F-14s galore!

Built by Grumman at Bethpage Long Island NY.
One of the engineers was on a sabbatical at our HS, he arranged a field trip to the facility for our shop class, it was awesome.
 
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I saw one fly exactly once...it was a D model from VF-213 the day it showed up at Charlotte for display at the museum. We all got together on the ramp and watch them do a low level pass down 18L in full afterburner with the wings swept back, what looked like a near vertical climb, and come back around for landing. It went straight to the ANG hangars where it was decommissioned, engines and avionics removed, then towed over for display.

It was sort of a surprise when it showed up and I was caught completely off guard without a camera.
 
They would fly a few over our town and the house would shake when they slowed to subsonic.

F 14 hi-res stock photography and images - Alamy

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One of my fave pics:

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I saw them time to time around Virginia Beach and southern Cali. Those engines had a distinctive sound. Being maintenance-heavy, expensive to fly, and new-gen aircraft coming out, they killed it, but golly I would have loved to have seen the Super Tomcat:

www.thedrive.com

This Is What Grumman's Proposed F-14 Super Tomcat 21 Would Have Actually Looked Like

If the Super Hornet hadn't been built, Grumman's next-gen Tomcat may have become a reality. We forensically recreated it in these awesome renderings.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
 
Chuckman said:
One of my fave pics:

View attachment 730799

I saw them time to time around Virginia Beach and southern Cali. Those engines had a distinctive sound. Being maintenance-heavy, expensive to fly, and new-gen aircraft coming out, they killed it, but golly I would have loved to have seen the Super Tomcat:

www.thedrive.com

This Is What Grumman's Proposed F-14 Super Tomcat 21 Would Have Actually Looked Like

If the Super Hornet hadn't been built, Grumman's next-gen Tomcat may have become a reality. We forensically recreated it in these awesome renderings.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
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"snort" Snodgrass was the pilot in that picture he crashed and in a airshow a few years ago I shot skeet with him at Nas Oceana in the intermural skeet tournament He shot for the VF101 (f-14 ) Rag and I shot for VA-42 (A-6 Rag) It was a great rivalry the F-14 team was all officers and the A-6 team was all enlisted for a 4 year stretch 1st and 2nd came down to those teams
 
AR10ShooterinNC said:
The only F-14’s flying today are the bad guys. They are going to be shot down by F-18’s.
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in real combat a F14 with AIM-54 Pheonix missiles could fire them at 6 targets at over a 100 mile with a 90% kill rate. poor little F18s would never know what hit them the F14 was NOT a Fighter it was a missle launch platform. In the Iran–Iraq War AIM-54s fired by IRIAF Tomcats achieved 78 victories against Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-25s, Tu-22s, Su-20/22s, Mirage F 1s, Super Étendards, and even two AM-39 Exocets and a C-601. This includes two occasions where one AIM-54 was responsible for the downing of two Iraqi aircraft, as well as an incident on January 7, 1981, where a Phoenix fired at a four-ship of MiG-23s downed three and damaged the fourth.[4]
 
vaskeet said:
"snort" Snodgrass was the pilot in that picture he crashed and in a airshow a few years ago I shot skeet with him at Nas Oceana in the intermural skeet tournament He shot for the VF101 (f-14 ) Rag and I shot for VA-42 (A-6 Rag) It was a great rivalry the F-14 team was all officers and the A-6 team was all enlisted for a 4 year stretch 1st and 2nd came down to those teams
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I had heard he and ship's crew took days to plan and stage that shot. He was a photographer, too, and had the picture in his mind and it took several attempts to get the right picture.

vaskeet said:
in real combat a F14 with AIM-54 Pheonix missiles could fire them at 6 targets at over a 100 mile with a 90% kill rate. poor little F18s would never know what hit them the F14 was NOT a Fighter it was a missle launch platform. In the Iran–Iraq War AIM-54s fired by IRIAF Tomcats achieved 78 victories against Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s, MiG-25s, Tu-22s, Su-20/22s, Mirage F 1s, Super Étendards, and even two AM-39 Exocets and a C-601. This includes two occasions where one AIM-54 was responsible for the downing of two Iraqi aircraft, as well as an incident on January 7, 1981, where a Phoenix fired at a four-ship of MiG-23s downed three and damaged the fourth.[4]
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It went from stand-off interceptor to fighter to attack platform, and excelled in each role. There will never be another plane like it.
 
Chuckman said:
I had heard he and ship's crew took days to plan and stage that shot. He was a photographer, too, and had the picture in his mind and it took several attempts to get the right picture.



It went from stand-off interceptor to fighter to attack platform, and excelled in each role. There will never be another plane like it.
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You made me laugh Attack Remember I worked on A-6 Intruders now that was ATTACK
 
We worked EW vs some of the last Bombcats at Oceana. They would fly down to our range, do some evasive work and make "bomb" runs on our ew site. They would land at Cherry Point and debrief; when they saw how ineffective they had been they would argue the point until we synced up the boresight camera. They would fuel and repeat the attacks before flying home. The improvements to their evasive maneuvers was both impressive and gratifying.
 
Button Pusher said:
Built by Grumman at Bethpage Long Island NY.
One of the engineers was on a sabbatical at our HS, he arranged a field trip to the facility for our shop class, it was awesome.
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I was born, raised and lived most of my life in Bethpage, NY. Most everyone's father was NYPD, FDNY or worked for Grumman on the F-14 or E2/C Hawkeye.
 
Chuckman said:
@vaskeet

View attachment 732824
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those are all TRAM/DRS birds notice the ball under the nose "Beginning in 1979, all A-6Es were fitted with the AN/AAS-33 DRS (Detecting and Ranging Set), part of the 'Target Recognition and Attack Multi-Sensor' (TRAM) system, a small, gyroscopically stabilized turret, mounted under the nose of the aircraft, containing a forward-looking infra-red (FLIR) boresighted with a laser spot-tracker/designator and IBM AN/ASQ-155 computer. TRAM was matched with a new Norden AN/APQ-156 radar. The BN could use both TRAM imagery and radar data for extremely accurate attacks, or use the TