Air Force YF-23 we flight demonstrated but was designed with both a pilot and an RIO. It had an electrically scanned array (ESA) radar, larger internal weapons bay to accommodate the AAAM, had a much larger thrust to weight ratio than the F-14D, and incorporated a very low radar and infrared signature. I personally flew thousands of hours in flight simulation. It was an exciting time to be sure. But at source selection in late April 1991, the Air Force - the lead service on the program - chose the Lockheed team’s YF-22 for the Air Force. DoD had billed the program as “two aircraft with one contractor for both services” (like the F-4 Phantom and the TFX) but what occurred was what many had feared: the Air Force and Navy split on their selections. The Navy pulled out of the program - which infuriated the Air Force because it dramatically drove up their costs. The day it was announced the Navy was out of the program, McDonnell Douglas issued pink slips to all of the design engineers I had worked with for several years. So sad. In the debates that followed, the Navy planners decided that low observability was not so-much the design driver as it was in the Air Force community. Although not expressly “low observable,” what eventually transpired was the development of the F/A-18 Super Hornet as you have described by the same two contractors that lost the NATF program: Northrop (now Northrop/Grumman) and McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing). I still have a couple of coffee mugs in my china hutch depicting our NATF on the side that “disappears” when hot coffee is poured into it. I gave away boxes and boxes of these at our Northrop booth at Tailhook 1990. Stan Harley “Hawg”
A great recap of the F-14 story. I was closely involved with the beginning, and until your video didn't know the end. I was a LCDR RIO instructor in VF=121 in the late 60's and was asked to visit Hughes aircraft for fleet inputs on how the modify the F-111 B weapons system for the newly planned F-14. This soon involved more and more time, and I ended up getting orders to the F-14 program office at NAVAIR. It's hard to believe today, but the program manager was only a Navy Captain (Mike Ames). The only other blue suit was the weapon system manager an EDO CDR. Engine procurement was managed by the USAF at Wright-Pat. This might help to explain the TF-30 thump-bang problem that we experienced during the first deployment on Enterprise, which was a big surprise to those of us in the Fleet. In hindsight, someone knew of this problem. I used to get F-4 flight time at Pax River and the Pax service test pilots were leery of this engine even before the F-14 first flight. After the first F-14 crash, the Washington Post seemed to make it a personal vendetta to cancel the program and a flag officer (Swoose Snead) took over the program before fleet introduction. I was lucky to be assigned to the VF1/VF2 fleet introduction team at Miramar which was loaded with future Astronauts and Flag officers. Later on, I was again fortunate and was honored to command VF-24. Alas that was my last flying tour and involvement with the F-14. Joel Graffman (Capt USN RET)
you loaded Flag Officers and Astronauts? like into bomb bays and Weapons hardpoints? sounds fun. Dr Strangelove style skydiving! yeeehaww! Must be good for morale. The Admiral aint no pussy! he's just one of the lads... yep he wants a jump... You millitary boys crack me up!
I've always loved the Hornet, but from the first day my little brain became aware of the Tomcat's existence as a child, it had, has, and will have, the top place in my heart when it comes to naval aviation.
@@JonHuhnMedical The F5 was certainly a cool looking jet, and the Pig holds a place in most Aussie's hearts. You have great choice in model kits mate! Have a good one :)
I commend your candid assessment! Being a retired “Army dogfaced grunt” I can assure you that much Department of Defense procurement is suspicious to us too! Anchors aweigh!
Absolutely not. The shortfalls of the Super Hornet compared to Super Tomcat are completely valid, but there is no making a 4th-generation airframe stealthy, and the stealth aspect was completely overlooked in Ward's comparison of ST21 with the F-35C. You can slather all the RAM and alter all the leading edges you want, but even the latest "semi-stealth" Gen 4++ fighters like the F-15EX have nothing on the F-35's RCS, especially from the front quarter. The glib comment about wasting $1.2 trillion for the F-35C also completely ignores the huge leaps in capability the other F-35 variants have given, especially to allies who could otherwise not afford stealth technology or have a (STOVL) carrier-based stealth fighter.
@@GintaPPE1000 Mea culpa, I was speaking to the Tomcat vs Hornet capabilities. It is known the F-35 brings more and different things to the table not available in the '90s. Fortunately, it hasn't been an issue to be concerned about.
We spend more to get less because the government prints as much money as it desires for any project that will enrich the congressional members that are involved. It’s not an accident that we are stuck in forever wars and our money has less value than an equal weight of bacon.
Mr. Carroll - A bunch of years ago, two MiG-29's (a single seater and a tandem seater) and an IL-76 support aircraft participated in the local airshow in Kalamazoo. There was an F-14 Tomcat flight demonstration during the show (I believe it may have been flown by the late, great "Snort Snodgrass - RIP) which included an amazingly tight 360 degree circle in knife-edge flight!!!! I was standing near one of the Russian pilots and his backseater, and you could tell they were absolutely gobsmacked at the flight characteristics of the Tomcat!!!! Their reaction was priceless!!!! Thanks for all the great information! Bryan
As “Top Gun” has made me a huge fan of the Tomcat, I am seriously disappointed in the politicians and Navy for not going forward with the Super Tomcat. Thanks for the the what if scenario.
Thanks for a most informative and enjoyable Tomcat presentation. I was an engineering undergrad at PAX in the late 60s where I watched an F-111 catapult launch. In 1971 I worked in PriFly on Independence when an F-14 was towed out to pier 12 Norfolk and hoisted aboard and towed around for the chance to evaluate how the big airplane would fit on the flight deck regarding parking, catapulting, etc. After active duty I was a reservist, then civilian maintainer on the F-8 flight simulator and F-4 cockpit procedures trainer. We actually transitioned an F-14 pilot into the RF-8G. Upon losing the only TF-8 in Dallas, Vought and the Navy came to us to aid the Philippine AF pilots in transitioning from their F-86s to the F-8. FAA ATC from '83 to '05. Kind of strayed from the F-14 topic. Thanks again.
I ran the Grumman systems test/analysis group in the early 80’s we were integrating the Tcs into the avionics suite. I designed a real time ACM training system it worked first time out.only1 F-14 was configured with this enhancement, so off it went without my full design operating yet I had a small group of smart engineers working in theSITS LAB making minor changes that could be software only and the Northrop group made the hardware changes. When VX-4 flew the latest configuration, they took it to Miramar. We at Grumman got this feedback. “Hot damn just what we need.” Too bad Dirty Dick Cheney didn’t like Grumman, and didn’t approve funding. The capability to train like you fight was lost.
Other than using his government ties to enrich Halliburton shareholders, are there any redeeming qualities possessed by Dick Cheney to explain why he got to a place of power and influence big enough to cause so much damage to America, its reputation abroad, its capabilities and so much more (Not that enriching people at the cost of our country's well-being is "redeeming".)?
Sad to say that using your ties in previous or after government life to enrich yourself and others isn’t uncommon. But there’s something else most people don’t seem to understand about the Halliburton contract that they got for oil well service in Iraq post-invasion: not much profit. Regardless of what you heard they did *NOT* make a butt load of money off the oil services provided to the Iraqi’s. They did make a crap ton off a subsidiary called KBR, but that’s a whole other story. But back to Halliburton proper. The contract that any prospective service company had to sign had a clause that forbid any profit margins over something like 6 or 8%. Any profit over that amount was immediately turned over to the Iraqi government. I’m not sure how much you know about the ONG industry but that’s cutting it so close that most companies won’t even bother with it. In fact, after complaining about Bush giving the contract to Halliburton during the campaign, Obama immediately had the bidding process reopened. Nobody offered to bid, they actively sought out companies to take over the contract including Schlumberger. The Iraq government owed a very significant amount of money to France and even though Schlumberger essentially rules (to this day) most of the ME & Africa in terms of oil service industry, they balked at the stipulation for such low profit margins. So Obama went back to Halliburton with his hat in hand and asked them return to the bidding. Mind you that they also had to do all that on such a tight budget as well as providing security to their people and equipment in the process. Dick Cheney has a lot of faults, that wasn’t one of them.
So Cheney sometime in the 1980s killed the ACM real-time trainer for the F-14A TCS? He was a Congressman at that time from Wyoming (1979-1989). How would that even have come across his desk?
Great summary! Man, I miss the F-14D and its capabilities, especially its TARPS capability. I was an Army "customer" on the ground in Afghanistan early on and the support we received from our brothers and sisters in Naval Aviation was second to none and extremely responsive to our needs.
As a retired enlisted AT, and supporting VF-32 as a tech rep on USS Harry S Truman, I'll never understand why the government killed the F-14 program. The Tomcat, which I first saw in Memphis at an airshow while I was in A-school, was the reason I went to the Jolly Rogers. Watching those Tomcats soaring over Millington was the best thing I had ever seen. I'm guessing that many of you have no idea what I'm talking about. It was a long time ago.
I for one could never understand why the Navy didn't insist on keeping the Tomcat. I was stationed at VX-4 ('87), then VX-9/Weapons test ('95) at Point Mugu. I saw all the improvements and installed them in the F-14A/B/D as an Aviation Electricians Mate. Also, side by side with the F-18. The F-14 was far superior to the F-18 in every way. I was hoping the F-14 would make a comeback, this plane will always be #1 with me. Thank you for your video and your service to our country.
I will preface this with "You probably know more than me, as I am a mere enthusiast". That said, as I see it... The latest variants of the AMRAAM-EX are capable of matching the range of the AIM-54, and with better manuverability and reliability on small targets like multirole strike fighters (SU-32), and cruise missiles. The Hornets and Super Hornets are simply lower maintenance. Buddy-refuling stores on a KA-6 or KA-18 can extend the range of a strike package to equal the tomcat. One former Tomcat pilot was saying that late model cats were known to occasionally explode! This due to an engine housing flaw. Lives were lost. The Tomcat's wicked flat spin charachteristic was never entirely solved. It was reportedly still tougher to land on a carrier than smaller aircraft with more centralized thrust. At the end of the day, the Tomcat was still a borderline ensign eliminator with a unique and unreliable missile. Past the merge almost every late-4th gen aircraft could out manuever it in a turning fight. She was slowly becoming a bomb truck, in a Navy that increasingly sought multi-role aircraft. The Tomcat was a thing of speed, good maneuverabity for it's size, and absolute beauty... but age comes for them all.
That's why I tell people they had been trying to kill old Tom off since he was still in the womb doging clothes hangers. And after decades of being treated like shit from people up top he ended up being murdered with his body unceremoniously tossed into the garbage. Largely what I mean by treated like shit from up top is all the upgrades denied to it. When I was on the Kitty Hawk we had VF-154, I was there from 1999-2002 and they left not long after me. I hold the honor/ distinction of being the only HT to have ever had to work on a Tomcat. It's too long to put here, it is truly It's own story but a short bit of info I had to rig something up to keep a part that had no spares remaining functional. If I couldn't do that then the Squadron would have been down one cat forever AND they would have been disqualified from the gun ex they were taking part in 2 days later. Recently as part of that whole aging process we go back and evaluate things from life. Recently I've adopted the belief that as successful as it was and in the face of constant adversity the chair, err airfarce, um airforce giving one of the best reason every branch hates them, the dirty games they played getting the F401 killed. Those smug bastards and a few politicians should have been made accessories to murder they knew damn well what was going to happen from the engine change, especially the airforce they knew people would die.
And the F35A costs $175,983,989 and the C with Sidekick pushing past $220 million EACH. ... im fairly sure Grumman could built a stealth cat for cheaper. Its purely kickback corruption...sad but a sign of the ultimate failure if the big fish are allowed to set the rules via bribery and corrupt politicians.
@@martinpalmer6203 Hollings delved further into the financial details. “The Navy’s first batch of F-14As rang in at $38 million per aircraft in 1973. That sounds pretty cheap compared to around $88 million for a new F-15EX these days, but when you adjust that number to reflect nearly five decades of inflation, you get a downright shocking figure of more than $234 million per F-14 Tomcat,” he said. “The F-35’s initial production run per-unit cost was also quite high, but still more than $10 million less than the Tomcat, at $221 million per fighter. By 1988, thirteen years later, the F-14D cost $74 million per airframe, which adjusted for inflation brings the Tomcat’s price down to $171 million per aircraft in today’s dollars. Last year marked thirteen years since the F-35’s first production batch, with per-unit prices of the F-35A now at around $78 million per airframe-$93 million less than the F-14 per jet,” he added. Interesting that it's fine when the F-14 is bloody expensive but when the F-35 looks like it has a somewhat high number everyone loses their mind. The F-35 is mind numbingly cheap per unit for a 5th generation multirole stealth fighter.
@@IgnoredAdviceProductions the F35 numbers are falsified "flyaway cost" doesn't include things like radar, avionics, weapon racks, DAS... all the things that make it into a fighter. I trust the USAF official crash reports which list the actual cost to replace a combat ready F35A @ $175,983,989 ... which is also extremely close to the unit cost foreign governments are paying when you divide # of aircraft by amount spent. Sorry but the "flyaway cost" is bullshit to placate the public who are being robbed blind.
Not as well as you would think. While it did perform its mission adequately enough, the Spark Vark was severely limited in its jamming capability. That's what happens when you power all of your ECM assets off engine power alone. When there was a choice between a Prowler and a Spark to provide you a corridor into Bosnia, the Prowler got the call. Witnessed it first hand as we would watch the Prowlers taxi past the buttoned up EF-111s in Aviano, Italy.
@@spannerturnerMWO That's interesting. You would think that the manufacturer would upgrade the generators and accessory drive to produce enough power, and that the engine power lost would be preferable to the drag from the Prowler pod's Ram Air Turbines... but I guess not?
12:08 Thats buno 159600, the longest serving Tomcat. Delivered in 1975 as a Blk 85 F-14A, became the 5th re-manufactured F-14D(R) in 1994, retired in 2006.
As someone who spends a lot of his time in the Digital Simulation of the Tomcat you used as examples. I curse the decisions that led to the cancellation of the Supercat. An F-14 with glass cockpit , AMRAAM's and Supercruise would be damn near unstoppable.
Had the opportunity to witness the public introduction of the Tomcat at the 1973 Paris Airshow. Being the assistant to a professional photographer working for Aviation Week we had unlimited access to the aircraft and Grumman’s pavilion. Still have Grummans promotional documents along with AW’s publication featuring the Tomcat on the cover.
I often wondered why such a great airframe was discontinued. I asked an engineer who had worked at Raytheon if he knew why...he replied with one word: "politics".
We have an awesome military but imagine what we could have if the Admirals and Generals were able to build the forces needed to meet the current threats instead of letting politicians choose the designs that personally makes them the most money. To hell with those guys; especially Dick "Shotgun" Cheney. I was pissed when they mothballed the F-14. That fighter was the poster child around the world for American Badassery. First time posting. Love your channel Ward. Keep it up sir.
Unfortunately, politicians are put into office by corporate interests much larger than defense, and a lot of those corporate interests share industrial supply with the top 20 industries in the US. Say you want to build a next generation super airframe out of carbon composites. Alcoa aluminum might have something to say about that, and they have far more pull in Congress than one of the “lowly” big defense contractors. Study the top 20 industries in the US. Defense isn’t one of them.
It's the same pencil pushers who didn't want ground troops to have modern, comfortable, capable boots because they "didn't look as good" in garrison use.
@@Texas240 Boots went the total opposite direction from spit and polish once the desert boots and authorized alternate list was approved. Back in the '90s, they spec'd out a more press shop friendly BDU set, and went away from the comfortable, articulated knee BDUs with bellowed pocket blouse to flat pockets so garritroopers could have them starched easily, even though by regulation they were forbidden from being starched. The uniforms that came after that with ACU and now went back to a baggy functionality. The most comfortable were the OG107 Jungle Fatigues with very relaxed fit and functional pockets.
Grew up in North Massapequa on Long Island, about 2 miles south of the Bethpage plant, my uncle was as electronics installer at Grumman primarily on the A6 Intruder at both Bethpage and, later, out at Calverton. Many of my neighbors worked on Grumman planes and the lunar module program. I served in VF-32 during 82-84. Lot's of Grumman in my blood...the aviation industry fell apart on Long island with the closing/merger of Grumman and the closing of Fairchild Republic. All those facilities are still there but it's incredibly depressing to see all of that manufacturing gone.
I image a 4.5++ generation Tomcat, with composite materials, some stealth features (like S inlets, radar absorving paint -like Sukhoi Su-35S, some angled surfaces), supercruise capable engines, recountour the shoulder for gas, integrated IRST, modern heads up display, all glass cockpit, an AESA radar, fly-by-ware, landing PC Copilot, AIM-152, AGM-158, ADM-160, RIM161 (SM-3 Anti Ballistic like the Russian MiG-31), AGM-169, Harpoon, NSM, Tomahawk, etc... it would be an awesome platform.
Great info. I was in VF 21 from '89-92, we really liked where the Tomcat was going with the GE engines and avionics upgrade. Unfortunately, after '89 the Tomcat wasn't viewed as a post-cold war air superiority option. They tried to convert into a dual role fighter/attack (bomber) like the F/A 18. I remember being on the flightline at Miramar and Atsugi watching the F-18 maintenance crews leaving after an 8-hour shift, while the F-14 maintenance crews were working 3 8-hour shifts or 12 on/off to keep up with maintenance.
You omit two important activities that had a major impact on the decision to move Naval aviation in its current direction. The first was the Congressionally directed study called Carrier Airwing 2000 which was done at CNA in 1990 with a supporting paper from NAVAIR titled "Aircraft Carrier Requirements for a Post Cold War World" and the "From the Sea" maritime strategy document. Both the CV Airwing Study and From the Sea postulated that there would no peer or near peer competitor until well Into the 21st Century and as a result the fleet air defense problem was less severe and there would be only a limited Naval deep strike requirement that could not be handled by cruise missiles. Then in 1992 NAVAIR did a study on future fighter/attack aircraft. There were three alternatives considered. What became the F/A-18EF, the FI4D + F14 QS and just build F-18C/Ds as gap fillers until what F-35, orginally JAST then JSF could be developed . The other two alternatives included a 5th Gen fighter-Attack aircraft. The least cost and least capable option was Option 3. Option 2 was the most capability but much cost more than Option 3. Option 1 was the least bang for the buck but was chosen anyway. VADM Bill Bowes, who was AIR-00 at the time explained that after the failure if the A-12, A-6 rewing, P-7 and P-3 Update IV that Congress would not give the Navy money to start a 5th Generation fighter until Naval aviation produce something and that Super Hornet was the best way to do that.
The Naval prototype F111N is at China Lake Ca in storage. The Prototype Hornet is also at China Lake but on display at their museum. The Iranians who purchased Tomcats, were given patches that said "Ali-cat." :D lol
When I was a kid and obsessed with military aircraft in the mid-80's I would read all the stuff I could find about them. Unfortunately, while I read the info, it was just gobbledygook in my brain as I don't understand any of the math or how the numbers of anything work with any of this stuff. SO, now, when Ward tells these stories they make sense!
Yes, this is exactly how I feel -- stored a bunch of letters and numbers and manufacturer names like memorizing the stats on a baseball card but not knowing enough about the game. Ward's teaching us all the inside baseball knowledge.
One of the interesting things about the Super Tomcat design is that the enlarged leading edge root extensions (LERX) looks very similar to what Russia has designed into their 5th gen SU-57 which along with thrust vectoring helps make it highly maneuverable aircraft.
A friend of mine that I served with went to JTAC school training with VF-31. The SEALs loved the F-14…. considered it a force multiplier. Imagine if ST21 was in the game for those guys. Turns out the F-15EX is as close as we’ll get to the ST21.
@redw11er - after reading about Cheney's follies, 1) His 5- sucessful deferments to Dodge military service when he was needed, 2) His very poor/sloppy/ politically (personally gratifying) motivated decisions - regarding military equipment and weapons systems procurement, 3) His Extremely low level of his personal firearms safety training, have put him in the higher levels, of earning the 'Homer Simpson' award of EXTREME aDOLT incapabilities, on the wall of SHAME....
Mr. Ward, I am so grateful to have found this channel. Back in the mid seventies my older brother was a navigator in the F14, however my brother was in the Marines! I only recently learned that the Marines didn't purchase any F14's. That new knowledge has left me in a quagmire as you can tell. He is no longer with us as he perished in a plane crash in 76 at Cherry Point N.C. It was not any type of a fighter but some kind of a transport plane. I remember when he got to Cherry Point he expressed to us how happy he was that he wasn't flying the harriers there because they were crashing alot. So I wonder what would have happened to his career if he had lived? Would he have been reassigned to the Navy? Oh by the way,he got his wings in Pensacola Florida. Any comments on this from you would be greatly appreciated.
I just got to go on the midway carrier in San Diego and I drove my wife nuts trying to get up on deck to see the f14 they ..what a super sweet plane. When you see it up close and get a real good look at the curves and angles it is such a beauty. Still my favorite of all time.
I have some old Bendix vacuum tubes. Those things are built like a tank. They weigh 2x more than a similar sized vacuum tube. The support discs are ceramic inside the Bendix tubes. Support discs and tabs in regular tubes are paper thin mica. The support rods in a Bendix tube are over 50%-150% thicker than regular tube support rods. The plates are heavier. They are all rated for high G dynamic loads, higher G shock loads and very high altitudes. They may be designed for RADAR displays and RADAR transmission, but they also work great for audio.
Lots of musicians and audiophiles literally hunt for MILSPEC tubes for that exact reason. These guys are also willing to pay quite the money for that stuff.
@@svenschwingel8632 I got mine back when the getting was good plus I could go down to the boneyard on jobs and score things like 5881s or TT21s off B52s for free. As long as I wasn't studying the RADAR controlled steering landing gear circuitry they didn't care. The TT21s were in the glide slope part anyway. I have no idea if any B52s still use any tubes or not. I think they might still use BWOs or other traveling wave tubes for RADAR jamming. New Gallium arsenide RF transistors have some impressive bandwidth and power but there are still a lot of older systems out there. Is it hardened for an E pulse? Who knows. There are maybe two labs that can attempt to study that. Los Alamos is one.
I’m so glad you do this, I grew with Tomcats flying over Va beach. I was totally infatuated growing up, little did I know I would grow up to become a Cod Aircrewman and become a part of the same carrier aviation legacy.
This RUclips channel is a great source for the history of one of the most iconic military aircraft of the post-WW2 era. Very informative, great content!
I just wish that every aviation commentator was as lucid and interesting even down to understanding a series of models numbers and comparisons.Thank you.
Interesting information about the Tomcat. I am retired Air Force and some of the Navy planes seem to be better than the Air Force planes at times. I wish the Air Force would get the F-35B since it can operate from short runways or if a runway and taxiway are bombed out. But I digress. It is interesting to note that one of the reasons the Air Force accepted the F-16 over the F-17 was that the F-111 production had ended and that General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) already had the new production line ready. The F-17 was superior but did not have flyby wire. The Navy got the better end of the deal by taking the F-17 and turning it into the F-18. Again great video.
Sir, the reason that Navy planes are generally regarded as "better" than USAF planes (by the USAF, themselves...) is simply because of the way they're designed. They're more rugged. They're expected, over the years of their service lives, to literally "slam down" on the deck of a carrier in what can best be described as an "intentionally controlled crash" and then be expected to fly again. Ever look at the main landing gear of an F-18 Hornet..?? It's massive..! For a reason..! The entire wing and fuselage structure is designed for this "abuse"..! When the Navy decided to use the British BAE Hawk as their next trainer, they had to beef it up considerably. Stouter landing gear, beefier fuselage and wings. And a bigger engine with more power to make up for the increased weight. With the exception of the F-15 Eagle, virtually all Navy planes used by the Air Force have performed very well. Even the old and loved F-4 Phantom, in it's various renditions, all still used a tail hook - thereby saving more than a few flight crews and aircraft as a result. Food for thought..!!
Loved the video. You skipped a crucial phase in the Tomcat air-to-ground saga. In 1999 VF-14 (for whom I was the intel officer) and VF-41 onboard the Roosevelt, effectively utilized LANTERN against targets in Kosovo and Iraq. That success put to bed the fears generated by the VF-41 incident in Bosnia and should have been used more effectively as a proof point in favor of continued Tomcat development and deployment.
I made that cruise. Black Aces first Tomcat squadron dropped iron bombs that deployment. Admiral Mike Borda visited us that deployment God rest his soul
My view of the F18 was shaped by the film Independence Day as a kid. As an adult I wondered why the hell they picked a Marine pilot in an F18 squadron as the one of the main focuses when it would have made more sense for it to be an F15E pilot in a USAF squadron.
I liked the picture of Ranger when talking about the all-Grumman airwing. I recently received an e-mail that talked about when Ranger was virtually all Grumman. We had a lot of Grumman aircraft when I was aboard from 1968-'70. Grumman really knew what they were doing when it came to building carrier based warplanes.
Looking back I'm so grateful to have seen the F-14 Tomcat fly at the airshow at Cecil Field in Jacksonville FL in 1987?. I was in my college's flight program so I went with my classmates to the airshow. The F-14 Tomcat is visibly a BIG fighter jet and I loved the look and jet engine noise it made! The Tomcat took off, went vertical till it was out of sight in the clear sky. It had a thunderous ground shaking sound doing it. The Air Force brought a F-15 and later did the same thing. You could tell right away the F-15 climbed MUCH faster than the F-14 did but the F-15 wasn't as cool with all the thunderous ground shaking! Lol! Neither F-14 or the F-15 got the complete attention of that crowd that the US Marines AV-8 Harrier received later when it did its demonstration of vertical takeoff/landing/flying backwards/sideways/accelerating from hovering.
F-14 is too expensive and too powerful and more maintenance so they choose the budget choice instead. Such a bullshit money-saving reason while squandering trillions to make them rich is fine.
As a former Navy aviation guy and working for many years in military aviation I totally agree. An F-14 and A-6 combo would be amazing. Both are fantastic at their jobs. Combination aircraft never work nearly as well as dedicated aircraft. Dick Cheney was a total idiot. The position of Secdef should never be held by anyone who has not served in the military, preferably a senior enlisted man.
Thank you, very interesting. I was a A6 mechanic in the early 80’s and my squadron assisted in the development of the F18. Mainly, they needed our tankers to keep the Hornet flying.
What a great run down of the Tomcat, as an AQ with over 26 years… with tours at China Lake & Point Mugu, i lived this battle everyday… Hornets where nothing but cyclic ops fuel burners, but great at catching the 3 wire. Grumman did get to big for their pants and Mac Air later (Boeing aircraft) had many to soon to retire Admirals in their pocket along with His Majesty “Dick”. That guy never wanted to hear good news on Projects to upgrade the Tomcat or Intruders. Granted Maintenance hogs, but damn, they got the job done when they were let free from the BS of Political target selection… I could go for for ever, loved my leading edge tech job, and the education the Navy provided me… our watch is over, the kids have the con and I just watch & shake my head… God Help us
Strange how for over 20 years of my adult life all I heard about the A-10 was that it was amazing in its role, yet badly needs to be retired. Dick dies and now overdue upgrades are going to be rolled out and talk about how we may likely be using the A-10 in to 2035. It's like the A-10 got a stat boost in surviveability vs polotics.
Excellent production all round; especially script, editing and imagery. This episode is not to be approached lightly, but packs a whole lot into 31.5 mins. BZ, Ward.
The F-18's are impressive, especially the Super Hornets.... But as You said , Mr. Ward, the various Tomcats had several advantages over the Hornets... Especially the 2nd person in the cockpit... It gives the pilot more focus on Flying the plane.,. Also, the Tomcats were more control-able during low speed flight, a HUGE advantage on carrier landings, ESPECIALLY in rough seas. The Tomcats had greater range than the F-18's which is another marked advantage in the form of greater mission capability and less dependence on the complex and manpower/expense intensive actions of Aerial re-fueling, especially during bad weather in the air AND on the ground (when tankers or even smaller fighter aircraft equipped with external airborne re-fueling tanks that are scheduled to re-fuel might not have the ability to take-off or land safely, or maybe the fighters have to guard the carrier group in a pinch)..The F-14's could carry a LOT More weapons than the F-18's.... Again , a Huge advantage over enemies that were facing our Courageous people in battle. What bothers me was the POOR choice that was made, to just POUR UNGODLY amounts money into the numerous, over-complicated , over-engineered F-35 programs, (with their 1950's - era performance characteristics) , and cancel other programs that have already been PROVEN to work very well and reliably, (MUCH better than ANY of the 1950's performance characteristics F-35's, but at about 500x the price of the 1950's era planes).... The F-14's, the F-22's, and other programs should have continued on instead of the F-35's. Several people would have shed-no-tears to see the initial JSF proposals (Like the extremely - complex Lockheed F-35, and the Ultra-FEA Boeing X-32) to get cut from the budget. Sure, the Tomcats & Hornets are not as stealthy as the lackluster F-117's & F-35's programs, but with the recent knowledge gained with certain shapes and materials, and the knowledge of recent launch data of enemy surface to air & air to air missiles, and air to surface launched guided missiles, which could effectively dispatch incoming threats, that could be launched towards towards our weapons delivery systems BEFORE they even have a chance to be launched ... The stealthy planes are going to have an advantage because of a lack of detection from radar, yes. But if the plane is traveling at a lower speed than the higher speed, but less stealthy jets, the advantages of 'stealth' begin to be diminished, as they pass over sam sites...And if our weapons delivery systems are attacked, the ABILITY to FIGHT incoming missile threats is MUCH more effective in a hot fighter/attack aircraft, than trying to hide and run from them, when flying at mediocre speeds, with a very limited amount of counter-measures systems. Certain reconnaissance aircraft have proven several times , that speed is a very important advantage when being shot at with SAM's , especially when equipped with ECM and other similar type of equipment, and that type of equipment and detection systems have been proven to be effective as well . I normally don't slam conservative people who are trying to maintain our military to the highest standard, but I have lost a LOT of confidence with the former DOD Secretary, Dick Cheney and a few other DOD secretaries from the past.. Heck, that individual (D)C had trouble properly handling a shotgun with others nearby without hurting another person in his group, during a hunting trip. For GOD'S sake - the BIRDS they were supposed to be hunting were in a safer situation , than the other people who were adjacent to him in that group ... Maybe Jed Clampet could have instructed him, on how to properly & safely carry a shotgun , when on a hunt.... Anyway, his role as the Secretary of Defence of our country, was not one that many people who support freedom would normally endorse... His questionable financial involvement with certain DOD funded contractors have many people wondering about his possible conflict of interest as his political stature grew.... Yes Ward, I agree with you , on the viability of the improved versions of the F-14's , regardless of which company the defence directors take a liking to... The Tomcats were always an OUTSTANDING answer to the threats of our ships in foreign oceans and they were much more capable of performing and carrying-out the necessary missions to land-based targets of our adversaries, without the need for in-flight refueling to make it back to the mother ship after the completion of the long distance missions... This REDUCED the costs of operating these planes dramatically as opposed to the need for in-flight refueling, that became necessary for several of the medium range F-18's while they were approaching/returning to, from hostile air space, but were not properly suited for the long-range attack / fighter role that they were not originally designed for, that the Tomcats were so well suited and PROVEN to be able/capable of during the various strikes after the 911 events took place, nearly 21 years ago WITHOUT having to perform aerial re-fueling. This capability alone saved the tax-payers Billions of dollars by using a lot less aviation fuel and dramatically lowering the usage time on the planes that would have supported the aerial re-fueling role...So many errors , and politically motivated~POOR decisions from people who control the programs that the DOD approves or rejects, and these people fail to ask or even consider what the people who KNOW the tactics and capabilities of this type of equipment and personnel are capable of (like the F-14's , The F-22's, The F-18's) or (as in the case with the F-35's) LESS capable of, when dealing with HOSTILE ADVERSARIES... THE F-18's are extremely well suited for Intercepting incoming threats of the carrier groups, and attacking ground targets as our troops are making advances toward enemy positions, within the non-refuel necessary range... With that being said, planes like the F-14's varients would have been MUCH better choices to maintain on the carriers, than the much less capable F-35's... Save the F-35's for the FOB's that need to have localized equipment that can strike ground targets quickly that are a great distance away, but for the role as a fighter? In the Korean war and Viet-Nam era conflicts, sure!!! But fighting with the planes out there now, that could end-up like the Mariana's 'Turkey Shoot' , to the planes like SU's , Migs, or even the Chinese made Chengdu J-20's...
@@decimated550 F16 is the most successfull Gen 4 fighter ever build. 😉 And for reasons. Cost-Performance is on a sweetspot. It is easy to maintain, there are enough cheap spare parts on the market, there are modernization kits available for most of the airframes/versions. It can be equipped for multiple roles. It ist a good dog fighter. It is a durable work horse. Sometimes its not best to go big. Operation costs are going to explode.
@@Gentleman...Driver meanwhile the tomcat was absurdly expensive to buy and maintain. Not only that the maintenance times were much much longer and the aircraft wasn’t built around future upgradability in mind
@@v0id683 Yes, and I remember that the wear and tear of the F14, with those swept wings, was horrible. Especially on the navy versions which had to do the carrier landings. Its a cool looking thing, no question. But you have to fund the mess. Thats the reality.
These points needed to be illustrated, articulated and driven home. And yes, it just so happens that the Lone Ranger is far better off when accompanied by Tonto... Many thanks for this video.
Thank you for your service and many years of flying the Tomcat. I’m 27 and always wanted to be a pilot but from what I’ve heard it’s likely too late for me to be selected for a pilot slot once I finish my degree. I didn’t have the easiest path in life so I’ve had a bit of a late start. I’m thankful there are so many great former pilots like yourself that are sharing their knowledge to us.
Don’t let that stop you. Grab that dream and run with it. I’m 55 and a disabled veteran and sitting here thinking about what-ifs sucks ass. Grab it man, grab it hard.
Thanks Ward for the political history lesson on our fighter aircraft. I joined the Navy in 1962 and did jets in basic training but chose many engines in advanced because I spent a day on the carrier. I became bored, lost, several misadventures and hungry. I could not imagine 6 months at sea, I would have been demoted to E-1 in short fashion. As it was, I got to fly the P-3 as PPC with my own crew, as a boot J.G.. My mission was patrolling Waikiki beach for socially acceptable bikinis. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. I ended up with a 36 year career in the airlines with the 747 left seat for the last 15 years. A nice view. Bottom line, please keep up the great website, I have been a subscriber for many a year. It is educational for those of us that were in and those who envy same. The F14 is still the best looking bird in the Navy. Blue side up.
The TCF-14 is my favorite plane of all time! The 1st time I saw them was in the movie The Final Countdown & I was in love with that plane. So, when Top Gun came out I was even more excited to see that movie. My only complaint was I didn't see enough of the plane. I grew up in a small town (now a part of the city of Miramichi.) called Chatham NB Canada. In the mid-late 80's there was an Air Force Base in Chatham which was home to the 416 Lynx VF101-Voodo squadron. There was different times over the years that 2-4 F-14's would come in & play with the Voodo's & I mean the F-14 was playing! It was awesome seeing 2 F-14's going up against as many as 6 F-101's! It wasn't a F-14 against a Japanese Zero, but the Voodo's were so out of the Top Cats league! I was wondering however, if you ever did any research on the CF-105 Avro Arrow. By all accounts it seemed like a plane that was far ahead of it's time & I believe Avro was going to add a model for a Aircraft Carrier for the RAF. Love your videos sir & Thank You from a Canadian for your service for keeping us safe as well! Cheers!
Ward, this is a great explanation of the hose job that was done on fleet air defense. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the gaps if any in fleet anti-submarine defense with the loss of the S-3.
If I were building a modern dream team for fleet ASW and Maritime Patrol, I would develop the following types of aircraft: 1. Long range efficient jet-powered heavy airframe with greater payload, range, and endurance than the P-3C Orion. It would have modern avionics, streamlined data link connectivity with other fleet aircraft, and function as the large platform in the networked mix with drones and carrier-borne fighters/attackers that could carry anti-ship and anti-sub weapons. 2. Omnirole Very Low Observable Carrier-Borne Fighter: It would have internal weapons bays, very long combat radius like the old A-7E did, be capable of supersonic speeds as well as long endurance at optimized subsonic profiles, have LPI data link, excellent payload and bringback, multispectral sensor suite adaptable/programmable to the various carrier mission profiles of legacy dedicated platforms, and have excellent electronic attack/defensive capabilities with an onboard, integrated EW suite. 3. Unmanned Long Endurance Surveillance Drone: It would basically be like a U-2 but with far greater endurance, networked with the heavy maritime patrol and carrier Omnirole fighters, providing over the horizon surface vessel location and TGT-cuing to the surface warfare vessels, maritime patrol, fighters in anti-ship roles, and AWACS. 4. Upgraded AWACS with new data links and aerial refueling capability, AESA arrays in the Radome, new avionics and modernized crew interface systems. Guess what I just described? P-8A Poseidon, F-35C, MQ-4C Triton, and E-2D AWACS. Done
No shit..!! Even the guys who flew the KA-6D tankers wonder why the Navy killed their dedicated tanker program with no ready replacement. How stupid..!! They had already designed & built at least 3 to 5 "Super Intruders" with low-bypass turbofan engines (ironically, it was the same engine that went into the hornet but with no afterburner installed...) & all-new cockpits, etc. & The typical bullshit bean-counters in the Navy killed that program, as well. Why? Well, we've got our new hornet fighter. We'll just hang a tanker pod on that that, & viola! We've got ourselves a new "tanker"...! Now, if only we could get pigs to fly, we could get them to carry tanker pods & maybe even get them to carry a wee bit of cargo, too...
@@johnyoungs7453 I hated to see the A-6 go as well, but there were reasons. Intruder airframes were at end of service life, hadn't been built for many years, and weren't very survivable against the modern IADS threats. The older cockpit arrangement required a 2-man crew and training pipelines to support that, whereas advances in avionics and pilot interface proved a single crewman could navigate, attack, self-protect, and swing-role quite efficiently. Biggest lost was the strike range of the Air Wing. They had a plan to keep or extend that range with the A-12, but couldn't meet the weight and production consistency requirements with composites. Cancellation of the A-12 set a series of chain reactions that reverberate to this day, but are finally being corrected with the F-35C, which has longer legs than a D model Tomcat. They're already mentioning how nice it is to have long range strike back on the deck on this first deployment.
Thank you for your enlightening perspectives of my all time favourite fighter jet! I often compared the hypothetical future development of the F-14D with that of the F-15E/EX current trajectory. For me, thinking that the F-14 could head down 6th Gen Man-unmanned teaming development trajectory was just a wild imagination. I was glad that this was not just my imagination and that it similarly shared by you, someone who had flown the F-14 and knows the design potential well. Thank you!
Getting to the channel and this video very late. Fantastic vid. I fell absolutely, irrevocably, in love with the F-14 Tomcat in the summer of 1987 at Mt. Carmel airport in Indiana (my brothers and father drove a good distance to attend.) VF-84 did the demo flight for the airshow crowd and I can't ever forget how freaking cool the pilot and RIO were, handing out squadron patches and answering questions from the crowd; and that big, beautiful beast, ready to leap into the air, painted in the best livery in the U.S. Military. Enough waxing poetic, the only thing I can say about the Tomcat and whether it was better or worse than the Hornet, or even the F-15. When those programs end, will they immediately destroy all the copies not meant for static display? That's all that needs said. Imagine, Grumman built a weapon system so adapted to it's role, that WE were so afraid of it falling into Iranian hands to keep their F-14A's flying we destroyed. Every. Single. One. That could be used against us. When in our history has that happened before? Not because it was obsolete, but because it was so good at what it did. Heck, in 2023 the USAF is buying the F-15EX and that design is only 24 months or so younger than the F-14. As I like to say, "When you're out of Tomcats, you're out of fighters." Again, excellent video, Ward, and very informative to someone that wasn't young enough to understand all the jockeying going on politically regarding the F-14 at the time.
So what you are saying is that if there is ever a conflict against Iran, csg's are going to take heavy losses by the tomcats Iran has sinch its such a superior aircraft after all...
@@henrycastle6584 If the Iranians had access to repair parts and spare aircraft, instead of cannibalizing their own, yeah, I think so. I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you trying to troll my comment, because this is my favorite airframe of all time? I can tell you, and I'd hope the Tomcat vets that follow Ward would back me up on it; the U.S. has always had a vested interest in how many airframes the Iranians had that were flyable. Let's do this, name for me one better carrier-based, fleet defense interceptor produced anywhere in the world during the life of the Tomcat program, that's better than the F-14. I'll wait.
It definitely would have been interesting to see the ST21 up and running, bridging the gap between it's analogue roots, and the 21st Century electronic battlefield with its multi-faceted threats. The TC appears to have been the victim of political whims and desires, along with cost constraints, but it's certainly ironic that we've looped back to threats considered in its conception parameters. Great vid' as always Ward!
Just another example of how fearmongering over spending and fiscal responsibility is just used as a political weapon to prevent opposition from spending money on things that may help them become more popular amongst the electorate than an actual component of their ideology. Watch how the F-15EX operates alongside the F-35 and F-22 to fill roles not covered by those two planes and you'll have a decent picture of what the Navy will be missing out on. Dick Cheney really sucks!
I would have loved to see a Quickstrike or ST-21, but with the lack of truly high intensity conflicts in the last 20 years the US Navy was probably fine with the super hornet. What I am more interested is, weather the high maintenance cost of the tomcat was caused by the mechanical design or the avionics. If the latter was the case, a fully digital Tomcat would not be terribly expensive to maintain, still more costly than the Rhino, but also a bit more capable. Edit: Would love to see a CVW with ST-21, A-6F Intruder II and YA-7F Strikefighter, not for price to performance, but for variety and a bit of fun.
The Navy flew the piss out it's Tomcats. Added stress and Airframe wear was accelerated by Cat shots and Traps. This put considerable stress on the landing gear and aircraft structure. The AMSs had Hell keep them in the air along with the other rates. Then factor internal components and radars had to be fixed and kept in Calibration. The armament equipment the bomb racks, shackles, and LAUs for the missiles, and M61A1 was a whole other animal along with the powerplants. In Reality the legacy Hornets were in bad shape also. I feel the Tomcat got the ax Purely out of spite and politics! When the Tomcat and Intruder stop flying the CVW loss a lot of Teeth. I use the analogy in Boxing comparing the Tomcat to George Foreman in his prime considerably Quick, Big, Mean and Nasty with devastating punching power. The Rhino is a underweight middleweight trying to punch above it's class and failing to do all assigned tasks miserably yet it can throw a decent blow now and then.
@@georgesykes394 Another problem is that, for most of its life the Tomcat flew as an early 70s plane and competed with mid 80s planes, at least systems wise (and did a remarkable job at that). The A/B models of F-15, F-16 and F-18 were not that great to be honest, only the C/D versions of those aircraft could unleash their true 4th gen potential. The Tomcat got the D modification way to late and less than 100 planes were built/rebuilt which lead to huge costs per airframe. For some reason the D modification only added JDAM capabilities, while the other three fighters got all the new toys.
Unfortunately, the Tomcat (A/A+/B/B+)was an avionics nightmare. Can’t speak to airframe issues, we were too busy robbing the hanger queen to get a TID or radar transmitter up to the deck. Not an easy task. And about the only thing you could get an EL run for, was maybe the AWG-9 antenna, and only because it couldn’t fit up the ladderwells without possible damage. Add in the poor quality and/or lack of spare parts, plus attempting to explain to the maintenance chief that no, the radar power supply is not physically broken in half, it is nonetheless still “broke” from supply. With cyclic ops, you simply did not have time to debrief the aircrew, properly troubleshoot and call for parts. We mostly made a best guess for turnaround gripes and maybe get the next crew to run a BIT sequence during the next launch….which they rarely had time for. And finally, the bane of all; kapton wiring. Most gripes, you’re chasing ghost.
Exactly this. We have to remember that Grumman's only cost info on the ST21 was that it would've cost less to buy than NATF, which was a navalized F-22. At the time, even though the Air Force was planning on ordering 750 F-22s, the Raptor already had a unit cost of $59 million ($152.41 million in 2021 dollars), which means even before the cost overruns and growth, it would've been the most expensive fighter the US military had ever procured. An aircraft can be cheaper than that, and still be deeply-unaffordable, especially when considering the operating cost side of things (something the F-14 was infamous for). Cheney definitely had a grudge against Grumman, and wanted the F-14 purged rather than given a fair chance like the other Teen series aircraft, but his bias doesn't mean he was completely wrong.
I didn't know all of this but I just about cried when I heard one of the greatest planes of all time in Naval aviation was basically killed by not getting the F-21 program. I always loved this plane and really wish it had gotten its wings. Oh well, maybe there will be a scaled down version in the drone fleet one day. Cheers good sir and thanks for a really informative video.
Always a huge gouge of the rest of the story -- inarguable facts, perfect sequence, and so bloody thorough! You're one hell of a threat to prime-time mediocrity and bullshit, anti-mil aviation agendas, Ward -- plus, you have earned your massively growing, well-informed legions of followers. Smell the kerosene & gear up!
Fascinating, Ward. Thanks. You've also intensified my distaste for Cheney. His parents knew what they were doing when they named him "Dick." Interesting the similarity between the Rapier and the A-5.
There's another RUclips channel of hardcore milsim pilots that run 'what if' scenarios and they pitted a modern US carrier group against a late 80's early 90's carrier group and there were some interesting take-aways. I'd be interested to hear how realistic/accurate the sim results were. In short, the F-14s were significantly faster and deployed their anti-ship ordinance well before the F/A-18's could.
This is by FAR the most comprehensive historical analysis of USAF and NAVY major modern fighter programmes that have spanned from the 60s to today. I can’t thank you enough!!
I’ve despised Dick Cheney for years at this point in my life, but after learning that he bears the biggest responsibility for killing the Super Tomcat, I couldn’t hate the man more.
Although I also like the F-14, the Problem with Cheney, as with his Daughter, is it’s not what the best choice for the Nation is, it’s what they feel is Right, and mainly for their point of view, shaded by their Interests.
While doing the ops checks, two TomCats pulled up, ran up to zone five and took off down the runway. The sound was not only deafening but resonated in my body cavity as they released brakes and rolled down the runway.
I am so glad you mentioned the naming link between Adm Connolly, Grumman the F-14. I saw him talk about that whole evolution on the F-14 episode of either Discovery WIngs or Great Planes.
Moving forward to the New Year, my flight bag will include a bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce for each new episode, Commander. Every evolution into YT-video success at your hand, consistently delivers the real meat and potatoes of not only the F-14 community, but addresses other departments that enhance the Tomcat legacy. All the best for 2022! ✈️😎👍
Odd how the Air Force wound up with the side-by-side seat ejection capsule and the Navy got tandem ejector seats. Also, the translating cowl intake system on A-model F-111s was a maintenance nightmare. The B-model would have been similarly bad. Thankfully later models went to blow-in doors that didn't require any electronics.
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
Mr. Ward, the Tomcat is the sexiest and most versitile fighter in history without a doubt. But as a retired infantryman, the A10 is my Angel and will forever hold that place in my heart!
I bet the strike eagle is a close second...
@@ILSRWY4 suspect F16's are way more common to drop ordnance as air support to groudn troops then Eagles.
There are way more F16's, way more countries/allies flying em.. and they are cheaper to run operationally so I'm pretty sure if not for A10's.. it was the F16's that did most of the work in the field.
As a former A-10 Crew Chief… the F-16 can NOT do ALL that the A-10 can. Each job has its own special tool. The Warthog was made specifically for taking hits… while the F-16 can do some parts of ground support… NOTHING ELSE … not the FX-15… F-16 can get as low and slow as the A-10. In the Air Force… even though we did not think much about Navy and Naval Aviation…. Most of all maintenance troops in the USAF would agree that the Tomcat was a BADASS bird… almost tied with the F-15 Eagle
I was at the clinic waiting room one day. I was wearing my Navy shirt and a gentleman across the way had on an Army shirt.
He struck up a conversation and told me that he and his unit were forever grateful to the Navy. He said in their area of ops, 9 times out of 10 when shit went down it was a few A-6 Intruders that reigned hellfire upon the North Vietnamese and saved their asses.
Navy proud.
No quarrel there.
In the early 1990's I was working as a stability and control aero engineer for McDonnell Aircraft. Even though Grumman was a competitor, I/we thought it was a complete travesty to not strengthen the F-14 line. The F-14 swing wing was well implemented after Grumman's lessons learned with the Jaguar and F-111. And a swing wing aircraft is the only really practical way to realize both the loiter and dash capability required for the long range fleet air defense mission.
A delta wing can work too, with more modern designs; the Rafale seems like an extremely capable aircraft, made possible with modern tech and materials.
Lockheed Skunkworks polymath Aero Engineer here. The swing wing also allowed the landing profile to have a lower speed.
@michaelspivey4574 The same can be accomplished with leading edge slats for much less weight and complexity.
@@termitreter6545 Delta wings belong in the 60's, let the concept die already
When was the British Light attack Jaguar a swingwing 🤔. Russians had a couple, British had the Tornado.
The F-14 Tomcat is one of the sexiest planes ever. Others for me include the F-22 Raptor, the F4U Corsair, the P-51 Mustang, and the SR-71 Blackbird. It's a shame that we never got the Super Tomcat 21, and that the Tomcat is no longer in service in the United States Navy.
Spitfire is far better looking than the P51
Idk if it is just me, but I always thought the Blackbird looked ugly. The U-2 was a far sexier recon plane.
I'm glad you don't make funding decisions
Any aircraft that stayed with the navy for more than ten years was a good looking machine. Even the helicopters had their own special panache for getting the job done. Snap a crisp salute to the aircrews, maintainers and designers that made it happen with or without the politicians' support.
Don't forget the A-5, it looked like it was going supersonic just sitting on the deck!
When I was a SH-60 AWS in the 90s my buddies that worked on the Tomcat always told me the maintenance issues were WAY over blown.
For 27 years in Grumman Engineering, I worked on F-14 Programs. I was the 9K TCR Task Team Leader when the F-14 Program came to an end in 2001.
Sorry to hear that. I think the F/A-14E you guys were working on in the Super Tomcat 21 program would've been superior than this "Super" Hornet. As a former Navy avionics tech (2016-2020) the hornet is cool, but I still feel like I missed out on something better and cooler.
I'm looking forward to reading your book.
That's thanks to dick Cheney
You folks are living a fantasy. An old, worn out fantasy. The true mission capable rate was highly doctored and it was still bad. Never FMC...ever.
@@MH-53E Do you feel better now, or would another round of "rectal-cranial-inversion" help out some?
I was an engine mechanic in VF-142 in the mid-'70s and transitioned from the F-4 to the F-14 (around 1974). Our squadron was attached to the USS America. I found this video by accident, but it was really interesting.
How old are you now, out of curiosity?
@@ruthnoya8424 67
@@mister-LA
Thanks for your service, Mister.
74?? On the Forrestal we had the F-4's till 82...someone didn't like us 🤔
Sir you served with one of the best us navy squadrons other then the sundowners
As a Prowler maintainer, I hated that the Navy turned its back on Grumman. If they could figure out how to put a dish on a lawn dart, the E2 would be gone too. 😥
difficult to understand... for most people interested in the subject, Grumman is THE naval aircraft manufacturer.
The Navy didn't turn it's back... Dick Cheney was bought off.
@@ramosel I used to enjoy that phrase “I’d rather hunt with Dick than ride with Teddy!” I still wouldn’t ride with Teddy if he was still with us, but I know a lot more about Dick nowadays!
@@terrysaunders2026 And his daughter is no peach either.
@@ramosel 1000 times this.
The F-14 was one of the most iconic aircraft to ever grace our skies from a military sense...among so many others...but the Tomcat just had that something else about it...its swing wing format...its awesomely mean looking stance from the front...and its kneel when shuttled up and ready to pounce on any poor bastard that had the unfortunate pleasure of coming up against it...it was just a pure beast of a plane, in every facet...loved it when I first got into military aircraft many many moons ago...and still love it for the most beautiful of carrier aircraft I believe there has ever been...LONG LIVE THE TOMCAT!!!!!
I was working for Northrop Grumman in the 1990’s when the program was canceled. A lot of scuttle but at the time corroborated your sentiments. In final analysis, the Armed Services Committee had more constituents in St Louis than in Bethpage. What a shame, the F-14D was an incredible warplane.
Yep, it was then Congr Dick Cheney
It’s dick bag 💼 Cheney. Gah he screwed up more stuff in his career then anyone else I can think of
The company didn't become Northrop Grumman until after the Tomcat was killed.
They merged after they Lost the cointract to build the YF-23 was lost by Northrop. MCD was bought by Beoing, and Grumman merger with Northrop, because Northrop wanted the "Joint Stars" program
It was just Grumman back then until the company went under because of bad leadership in the government 95% of the employees were gone because of it (at least that's what I was told). Northrop Grumman was born after it but the program was lost, and the 4.5 gen interceptor we needed to replace the Tomcat that was retired.
Great history presentation, Ward. I work for Navair, and spent several years doing depot level work on the Tomcat in Norfolk. My specialty was the environmental control systems, which provided cooling for the weapons systems, and the cockpit ECS.
(I spent hundreds of hours in the nose wheel well, where all the lines intersected) In addition to the A models, some of the B and D conversions were done. The wing gloves were riveted closed, and the plumbing for the cooling system for the Phoenix was omitted.
The early 90’s was a glum time for naval aviation. Scores of squadrons across the spectrum were being decommissioned. Intruders were rolling fresh off the overhaul line and straight to the scrappers. Dozens of Tomcats were being stripped of useful parts so as to scrap the airframes. It was a sad time. But the pilots who were still flying the Tomcats loved them. Pilots who would arrive at the depot to fly Tomcats back to Oceana told stories of how the hornet pilots on the boat were constantly calling for a tanker while the F-14 guys could stay aloft for hours. With the hornet’s short legs, the joke was that the hornet would make a fine attack plane as long as you were bombing Argentina.
I was at the FRC at Jacksonville for the ceremony commemorating rollout of the last Tomcat in 2005. The following year they were retired completely.
I have been with the Super Hornet for 16 years now, and it has matured into a very capable platform, but there will never be another combat aircraft like the mighty Grumman F-14 Tomcat.
Thanks for the work over the years and for adding this detail here.
@Alentangy..thanks for keeping us safe!
Appreciate you sharing your experience
I'm curious as to what cooling a weapons system involves. I do hvac as a trade, so that combines a couple of my interests 😁
The Tomcat will also be the most beautiful/handsome Navy jets ever.
Cheney was like McNamara. "They knew the price of everything and the value of nothing..."
Cheney made worse decisions than McNamara. Plus he never served.
Cheney had personal reasons for his hatred of Grumman.
McNamara was a legend
@@roc7880 McNamara served in The USAAF.
Truth To Power, Brother!
My friend, Bill Judd, worked for Grummond since late 1970. This was right after he got out of the US Navy. He was in Iran training the Shaw's mechanics on F-14 maintenance. Bill claimed (and I believe) that he had worked on every Tomcat ever made except the first one (model 001) which crashed. Bill and I were at the Reagan Library in 2018. We went to see the F-14 they had gotten. The name on the side was a man that Bill knew; the last aviator to be assigned to that plane. Bill loved the Tomcat. He retired from Pt. Mugu as a civilian contractor (Northrup-Grummond) in 2008.
Your friend should write a book or a document, or make a video interview like so his story isn't lost to history
"GRUMMAN" :)
If he knew the F-14 so well then he should of worked for Grumman. Was he buddies with the Ayatollah. I had several Grummans myself. Even had a double ender and so didn't the girls at my stag party
Shaw..grummond...my god american ignorance even in their own native tongue is a sight to behold.
That name sounds familiar, was he in the avionics field? I was with Grumman at Pt. Mugu in the early to late seventies, had tha opportunity to make that trip to work on the Imperial Iranian Air Force's Tomcats but didn't take it. I'd done enough traveling over eight years in the Air Force. I was involved working with the NMC techs when the Iranian pilots came through to do missile system training at the Pacific Missile Test Center out of Mugu. I on't think any of us were really fond of their safety concerns taxiing with loaded weapons.
Politics, inter-service rivalry, and a host of other noise. The F-14 and its crews have written themselves into history as the best Naval fighter ever fielded. The Tomcat was pure BADASS.
The Hellcat would like to speak with you...
@@cycloneranger7927: The Hellcat was good for it’s time. But the tomcat was even better. The tomcat was so good, that nobody wanted to challenge it. Libyans foolishly tried twice. Got splashed twice. The Japanese And North Korea didn’t hesitate to challenge the hellcat. Even the Iraqis hesitated to take on the Iranian tomcats.
The F14 was (imo) just one of those "lucky hit's" which progressed from the drawing board to production and it just all went well. Same as the F15 [overengineered] and F16. In the late 60's , a lot of enginerding was done properly. Take a motorcycle like the Honda VTR1000 "Firestorm" : they never changed/evolved it because they got it right first time (craptastic tank range on 27mpg though). However : the F14 *_was_* truly a pain in the derriere in terms of maintenance (like the Harrier) - esp. being at sea.
No doubt about it (F-14 best Naval fighter ever fielded).
@@sparrowbe4k802 No F-15 has ever been shot down in 42 years by an opposing force thanks to Aeronautical Engineering. In the world of first strike all weather Air Superiority there is no such thing as "over-engineered."
I fly the Super Hornet. I love it, but recognize its limitations. I do believe a Super Tomcat would have been a more capable aircraft; even now.If they had truly made it modular and upgradeable like the Super Hornet we would have a great asset in the 2020s and beyond.
Takes a brave Super Hornet pilot to admit that! Most Hornet jocks I know who never flew the F-14 tend to shit all over the Tomcat as you'd expect from sibling rivals! :)
Thanks, Bill. Much love to Rhino guys. Fly safe and kick ass, brother.
@@WardCarroll Was the Rhino nickname inherited from the Phantom by the Super Hornet?
Bill, what modern day "upgrades" could've been done to the D Tomcat to bring it up to today's fighter..??
Honestly I think the major issue with the f-14 was its variable geometry wing Grumman did actually have a concept to replace it
39 years Air Force and was a F-111 crew chief in the early 80's, started on O2-A's n the late 70's and ended on F-16 C/D's in 2019 and I still believe the Tomcat is the best looking aircraft of the modern era.
It is a sweetheart...!! :-)
Air Force brat, here...while I thought, and still think, the Tomcat was a really good looking airplane, NOTHING we've ever built is even close to as sexy as the Phantoms, in all its' variants! That thing could be sitting on the tarmac, and looked like it was already doing 1000 mph and was looking for something to kill!
@@DEADorALIVEkayaking Are you talking about Phantoms or Tomcats? You kinda "switched horses in the middle of the stream", here...??
@@johnyoungs7453 Both, actually...the Tomcat was a really really good looking airplane, but those Phantoms...man, they were just flat sexy! :)
Tomcat is the most beautiful aircraft ever. Better looking than the Phantom IMO
I'm still watching old episodes on this channel, just catching up on my education, and what jumps straight out at me is a saying we have of "Penny wise, pound foolish." But politicians rarely admit their mistakes, and the rest is history. A fascinating video, thanks. 👋
So energizing, and then the reality of military aviation acquisition and related politics. You can't fix stupid. Thanks Ward, it's a privilege to hear your stories, and analysis.
As a retired Army guy, I understood the value and appreciated the design of Grumman aircraft and admired the thinking behind it all! But, how to forgive those terrible politicians who imposed their 'better judgment' on the Troops, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen?
Gallows
Childs play compared to what they do now! If you listen closely you can hear the death rattle of America
Forgiveness at the bottom of a rope on a street pole
Something about the Cheney family !!!! If he's not costing men and lives in the military??? She's costing US taxpayer money on socialism!!!! Tomcat was an amazing plane it should still be in service, according to some of the pilots I know!!
It's no worse than other branches making one another keep machines around that they didn't want. See the Navy and battleships and the Air Force and the A-10.
I'm a former member of the USAF RF-4C community. I'm impressed with your knowledge of aircraft and your ability to present the information. This video answered a lot of questions that I had about the reasons the F-14 was retired so soon.
It's ironic that the Air Force wanted a tandem aircraft and got a side by side one and the Navy wanted side by side and got tandem. The other navalized feature the F-111 inherited was the escape pod, which had it been included in the Tomcat would have saved Goose.
If only Goose followed the procedure of manually ejecting canopy first and then actually ejecting... ;)
lmao
@@The_Tau He wanted to see them great balls of fire on the canopy explosive bolts fire, up close and follow em out.
That pod has killed more crew members then it has saved.
The writers killed Goose. It did not matter what type of plane he was in, he was going to die to further the plot.
Even though it's gone, when I think Naval Air Capability I think of the F14.
And while it's an arcade flying game, the F14 will always be one of my favorite planes to fly in Ace Combat.
And every other aircraft games.
This is hilarious! I was just playing with the F-14 on my PSP, Ace Combat! Lol. Small world!
And the Tomcat became more popular than ever thanks to Maverick again
Ace Combat 7 Tomcats DLC are basically AST-21 in disguise
I’ve been using the Tomcat a lot in Project Wingman. Very fun.
@@Pramit2000 have you played DCS?
It would be so amazing if we had a 5th Gen Tomcat. The Tom Cat is one of the best looking planes ever!
Hence, "Final Countdown" and "Top Gun". Notice that every successful fighter copied our twin tails! Couldn't agree with you more!
..maybe the F15 could be a bit better looking (which is subjectively)... but I like both.
Have you seen the XFA-27 from Ace Combat 7. From a video game but pretty interesting take on a reworked next gen successor to the F-14
i mean technically itd probably be classified as a gen 4++
For me, it is a tie with the Flanker. Then again, the Flanker looks a lot like a fixed wing version of the Tomcat, which makes sense as plenty of the requirements behind it are similar (flying over the vast expanse of Siberia in winter may not be perlustrating the Pacific, but it isn't all that different either).
I have only recently discovered this channel, and have watched maybe half a dozen videos going back several years. I have to say that the writing for this channel is a cut above. Certainly it is personally informed by actual experience, but not everyone who has done the thing can describe the thing so well. I can only assume that communication plays a large part in US naval aviation. Thank you for sharing your observations and analysis so clearly, in a way that enhances their value, both in terms of history and entertainment. A rare feat, and one which you can apparently execute on a weekly basis.
R❤❤❤❤❤❤
Which channel it it if you don't mind me asking?
Ward:
Very interesting discussion on “Why We Didn't Get the Super Tomcat-21.” There is one more very important program development that weighed heavily in the evolution that was not mentioned.
From 1979 through 1983 I served as a Radar Intercept Officer (RIO) in the same squadron in which you later served: VF-102 Diamondbacks at NAS Oceana. Following VF-102, from 1983 to 1986 I was at VX-4, NAS Pt. Mugu, CA. After the Navy went to work for Northrop (now Northrop/Grumman) in 1987. At the time, Northrop was teamed with McDonnell Douglas in development
of the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) and the Navy Advanced Tactical Fighter (NATF). The two of us - Northrop and McDonnell Douglas - were in competition against Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics to design and build two replacement fighters for both the Air Force’s F-15 and the Navy’s F-14. Both teams built two flyable vehicles - the Lockheed team built and flew the YF-22 and we built and flew the YF-23. What is not widely known are the details involving the Navy variants the public never saw. I was the senior RIO on the program for the Northrop/McDonnell team. While the public saw our YF-23 we built for the Air Force, the details for our Navy ATF were never publicly released and I assume remain classified. I can tell you, though, our aircraft looked similar to the YF-23 the public saw. The big design drivers at that time were low observability, interoperability with the AAAM missile - the Phoenix replacement, the ability to super cruise, sensor fusion both internal and external, and a significant reduction in maintainability costs. Our Navy ATF resembled the Air Force YF-23 we flight demonstrated but was designed with both a pilot and an RIO. It had an electrically scanned array (ESA) radar, larger internal weapons bay to accommodate the AAAM, had a much larger thrust to weight ratio than the F-14D, and incorporated a very low radar and infrared signature. I personally flew thousands of hours in flight simulation. It was an exciting time to be sure. But at source selection in late April 1991, the Air Force - the lead service on the program - chose the Lockheed team’s YF-22 for the Air Force. DoD had billed the program as “two aircraft with one contractor for both services” (like the F-4 Phantom and the TFX) but what occurred was what many had feared: the Air Force and Navy split on their selections.
The Navy pulled out of the program - which infuriated the Air Force because it dramatically drove up their costs. The day it was announced the Navy was out of the program, McDonnell Douglas issued pink slips to all of the design engineers I had worked with for several years. So sad. In the debates that followed, the Navy planners decided that low observability was not so-much the design driver as it was in the Air Force community. Although not expressly “low observable,” what eventually transpired was the development of the F/A-18 Super Hornet as you have described by the same two contractors that lost the NATF program: Northrop (now Northrop/Grumman) and McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing).
I still have a couple of coffee mugs in my china hutch depicting our NATF on the side that “disappears” when hot coffee is poured into it. I gave away boxes and boxes of these at our Northrop booth at Tailhook 1990.
Stan Harley “Hawg”
A great recap of the F-14 story. I was closely involved with the beginning, and until your video didn't know the end. I was a LCDR RIO instructor in VF=121 in the late 60's and was asked to visit Hughes aircraft for fleet inputs on how the modify the F-111 B weapons system for the newly planned F-14. This soon involved more and more time, and I ended up getting orders to the F-14 program office at NAVAIR. It's hard to believe today, but the program manager was only a Navy Captain (Mike Ames). The only other blue suit was the weapon system manager an EDO CDR. Engine procurement was managed by the USAF at Wright-Pat. This might help to explain the TF-30 thump-bang problem that we experienced during the first deployment on Enterprise, which was a big surprise to those of us in the Fleet. In hindsight, someone knew of this problem. I used to get F-4 flight time at Pax River and the Pax service test pilots were leery of this engine even before the F-14 first flight. After the first F-14 crash, the Washington Post seemed to make it a personal vendetta to cancel the program and a flag officer (Swoose Snead) took over the program before fleet introduction. I was lucky to be assigned to the VF1/VF2 fleet introduction team at Miramar which was loaded with future Astronauts and Flag officers. Later on, I was again fortunate and was honored to command VF-24. Alas that was my last flying tour and involvement with the F-14. Joel Graffman (Capt USN RET)
Just to make things explicit, every program manager for every NAVAIR program office is a Navy Captain.
you loaded Flag Officers and Astronauts? like into bomb bays and Weapons hardpoints?
sounds fun.
Dr Strangelove style skydiving! yeeehaww!
Must be good for morale. The Admiral aint no pussy! he's just one of the lads... yep he wants a jump...
You millitary boys crack me up!
L
Thank you for your service Capt Joel!!
I've always loved the Hornet, but from the first day my little brain became aware of the Tomcat's existence as a child, it had, has, and will have, the top place in my heart when it comes to naval aviation.
The F14, the Apache, and the Blackbird. The aviation trio of awesomeness.
Those were 3 of the 5 model kits I built as a kid. The other two being the F5 in "mig 28" color scheme, and the F111.
@@JonHuhnMedical The F5 was certainly a cool looking jet, and the Pig holds a place in most Aussie's hearts. You have great choice in model kits mate! Have a good one :)
As an AD tho, the 404 was a wonderful engine.💕
I commend your candid assessment! Being a retired “Army dogfaced grunt” I can assure you that much Department of Defense procurement is suspicious to us too! Anchors aweigh!
yeah, for sure the best product doesn't always win. Our "democracy" is pretty much mostly a system of influence across the board.
"Spending more to get less," is the most appropriate comment concerning the Super 21 Tomcat 14D vs what we have now.
Absolutely not. The shortfalls of the Super Hornet compared to Super Tomcat are completely valid, but there is no making a 4th-generation airframe stealthy, and the stealth aspect was completely overlooked in Ward's comparison of ST21 with the F-35C. You can slather all the RAM and alter all the leading edges you want, but even the latest "semi-stealth" Gen 4++ fighters like the F-15EX have nothing on the F-35's RCS, especially from the front quarter.
The glib comment about wasting $1.2 trillion for the F-35C also completely ignores the huge leaps in capability the other F-35 variants have given, especially to allies who could otherwise not afford stealth technology or have a (STOVL) carrier-based stealth fighter.
@@GintaPPE1000 Mea culpa, I was speaking to the Tomcat vs Hornet capabilities. It is known the F-35 brings more and different things to the table not available in the '90s. Fortunately, it hasn't been an issue to be concerned about.
We spend more to get less because the government prints as much money as it desires for any project that will enrich the congressional members that are involved. It’s not an accident that we are stuck in forever wars and our money has less value than an equal weight of bacon.
Mr. Carroll - A bunch of years ago, two MiG-29's (a single seater and a tandem seater) and an IL-76 support aircraft participated in the local airshow in Kalamazoo. There was an F-14 Tomcat flight demonstration during the show (I believe it may have been flown by the late, great "Snort Snodgrass - RIP) which included an amazingly tight 360 degree circle in knife-edge flight!!!! I was standing near one of the Russian pilots and his backseater, and you could tell they were absolutely gobsmacked at the flight characteristics of the Tomcat!!!! Their reaction was priceless!!!! Thanks for all the great information! Bryan
As “Top Gun” has made me a huge fan of the Tomcat, I am seriously disappointed in the politicians and Navy for not going forward with the Super Tomcat. Thanks for the the what if scenario.
Blame cheney
@@harrisn3693 That globalist bastard!!!
@@harrisn3693 not putin this time? aww man... that's my dads favorite thing
@@D20000 naw, Putin is actually a top gun fan. I ain’t a Libitard if you are wondering that.
@@D20000 🤣🤣
Thanks for a most informative and enjoyable Tomcat presentation.
I was an engineering undergrad at PAX in the late 60s where I watched an F-111 catapult launch. In 1971 I worked in PriFly on Independence when an F-14 was towed out to pier 12 Norfolk and hoisted aboard and towed around for the chance to evaluate how the big airplane would fit on the flight deck regarding parking, catapulting, etc. After active duty I was a reservist, then civilian maintainer on the F-8 flight simulator and F-4 cockpit procedures trainer. We actually transitioned an F-14 pilot into the RF-8G. Upon losing the only TF-8 in Dallas, Vought and the Navy came to us to aid the Philippine AF pilots in transitioning from their F-86s to the F-8. FAA ATC from '83 to '05. Kind of strayed from the F-14 topic.
Thanks again.
I ran the Grumman systems test/analysis group in the early 80’s we were integrating the Tcs into the avionics suite. I designed a real time ACM training system it worked first time out.only1 F-14 was configured with this enhancement, so off it went without my full design operating yet I had a small group of smart engineers working in theSITS LAB making minor changes that could be software only and the Northrop group made the hardware changes. When VX-4 flew the latest configuration, they took it to Miramar. We at Grumman got this feedback. “Hot damn just what we need.” Too bad Dirty Dick Cheney didn’t like Grumman, and didn’t approve funding. The capability to train like you fight was lost.
I’m really hoping that the new next gen fighter will be a Grumman so we can have another Cat.
Other than using his government ties to enrich Halliburton shareholders, are there any redeeming qualities possessed by Dick Cheney to explain why he got to a place of power and influence big enough to cause so much damage to America, its reputation abroad, its capabilities and so much more (Not that enriching people at the cost of our country's well-being is "redeeming".)?
Sad to say that using your ties in previous or after government life to enrich yourself and others isn’t uncommon. But there’s something else most people don’t seem to understand about the Halliburton contract that they got for oil well service in Iraq post-invasion: not much profit. Regardless of what you heard they did *NOT* make a butt load of money off the oil services provided to the Iraqi’s. They did make a crap ton off a subsidiary called KBR, but that’s a whole other story. But back to Halliburton proper.
The contract that any prospective service company had to sign had a clause that forbid any profit margins over something like 6 or 8%. Any profit over that amount was immediately turned over to the Iraqi government. I’m not sure how much you know about the ONG industry but that’s cutting it so close that most companies won’t even bother with it. In fact, after complaining about Bush giving the contract to Halliburton during the campaign, Obama immediately had the bidding process reopened. Nobody offered to bid, they actively sought out companies to take over the contract including Schlumberger. The Iraq government owed a very significant amount of money to France and even though Schlumberger essentially rules (to this day) most of the ME & Africa in terms of oil service industry, they balked at the stipulation for such low profit margins. So Obama went back to Halliburton with his hat in hand and asked them return to the bidding.
Mind you that they also had to do all that on such a tight budget as well as providing security to their people and equipment in the process.
Dick Cheney has a lot of faults, that wasn’t one of them.
So Cheney sometime in the 1980s killed the ACM real-time trainer for the F-14A TCS?
He was a Congressman at that time from Wyoming (1979-1989). How would that even have come across his desk?
@@LRRPFco52 because it was axed in 1990, after Cheney was Secretary of Defense.
Great summary! Man, I miss the F-14D and its capabilities, especially its TARPS capability. I was an Army "customer" on the ground in Afghanistan early on and the support we received from our brothers and sisters in Naval Aviation was second to none and extremely responsive to our needs.
TARPS pods were important, but they were a giant pain in the backside to maintain.
As a retired enlisted AT, and supporting VF-32 as a tech rep on USS Harry S Truman, I'll never understand why the government killed the F-14 program. The Tomcat, which I first saw in Memphis at an airshow while I was in A-school, was the reason I went to the Jolly Rogers. Watching those Tomcats soaring over Millington was the best thing I had ever seen. I'm guessing that many of you have no idea what I'm talking about. It was a long time ago.
I for one could never understand why the Navy didn't insist on keeping the Tomcat. I was stationed at VX-4 ('87), then VX-9/Weapons test ('95) at Point Mugu. I saw all the improvements and installed them in the F-14A/B/D as an Aviation Electricians Mate. Also, side by side with the F-18. The F-14 was far superior to the F-18 in every way. I was hoping the F-14 would make a comeback, this plane will always be #1 with me. Thank you for your video and your service to our country.
I will preface this with "You probably know more than me, as I am a mere enthusiast". That said, as I see it...
The latest variants of the AMRAAM-EX are capable of matching the range of the AIM-54, and with better manuverability and reliability on small targets like multirole strike fighters (SU-32), and cruise missiles.
The Hornets and Super Hornets are simply lower maintenance. Buddy-refuling stores on a KA-6 or KA-18 can extend the range of a strike package to equal the tomcat.
One former Tomcat pilot was saying that late model cats were known to occasionally explode! This due to an engine housing flaw. Lives were lost.
The Tomcat's wicked flat spin charachteristic was never entirely solved. It was reportedly still tougher to land on a carrier than smaller aircraft with more centralized thrust.
At the end of the day, the Tomcat was still a borderline ensign eliminator with a unique and unreliable missile. Past the merge almost every late-4th gen aircraft could out manuever it in a turning fight. She was slowly becoming a bomb truck, in a Navy that increasingly sought multi-role aircraft.
The Tomcat was a thing of speed, good maneuverabity for it's size, and absolute beauty... but age comes for them all.
That last 4 minutes not only nails the dysfunction of defence acquisition but the total tragedy of throwing the F-14 under the bus.
That's why I tell people they had been trying to kill old Tom off since he was still in the womb doging clothes hangers. And after decades of being treated like shit from people up top he ended up being murdered with his body unceremoniously tossed into the garbage. Largely what I mean by treated like shit from up top is all the upgrades denied to it. When I was on the Kitty Hawk we had VF-154, I was there from 1999-2002 and they left not long after me.
I hold the honor/ distinction of being the only HT to have ever had to work on a Tomcat. It's too long to put here, it is truly It's own story but a short bit of info I had to rig something up to keep a part that had no spares remaining functional. If I couldn't do that then the Squadron would have been down one cat forever AND they would have been disqualified from the gun ex they were taking part in 2 days later.
Recently as part of that whole aging process we go back and evaluate things from life. Recently I've adopted the belief that as successful as it was and in the face of constant adversity the chair, err airfarce, um airforce giving one of the best reason every branch hates them, the dirty games they played getting the F401 killed. Those smug bastards and a few politicians should have been made accessories to murder they knew damn well what was going to happen from the engine change, especially the airforce they knew people would die.
Its creation was an attempt to throw the Air Force under the bus, what goes around comes around
And the F35A costs $175,983,989 and the C with Sidekick pushing past $220 million EACH. ... im fairly sure Grumman could built a stealth cat for cheaper.
Its purely kickback corruption...sad but a sign of the ultimate failure if the big fish are allowed to set the rules via bribery and corrupt politicians.
@@martinpalmer6203 Hollings delved further into the financial details. “The Navy’s first batch of F-14As rang in at $38 million per aircraft in 1973. That sounds pretty cheap compared to around $88 million for a new F-15EX these days, but when you adjust that number to reflect nearly five decades of inflation, you get a downright shocking figure of more than $234 million per F-14 Tomcat,” he said.
“The F-35’s initial production run per-unit cost was also quite high, but still more than $10 million less than the Tomcat, at $221 million per fighter. By 1988, thirteen years later, the F-14D cost $74 million per airframe, which adjusted for inflation brings the Tomcat’s price down to $171 million per aircraft in today’s dollars. Last year marked thirteen years since the F-35’s first production batch, with per-unit prices of the F-35A now at around $78 million per airframe-$93 million less than the F-14 per jet,” he added.
Interesting that it's fine when the F-14 is bloody expensive but when the F-35 looks like it has a somewhat high number everyone loses their mind. The F-35 is mind numbingly cheap per unit for a 5th generation multirole stealth fighter.
@@IgnoredAdviceProductions the F35 numbers are falsified "flyaway cost" doesn't include things like radar, avionics, weapon racks, DAS... all the things that make it into a fighter. I trust the USAF official crash reports which list the actual cost to replace a combat ready F35A @ $175,983,989 ... which is also extremely close to the unit cost foreign governments are paying when you divide # of aircraft by amount spent. Sorry but the "flyaway cost" is bullshit to placate the public who are being robbed blind.
I loved Admiral's Tom comment to Congress that there wasn't enough trust in Christendom to make a fighter out of the F111B.
I was confused by this. The quote is: "There isn’t enough *thrust* in all Christendom to make a Navy fighter out of that airplane.” Savage! 😂
But late in its life, it did well as the EF Raven. Late bloomer I suppose.
Not as well as you would think. While it did perform its mission adequately enough, the Spark Vark was severely limited in its jamming capability. That's what happens when you power all of your ECM assets off engine power alone. When there was a choice between a Prowler and a Spark to provide you a corridor into Bosnia, the Prowler got the call. Witnessed it first hand as we would watch the Prowlers taxi past the buttoned up EF-111s in Aviano, Italy.
@@spannerturnerMWO That's interesting. You would think that the manufacturer would upgrade the generators and accessory drive to produce enough power, and that the engine power lost would be preferable to the drag from the Prowler pod's Ram Air Turbines... but I guess not?
12:08 Thats buno 159600, the longest serving Tomcat. Delivered in 1975 as a Blk 85 F-14A, became the 5th re-manufactured F-14D(R) in 1994, retired in 2006.
Ward- like the Ricky 620 in the background! I have a Fireglo.
Let's be honest. The f14 was a nightmare to maintain. Absolute nightmare. I think that's part of the reason why it's gone.
As someone who spends a lot of his time in the Digital Simulation of the Tomcat you used as examples. I curse the decisions that led to the cancellation of the Supercat. An F-14 with glass cockpit , AMRAAM's and Supercruise would be damn near unstoppable.
Oh shoot it’s @Animarchy! He everywhere like JaxBlade! Well. You are right, and we can blame Dick Cheney for that.
In DCS is there a Hornet and Super Hornet? Or just one?
Super hornet is a newer hornet or I should say a improvement
Had the opportunity to witness the public introduction of the Tomcat at the 1973 Paris Airshow. Being the assistant to a professional photographer working for Aviation Week we had unlimited access to the aircraft and Grumman’s pavilion. Still have Grummans promotional documents along with AW’s publication featuring the Tomcat on the cover.
Oh wow!
By far the best explanation I have ever heard or read about how the Navy ended up with the Super Hornet over the Tomcat. Well done sir.
For me the F-14 was the best looking aircraft on the flightdeck, and I was a rotorhead AE troubleshooter.
I often wondered why such a great airframe was discontinued. I asked an engineer who had worked at Raytheon if he knew why...he replied with one word: "politics".
We have an awesome military but imagine what we could have if the Admirals and Generals were able to build the forces needed to meet the current threats instead of letting politicians choose the designs that personally makes them the most money. To hell with those guys; especially Dick "Shotgun" Cheney. I was pissed when they mothballed the F-14. That fighter was the poster child around the world for American Badassery.
First time posting. Love your channel Ward. Keep it up sir.
Unfortunately, politicians are put into office by corporate interests much larger than defense, and a lot of those corporate interests share industrial supply with the top 20 industries in the US. Say you want to build a next generation super airframe out of carbon composites. Alcoa aluminum might have something to say about that, and they have far more pull in Congress than one of the “lowly” big defense contractors. Study the top 20 industries in the US. Defense isn’t one of them.
It's the same pencil pushers who didn't want ground troops to have modern, comfortable, capable boots because they "didn't look as good" in garrison use.
@@Texas240 Boots went the total opposite direction from spit and polish once the desert boots and authorized alternate list was approved.
Back in the '90s, they spec'd out a more press shop friendly BDU set, and went away from the comfortable, articulated knee BDUs with bellowed pocket blouse to flat pockets so garritroopers could have them starched easily, even though by regulation they were forbidden from being starched.
The uniforms that came after that with ACU and now went back to a baggy functionality.
The most comfortable were the OG107 Jungle Fatigues with very relaxed fit and functional pockets.
Grew up in North Massapequa on Long Island, about 2 miles south of the Bethpage plant, my uncle was as electronics installer at Grumman primarily on the A6 Intruder at both Bethpage and, later, out at Calverton. Many of my neighbors worked on Grumman planes and the lunar module program. I served in VF-32 during 82-84. Lot's of Grumman in my blood...the aviation industry fell apart on Long island with the closing/merger of Grumman and the closing of Fairchild Republic. All those facilities are still there but it's incredibly depressing to see all of that manufacturing gone.
I image a 4.5++ generation Tomcat, with composite materials, some stealth features (like S inlets, radar absorving paint -like Sukhoi Su-35S, some angled surfaces), supercruise capable engines, recountour the shoulder for gas, integrated IRST, modern heads up display, all glass cockpit, an AESA radar, fly-by-ware, landing PC Copilot, AIM-152, AGM-158, ADM-160, RIM161 (SM-3 Anti Ballistic like the Russian MiG-31), AGM-169, Harpoon, NSM, Tomahawk, etc... it would be an awesome platform.
Great info. I was in VF 21 from '89-92, we really liked where the Tomcat was going with the GE engines and avionics upgrade. Unfortunately, after '89 the Tomcat wasn't viewed as a post-cold war air superiority option. They tried to convert into a dual role fighter/attack (bomber) like the F/A 18. I remember being on the flightline at Miramar and Atsugi watching the F-18 maintenance crews leaving after an 8-hour shift, while the F-14 maintenance crews were working 3 8-hour shifts or 12 on/off to keep up with maintenance.
You omit two important activities that had a major impact on the decision to move Naval aviation in its current direction. The first was the Congressionally directed study called Carrier Airwing 2000 which was done at CNA in 1990 with a supporting paper from NAVAIR titled "Aircraft Carrier Requirements for a Post Cold War World" and the "From the Sea" maritime strategy document. Both the CV Airwing Study and From the Sea postulated that there would no peer or near peer competitor until well Into the 21st Century and as a result the fleet air defense problem was less severe and there would be only a limited Naval deep strike requirement that could not be handled by cruise missiles.
Then in 1992 NAVAIR did a study on future fighter/attack aircraft. There were three alternatives considered. What became the F/A-18EF, the FI4D + F14 QS and just build F-18C/Ds as gap fillers until what F-35, orginally JAST then JSF could be developed . The other two alternatives included a 5th Gen fighter-Attack aircraft. The least cost and least capable option was Option 3. Option 2 was the most capability but much cost more than Option 3. Option 1 was the least bang for the buck but was chosen anyway. VADM Bill Bowes, who was AIR-00 at the time explained that after the failure if the A-12, A-6 rewing, P-7 and P-3 Update IV that Congress would not give the Navy money to start a 5th Generation fighter until Naval aviation produce something and that Super Hornet was the best way to do that.
13:36 Has there ever been a more beautiful aircraft? What a work of art.
R.J. Mitchell: "Hold my beer"
The Naval prototype F111N is at China Lake Ca in storage. The Prototype Hornet is also at China Lake but on display at their museum. The Iranians who purchased Tomcats, were given patches that said "Ali-cat." :D lol
TOP GUN: Had they used the Super Tomcat 21, Goose would have lived. :D lol
When I was a kid and obsessed with military aircraft in the mid-80's I would read all the stuff I could find about them. Unfortunately, while I read the info, it was just gobbledygook in my brain as I don't understand any of the math or how the numbers of anything work with any of this stuff. SO, now, when Ward tells these stories they make sense!
Yes, this is exactly how I feel -- stored a bunch of letters and numbers and manufacturer names like memorizing the stats on a baseball card but not knowing enough about the game. Ward's teaching us all the inside baseball knowledge.
One of the interesting things about the Super Tomcat design is that the enlarged leading edge root extensions (LERX) looks very similar to what Russia has designed into their 5th gen SU-57 which along with thrust vectoring helps make it highly maneuverable aircraft.
Thrust vectoring is strictly impractical for the Navy. There is no room on the carrier for that kind of maintenance for 80+ fighters.
@@kenchen704
When was the last time a carrier actually went to sea with 80+ fighters embarked?
Typically its closer to 50.
Correction : The Russian SU-57 looks like Tomcat LERX.
OMG! A Tomcat with Thrust Vectoring Capability and Supercruise would be one Very Sweet Lethal Bird!
@@FallenPhoenix86 if you let the Nimitz class carriers go to all out war in Vietnam again it will definitely be 80+, pretending to be smart.
A friend of mine that I served with went to JTAC school training with VF-31. The SEALs loved the F-14…. considered it a force multiplier. Imagine if ST21 was in the game for those guys. Turns out the F-15EX is as close as we’ll get to the ST21.
Why would SEALS care about an air superiority fighter?
@@J_Caban Because of the FAC-A role it had late in it's service life.
@@J_Caban snake eaters care about eating livers & cutting off heads underwater/thread.
@@Bat21bravo ???
@@seanmurphy7011 True... but I'm sure you cared about how long they could remain on station and how well the aircrews we're trained.
Thanks a lot, Cheney...
@redw11er - after reading about Cheney's follies, 1) His 5- sucessful deferments to Dodge military service when he was needed, 2) His very poor/sloppy/ politically (personally gratifying) motivated decisions - regarding military equipment and weapons systems procurement, 3) His Extremely low level of his personal firearms safety training, have put him in the higher levels, of earning the 'Homer Simpson' award of EXTREME aDOLT incapabilities, on the wall of SHAME....
Mr. Ward, I am so grateful to have found this channel. Back in the mid seventies my older brother was a navigator in the F14, however my brother was in the Marines! I only recently learned that the Marines didn't purchase any F14's. That new knowledge has left me in a quagmire as you can tell. He is no longer with us as he perished in a plane crash in 76 at Cherry Point N.C. It was not any type of a fighter but some kind of a transport plane. I remember when he got to Cherry Point he expressed to us how happy he was that he wasn't flying the harriers there because they were crashing alot. So I wonder what would have happened to his career if he had lived? Would he have been reassigned to the Navy? Oh by the way,he got his wings in Pensacola Florida. Any comments on this from you would be greatly appreciated.
I just got to go on the midway carrier in San Diego and I drove my wife nuts trying to get up on deck to see the f14 they ..what a super sweet plane. When you see it up close and get a real good look at the curves and angles it is such a beauty. Still my favorite of all time.
Amazing story. F-14 is my all time fav fighter jet. I was sad when I heard it was being phased out.
So Wise, Thank You . Tom Cats RULE. We NEED SUPER TOM CAT
I have some old Bendix vacuum tubes. Those things are built like a tank. They weigh 2x more than a similar sized vacuum tube. The support discs are ceramic inside the Bendix tubes. Support discs and tabs in regular tubes are paper thin mica. The support rods in a Bendix tube are over 50%-150% thicker than regular tube support rods. The plates are heavier. They are all rated for high G dynamic loads, higher G shock loads and very high altitudes. They may be designed for RADAR displays and RADAR transmission, but they also work great for audio.
Lots of musicians and audiophiles literally hunt for MILSPEC tubes for that exact reason. These guys are also willing to pay quite the money for that stuff.
@@svenschwingel8632 I got mine back when the getting was good plus I could go down to the boneyard on jobs and score things like 5881s or TT21s off B52s for free. As long as I wasn't studying the RADAR controlled steering landing gear circuitry they didn't care. The TT21s were in the glide slope part anyway. I have no idea if any B52s still use any tubes or not. I think they might still use BWOs or other traveling wave tubes for RADAR jamming. New Gallium arsenide RF transistors have some impressive bandwidth and power but there are still a lot of older systems out there. Is it hardened for an E pulse? Who knows. There are maybe two labs that can attempt to study that. Los Alamos is one.
I’m so glad you do this, I grew with Tomcats flying over Va beach. I was totally infatuated growing up, little did I know I would grow up to become a Cod Aircrewman and become a part of the same carrier aviation legacy.
I used to visit va beach in the summers as a kid I can remember standing on mt trashmore watching them fly overhead and wanting to fly
@@avstlbeatz A lot of kids want to become pilots, but the world needs tire changers too.
This RUclips channel is a great source for the history of one of the most iconic military aircraft of the post-WW2 era. Very informative, great content!
I just wish that every aviation commentator was as lucid and interesting even down to understanding a series of models numbers and comparisons.Thank you.
So looking forward to this ward. Really looking forward to another episode talking about Iranian F-14A’s
I’m waiting for news that the Iranians are scrapping their remaining F-14s so the Yanks can’t get hold of them and put them back into service 😂
@@TheOriginalCoda Best news would be to hear that Navy Seals brought some Tomcat pilots on a raid and stole the F-14s back from Iran lol.
@@RCAvhstape imagine they stole all the Iranian F-14s that can fly and destroy the ones that couldn't.
Interesting information about the Tomcat. I am retired Air Force and some of the Navy planes seem to be better than the Air Force planes at times. I wish the Air Force would get the F-35B since it can operate from short runways or if a runway and taxiway are bombed out. But I digress. It is interesting to note that one of the reasons the Air Force accepted the F-16 over the F-17 was that the F-111 production had ended and that General Dynamics (now Lockheed Martin) already had the new production line ready. The F-17 was superior but did not have flyby wire. The Navy got the better end of the deal by taking the F-17 and turning it into the F-18.
Again great video.
In no way was the F-17 better than the F-16 🤣
Sir, the reason that Navy planes are generally regarded as "better" than USAF planes (by the USAF, themselves...) is simply because of the way they're designed. They're more rugged. They're expected, over the years of their service lives, to literally "slam down" on the deck of a carrier in what can best be described as an "intentionally controlled crash" and then be expected to fly again. Ever look at the main landing gear of an F-18 Hornet..?? It's massive..! For a reason..! The entire wing and fuselage structure is designed for this "abuse"..! When the Navy decided to use the British BAE Hawk as their next trainer, they had to beef it up considerably. Stouter landing gear, beefier fuselage and wings. And a bigger engine with more power to make up for the increased weight. With the exception of the F-15 Eagle, virtually all Navy planes used by the Air Force have performed very well. Even the old and loved F-4 Phantom, in it's various renditions, all still used a tail hook - thereby saving more than a few flight crews and aircraft as a result. Food for thought..!!
@@johnyoungs7453 Obviously turbo air head has never been on a carrier deck and felt a landing.
Loved the video. You skipped a crucial phase in the Tomcat air-to-ground saga. In 1999 VF-14 (for whom I was the intel officer) and VF-41 onboard the Roosevelt, effectively utilized LANTERN against targets in Kosovo and Iraq. That success put to bed the fears generated by the VF-41 incident in Bosnia and should have been used more effectively as a proof point in favor of continued Tomcat development and deployment.
I made that cruise. Black Aces first Tomcat squadron dropped iron bombs that deployment. Admiral Mike Borda visited us that deployment God rest his soul
as a kid, i never liked the f-18 on an instinctual level while loving the f-14
glad you confirmed what i felt as a kid
You must be Gen-X. Yep even as kid, there was always something about the F-18 that was off. As a kid, my favorite was always the F-15.
@@MrSmith-zy2bp I'm barely a millennial, born in 1986. I don't identify as a millennial or however it's said.
@@TheCADDGUY Same with my wife, born early 80's. Think she has more Gen-X characteristics than I do at times.
My view of the F18 was shaped by the film Independence Day as a kid. As an adult I wondered why the hell they picked a Marine pilot in an F18 squadron as the one of the main focuses when it would have made more sense for it to be an F15E pilot in a USAF squadron.
I liked the picture of Ranger when talking about the all-Grumman airwing. I recently received an e-mail that talked about when Ranger was virtually all Grumman. We had a lot of Grumman aircraft when I was aboard from 1968-'70. Grumman really knew what they were doing when it came to building carrier based warplanes.
Looking back I'm so grateful to have seen the F-14 Tomcat fly at the airshow at Cecil Field in Jacksonville FL in 1987?. I was in my college's flight program so I went with my classmates to the airshow. The F-14 Tomcat is visibly a BIG fighter jet and I loved the look and jet engine noise it made! The Tomcat took off, went vertical till it was out of sight in the clear sky. It had a thunderous ground shaking sound doing it. The Air Force brought a F-15 and later did the same thing. You could tell right away the F-15 climbed MUCH faster than the F-14 did but the F-15 wasn't as cool with all the thunderous ground shaking! Lol! Neither F-14 or the F-15 got the complete attention of that crowd that the US Marines AV-8 Harrier received later when it did its demonstration of vertical takeoff/landing/flying backwards/sideways/accelerating from hovering.
FA-18 - Jack of all trades, expert of none! I miss the F-14 Tomcat and the A-6 Intruder. The "replacement' for both bites!
“Jack of all trades, master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”
The Prowler is so sexy.
F-14 is too expensive and too powerful and more maintenance so they choose the budget choice instead. Such a bullshit money-saving reason while squandering trillions to make them rich is fine.
As a former Navy aviation guy and working for many years in military aviation I totally agree. An F-14 and A-6 combo would be amazing. Both are fantastic at their jobs. Combination aircraft never work nearly as well as dedicated aircraft. Dick Cheney was a total idiot. The position of Secdef should never be held by anyone who has not served in the military, preferably a senior enlisted man.
Thank you, very interesting. I was a A6 mechanic in the early 80’s and my squadron assisted in the development of the F18. Mainly, they needed our tankers to keep the Hornet flying.
Nicely put! I remember a typical hornet load of three fuel tanks and two winders. Not exactly intimidating.
What a great run down of the Tomcat, as an AQ with over 26 years… with tours at China Lake & Point Mugu, i lived this battle everyday… Hornets where nothing but cyclic ops fuel burners, but great at catching the 3 wire. Grumman did get to big for their pants and Mac Air later (Boeing aircraft) had many to soon to retire Admirals in their pocket along with His Majesty “Dick”. That guy never wanted to hear good news on Projects to upgrade the Tomcat or Intruders. Granted Maintenance hogs, but damn, they got the job done when they were let free from the BS of Political target selection… I could go for for ever, loved my leading edge tech job, and the education the Navy provided me… our watch is over, the kids have the con and I just watch & shake my head… God Help us
Our parents said the same shit about us and here we are!
Strange how for over 20 years of my adult life all I heard about the A-10 was that it was amazing in its role, yet badly needs to be retired. Dick dies and now overdue upgrades are going to be rolled out and talk about how we may likely be using the A-10 in to 2035. It's like the A-10 got a stat boost in surviveability vs polotics.
@@411DLWish the F/A-14E from the ST21 program would've got that.
Excellent production all round; especially script, editing and imagery. This episode is not to be approached lightly, but packs a whole lot into 31.5 mins. BZ, Ward.
The F-18's are impressive, especially the Super Hornets.... But as You said , Mr. Ward, the various Tomcats had several advantages over the Hornets... Especially the 2nd person in the cockpit... It gives the pilot more focus on Flying the plane.,. Also, the Tomcats were more control-able during low speed flight, a HUGE advantage on carrier landings, ESPECIALLY in rough seas. The Tomcats had greater range than the F-18's which is another marked advantage in the form of greater mission capability and less dependence on the complex and manpower/expense intensive actions of Aerial re-fueling, especially during bad weather in the air AND on the ground (when tankers or even smaller fighter aircraft equipped with external airborne re-fueling tanks that are scheduled to re-fuel might not have the ability to take-off or land safely, or maybe the fighters have to guard the carrier group in a pinch)..The F-14's could carry a LOT More weapons than the F-18's.... Again , a Huge advantage over enemies that were facing our Courageous people in battle. What bothers me was the POOR choice that was made, to just POUR UNGODLY amounts money into the numerous, over-complicated , over-engineered F-35 programs, (with their 1950's - era performance characteristics) , and cancel other programs that have already been PROVEN to work very well and reliably, (MUCH better than ANY of the 1950's performance characteristics F-35's, but at about 500x the price of the 1950's era planes).... The F-14's, the F-22's, and other programs should have continued on instead of the F-35's. Several people would have shed-no-tears to see the initial JSF proposals (Like the extremely - complex Lockheed F-35, and the Ultra-FEA Boeing X-32) to get cut from the budget. Sure, the Tomcats & Hornets are not as stealthy as the lackluster F-117's & F-35's programs, but with the recent knowledge gained with certain shapes and materials, and the knowledge of recent launch data of enemy surface to air & air to air missiles, and air to surface launched guided missiles, which could effectively dispatch incoming threats, that could be launched towards towards our weapons delivery systems BEFORE they even have a chance to be launched ... The stealthy planes are going to have an advantage because of a lack of detection from radar, yes. But if the plane is traveling at a lower speed than the higher speed, but less stealthy jets, the advantages of 'stealth' begin to be diminished, as they pass over sam sites...And if our weapons delivery systems are attacked, the ABILITY to FIGHT incoming missile threats is MUCH more effective in a hot fighter/attack aircraft, than trying to hide and run from them, when flying at mediocre speeds, with a very limited amount of counter-measures systems. Certain reconnaissance aircraft have proven several times , that speed is a very important advantage when being shot at with SAM's , especially when equipped with ECM and other similar type of equipment, and that type of equipment and detection systems have been proven to be effective as well . I normally don't slam conservative people who are trying to maintain our military to the highest standard, but I have lost a LOT of confidence with the former DOD Secretary, Dick Cheney and a few other DOD secretaries from the past.. Heck, that individual (D)C had trouble properly handling a shotgun with others nearby without hurting another person in his group, during a hunting trip. For GOD'S sake - the BIRDS they were supposed to be hunting were in a safer situation , than the other people who were adjacent to him in that group ... Maybe Jed Clampet could have instructed him, on how to properly & safely carry a shotgun , when on a hunt.... Anyway, his role as the Secretary of Defence of our country, was not one that many people who support freedom would normally endorse... His questionable financial involvement with certain DOD funded contractors have many people wondering about his possible conflict of interest as his political stature grew.... Yes Ward, I agree with you , on the viability of the improved versions of the F-14's , regardless of which company the defence directors take a liking to... The Tomcats were always an OUTSTANDING answer to the threats of our ships in foreign oceans and they were much more capable of performing and carrying-out the necessary missions to land-based targets of our adversaries, without the need for in-flight refueling to make it back to the mother ship after the completion of the long distance missions... This REDUCED the costs of operating these planes dramatically as opposed to the need for in-flight refueling, that became necessary for several of the medium range F-18's while they were approaching/returning to, from hostile air space, but were not properly suited for the long-range attack / fighter role that they were not originally designed for, that the Tomcats were so well suited and PROVEN to be able/capable of during the various strikes after the 911 events took place, nearly 21 years ago WITHOUT having to perform aerial re-fueling. This capability alone saved the tax-payers Billions of dollars by using a lot less aviation fuel and dramatically lowering the usage time on the planes that would have supported the aerial re-fueling role...So many errors , and politically motivated~POOR decisions from people who control the programs that the DOD approves or rejects, and these people fail to ask or even consider what the people who KNOW the tactics and capabilities of this type of equipment and personnel are capable of (like the F-14's , The F-22's, The F-18's) or (as in the case with the F-35's) LESS capable of, when dealing with HOSTILE ADVERSARIES... THE F-18's are extremely well suited for Intercepting incoming threats of the carrier groups, and attacking ground targets as our troops are making advances toward enemy positions, within the non-refuel necessary range... With that being said, planes like the F-14's varients would have been MUCH better choices to maintain on the carriers, than the much less capable F-35's... Save the F-35's for the FOB's that need to have localized equipment that can strike ground targets quickly that are a great distance away, but for the role as a fighter? In the Korean war and Viet-Nam era conflicts, sure!!! But fighting with the planes out there now, that could end-up like the Mariana's 'Turkey Shoot' , to the planes like SU's , Migs, or even the Chinese made Chengdu J-20's...
I was incredibly sad when the Tomcat got put out to pasture. It and the F-15 were always my favorite combat aircraft.
Yeah the f16 is like a peewee plane, and the f18 is just ugly , angular, it's wings are not even swept.
@@decimated550 F16 is the most successfull Gen 4 fighter ever build. 😉
And for reasons. Cost-Performance is on a sweetspot.
It is easy to maintain, there are enough cheap spare parts on the market, there are modernization kits available for most of the airframes/versions. It can be equipped for multiple roles. It ist a good dog fighter. It is a durable work horse.
Sometimes its not best to go big. Operation costs are going to explode.
Correction: with over 2,200 units in active service the F-16 is the most successfull jet fighter EVER build.
@@Gentleman...Driver meanwhile the tomcat was absurdly expensive to buy and maintain. Not only that the maintenance times were much much longer and the aircraft wasn’t built around future upgradability in mind
@@v0id683 Yes, and I remember that the wear and tear of the F14, with those swept wings, was horrible. Especially on the navy versions which had to do the carrier landings.
Its a cool looking thing, no question. But you have to fund the mess. Thats the reality.
These points needed to be illustrated, articulated and driven home. And yes, it just so happens that the Lone Ranger is far better off when accompanied by Tonto...
Many thanks for this video.
Thank you for your service and many years of flying the Tomcat. I’m 27 and always wanted to be a pilot but from what I’ve heard it’s likely too late for me to be selected for a pilot slot once I finish my degree. I didn’t have the easiest path in life so I’ve had a bit of a late start. I’m thankful there are so many great former pilots like yourself that are sharing their knowledge to us.
Don’t let that stop you. Grab that dream and run with it. I’m 55 and a disabled veteran and sitting here thinking about what-ifs sucks ass. Grab it man, grab it hard.
Thanks Ward for the political history lesson on our fighter aircraft. I joined the Navy in 1962 and did jets in basic training but chose many engines in advanced because I spent a day on the carrier. I became bored, lost, several misadventures and hungry. I could not imagine 6 months at sea, I would have been demoted to E-1 in short fashion. As it was, I got to fly the P-3 as PPC with my own crew, as a boot J.G.. My mission was patrolling Waikiki beach for socially acceptable bikinis. It was a tough job but somebody had to do it. I ended up with a 36 year career in the airlines with the 747 left seat for the last 15 years. A nice view. Bottom line, please keep up the great website, I have been a subscriber for many a year. It is educational for those of us that were in and those who envy same. The F14 is still the best looking bird in the Navy. Blue side up.
The TCF-14 is my favorite plane of all time! The 1st time I saw them was in the movie The Final Countdown & I was in love with that plane. So, when Top Gun came out I was even more excited to see that movie. My only complaint was I didn't see enough of the plane. I grew up in a small town (now a part of the city of Miramichi.) called Chatham NB Canada. In the mid-late 80's there was an Air Force Base in Chatham which was home to the 416 Lynx VF101-Voodo squadron. There was different times over the years that 2-4 F-14's would come in & play with the Voodo's & I mean the F-14 was playing! It was awesome seeing 2 F-14's going up against as many as 6 F-101's! It wasn't a F-14 against a Japanese Zero, but the Voodo's were so out of the Top Cats league! I was wondering however, if you ever did any research on the CF-105 Avro Arrow. By all accounts it seemed like a plane that was far ahead of it's time & I believe Avro was going to add a model for a Aircraft Carrier for the RAF. Love your videos sir & Thank You from a Canadian for your service for keeping us safe as well! Cheers!
Ward, this is a great explanation of the hose job that was done on fleet air defense. I'd like to hear your thoughts on the gaps if any in fleet anti-submarine defense with the loss of the S-3.
If I were building a modern dream team for fleet ASW and Maritime Patrol, I would develop the following types of aircraft:
1. Long range efficient jet-powered heavy airframe with greater payload, range, and endurance than the P-3C Orion. It would have modern avionics, streamlined data link connectivity with other fleet aircraft, and function as the large platform in the networked mix with drones and carrier-borne fighters/attackers that could carry anti-ship and anti-sub weapons.
2. Omnirole Very Low Observable Carrier-Borne Fighter: It would have internal weapons bays, very long combat radius like the old A-7E did, be capable of supersonic speeds as well as long endurance at optimized subsonic profiles, have LPI data link, excellent payload and bringback, multispectral sensor suite adaptable/programmable to the various carrier mission profiles of legacy dedicated platforms, and have excellent electronic attack/defensive capabilities with an onboard, integrated EW suite.
3. Unmanned Long Endurance Surveillance Drone: It would basically be like a U-2 but with far greater endurance, networked with the heavy maritime patrol and carrier Omnirole fighters, providing over the horizon surface vessel location and TGT-cuing to the surface warfare vessels, maritime patrol, fighters in anti-ship roles, and AWACS.
4. Upgraded AWACS with new data links and aerial refueling capability, AESA arrays in the Radome, new avionics and modernized crew interface systems.
Guess what I just described? P-8A Poseidon, F-35C, MQ-4C Triton, and E-2D AWACS. Done
No shit..!! Even the guys who flew the KA-6D tankers wonder why the Navy killed their dedicated tanker program with no ready replacement. How stupid..!! They had already designed & built at least 3 to 5 "Super Intruders" with low-bypass turbofan engines (ironically, it was the same engine that went into the hornet but with no afterburner installed...) & all-new cockpits, etc. & The typical bullshit bean-counters in the Navy killed that program, as well. Why? Well, we've got our new hornet fighter. We'll just hang a tanker pod on that that, & viola! We've got ourselves a new "tanker"...! Now, if only we could get pigs to fly, we could get them to carry tanker pods & maybe even get them to carry a wee bit of cargo, too...
@@johnyoungs7453 I hated to see the A-6 go as well, but there were reasons. Intruder airframes were at end of service life, hadn't been built for many years, and weren't very survivable against the modern IADS threats. The older cockpit arrangement required a 2-man crew and training pipelines to support that, whereas advances in avionics and pilot interface proved a single crewman could navigate, attack, self-protect, and swing-role quite efficiently. Biggest lost was the strike range of the Air Wing. They had a plan to keep or extend that range with the A-12, but couldn't meet the weight and production consistency requirements with composites.
Cancellation of the A-12 set a series of chain reactions that reverberate to this day, but are finally being corrected with the F-35C, which has longer legs than a D model Tomcat. They're already mentioning how nice it is to have long range strike back on the deck on this first deployment.
@@johnyoungs7453 Well Americas being dismantled! They're slow rolling us into tyranny.
@@only5186 No shit....!! :-(
Thank you for your enlightening perspectives of my all time favourite fighter jet! I often compared the hypothetical future development of the F-14D with that of the F-15E/EX current trajectory. For me, thinking that the F-14 could head down 6th Gen Man-unmanned teaming development trajectory was just a wild imagination. I was glad that this was not just my imagination and that it similarly shared by you, someone who had flown the F-14 and knows the design potential well. Thank you!
Getting to the channel and this video very late. Fantastic vid. I fell absolutely, irrevocably, in love with the F-14 Tomcat in the summer of 1987 at Mt. Carmel airport in Indiana (my brothers and father drove a good distance to attend.) VF-84 did the demo flight for the airshow crowd and I can't ever forget how freaking cool the pilot and RIO were, handing out squadron patches and answering questions from the crowd; and that big, beautiful beast, ready to leap into the air, painted in the best livery in the U.S. Military.
Enough waxing poetic, the only thing I can say about the Tomcat and whether it was better or worse than the Hornet, or even the F-15. When those programs end, will they immediately destroy all the copies not meant for static display? That's all that needs said. Imagine, Grumman built a weapon system so adapted to it's role, that WE were so afraid of it falling into Iranian hands to keep their F-14A's flying we destroyed. Every. Single. One. That could be used against us. When in our history has that happened before? Not because it was obsolete, but because it was so good at what it did. Heck, in 2023 the USAF is buying the F-15EX and that design is only 24 months or so younger than the F-14. As I like to say, "When you're out of Tomcats, you're out of fighters." Again, excellent video, Ward, and very informative to someone that wasn't young enough to understand all the jockeying going on politically regarding the F-14 at the time.
So what you are saying is that if there is ever a conflict against Iran, csg's are going to take heavy losses by the tomcats Iran has sinch its such a superior aircraft after all...
@@henrycastle6584 If the Iranians had access to repair parts and spare aircraft, instead of cannibalizing their own, yeah, I think so. I'm not sure what you're getting at, are you trying to troll my comment, because this is my favorite airframe of all time? I can tell you, and I'd hope the Tomcat vets that follow Ward would back me up on it; the U.S. has always had a vested interest in how many airframes the Iranians had that were flyable. Let's do this, name for me one better carrier-based, fleet defense interceptor produced anywhere in the world during the life of the Tomcat program, that's better than the F-14. I'll wait.
It definitely would have been interesting to see the ST21 up and running, bridging the gap between it's analogue roots, and the 21st Century electronic battlefield with its multi-faceted threats. The TC appears to have been the victim of political whims and desires, along with cost constraints, but it's certainly ironic that we've looped back to threats considered in its conception parameters. Great vid' as always Ward!
Just another example of how fearmongering over spending and fiscal responsibility is just used as a political weapon to prevent opposition from spending money on things that may help them become more popular amongst the electorate than an actual component of their ideology. Watch how the F-15EX operates alongside the F-35 and F-22 to fill roles not covered by those two planes and you'll have a decent picture of what the Navy will be missing out on. Dick Cheney really sucks!
I would have loved to see a Quickstrike or ST-21, but with the lack of truly high intensity conflicts in the last 20 years the US Navy was probably fine with the super hornet.
What I am more interested is, weather the high maintenance cost of the tomcat was caused by the mechanical design or the avionics.
If the latter was the case, a fully digital Tomcat would not be terribly expensive to maintain, still more costly than the Rhino, but also a bit more capable.
Edit: Would love to see a CVW with ST-21, A-6F Intruder II and YA-7F Strikefighter, not for price to performance, but for variety and a bit of fun.
The Navy flew the piss out it's Tomcats. Added stress and Airframe wear was accelerated by Cat shots and Traps. This put considerable stress on the landing gear and aircraft structure. The AMSs had Hell keep them in the air along with the other rates. Then factor internal components and radars had to be fixed and kept in Calibration. The armament equipment the bomb racks, shackles, and LAUs for the missiles, and M61A1 was a whole other animal along with the powerplants. In Reality the legacy Hornets were in bad shape also. I feel the Tomcat got the ax Purely out of spite and politics! When the Tomcat and Intruder stop flying the CVW loss a lot of Teeth. I use the analogy in Boxing comparing the Tomcat to George Foreman in his prime considerably Quick, Big, Mean and Nasty with devastating punching power. The Rhino is a underweight middleweight trying to punch above it's class and failing to do all assigned tasks miserably yet it can throw a decent blow now and then.
@@georgesykes394 Another problem is that, for most of its life the Tomcat flew as an early 70s plane and competed with mid 80s planes, at least systems wise (and did a remarkable job at that).
The A/B models of F-15, F-16 and F-18 were not that great to be honest, only the C/D versions of those aircraft could unleash their true 4th gen potential.
The Tomcat got the D modification way to late and less than 100 planes were built/rebuilt which lead to huge costs per airframe.
For some reason the D modification only added JDAM capabilities, while the other three fighters got all the new toys.
Unfortunately, the Tomcat (A/A+/B/B+)was an avionics nightmare.
Can’t speak to airframe issues, we were too busy robbing the hanger queen to get a TID or radar transmitter up to the deck. Not an easy task. And about the only thing you could get an EL run for, was maybe the AWG-9 antenna, and only because it couldn’t fit up the ladderwells without possible damage.
Add in the poor quality and/or lack of spare parts, plus attempting to explain to the maintenance chief that no, the radar power supply is not physically broken in half, it is nonetheless still “broke” from supply.
With cyclic ops, you simply did not have time to debrief the aircrew, properly troubleshoot and call for parts. We mostly made a best guess for turnaround gripes and maybe get the next crew to run a BIT sequence during the next launch….which they rarely had time for.
And finally, the bane of all; kapton wiring. Most gripes, you’re chasing ghost.
Exactly this. We have to remember that Grumman's only cost info on the ST21 was that it would've cost less to buy than NATF, which was a navalized F-22. At the time, even though the Air Force was planning on ordering 750 F-22s, the Raptor already had a unit cost of $59 million ($152.41 million in 2021 dollars), which means even before the cost overruns and growth, it would've been the most expensive fighter the US military had ever procured.
An aircraft can be cheaper than that, and still be deeply-unaffordable, especially when considering the operating cost side of things (something the F-14 was infamous for). Cheney definitely had a grudge against Grumman, and wanted the F-14 purged rather than given a fair chance like the other Teen series aircraft, but his bias doesn't mean he was completely wrong.
@@GintaPPE1000 You make some Valid points but I will NEVER defend Dick Cheney!
I didn't know all of this but I just about cried when I heard one of the greatest planes of all time in Naval aviation was basically killed by not getting the F-21 program. I always loved this plane and really wish it had gotten its wings. Oh well, maybe there will be a scaled down version in the drone fleet one day. Cheers good sir and thanks for a really informative video.
Wow... I loved this episode.
Always a huge gouge of the rest of the story -- inarguable facts, perfect sequence, and so bloody thorough! You're one hell of a threat to prime-time mediocrity and bullshit, anti-mil aviation agendas, Ward -- plus, you have earned your massively growing, well-informed legions of followers. Smell the kerosene & gear up!
What has prime time got to do with it? Nothing.
Fascinating, Ward. Thanks. You've also intensified my distaste for Cheney. His parents knew what they were doing when they named him "Dick."
Interesting the similarity between the Rapier and the A-5.
Yeah old tricky D operates on FE.And the E stands for everybody.
What about his daughter? Maybe even worse.
There's another RUclips channel of hardcore milsim pilots that run 'what if' scenarios and they pitted a modern US carrier group against a late 80's early 90's carrier group and there were some interesting take-aways. I'd be interested to hear how realistic/accurate the sim results were. In short, the F-14s were significantly faster and deployed their anti-ship ordinance well before the F/A-18's could.
What is the channel called?
@@ChiTown915 Grim Reapers.
@@ChiTown915 Found the vid, haven't watched it yet watch?v=mzD22j5AmW8
You mean anti air ordinance I guess
That's because they're faster. And missiles had longer range. For interceptors, there's nothing more important than speed and reach
This is by FAR the most comprehensive historical analysis of USAF and NAVY major modern fighter programmes that have spanned from the 60s to today. I can’t thank you enough!!
I am not American, not a pilot and have never served in the Navy but still found the video really interesting. Good job 👍🏻
Just like most people watching
I’ve despised Dick Cheney for years at this point in my life, but after learning that he bears the biggest responsibility for killing the Super Tomcat, I couldn’t hate the man more.
Although I also like the F-14, the Problem with Cheney, as with his Daughter, is it’s not what the best choice for the Nation is, it’s what they feel is Right, and mainly for their point of view, shaded by their Interests.
Dick Cheney the War Criminal. Who else..........
Neo-conservatism and neo-leftism (not necessarily neo-liberalism) has been a distaster for the United States
Only the money likes Dick..
Dick Chaney is and was a war criminal.
I was a jet engine mechanic on the A's. Love those planes.
Wow !! I was born Feb 14th 1961 and am a USAF Veteran. I had no idea this was a thing. Great info ty.
While doing the ops checks, two TomCats pulled up, ran up to zone five and took off down the runway. The sound was not only deafening but resonated in my body cavity as they released brakes and rolled down the runway.
I am so glad you mentioned the naming link between Adm Connolly, Grumman the F-14. I saw him talk about that whole evolution on the F-14 episode of either Discovery WIngs or Great Planes.
Both were great shows that I wish they'd bring back!
Moving forward to the New Year, my flight bag will include a bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce for each new episode, Commander. Every evolution into YT-video success at your hand, consistently delivers the real meat and potatoes of not only the F-14 community, but addresses other departments that enhance the Tomcat legacy. All the best for 2022! ✈️😎👍
Odd how the Air Force wound up with the side-by-side seat ejection capsule and the Navy got tandem ejector seats.
Also, the translating cowl intake system on A-model F-111s was a maintenance nightmare. The B-model would have been similarly bad. Thankfully later models went to blow-in doors that didn't require any electronics.
This is your finest work yet. I always wanted to know this whole history. Thank you Ward. You're the man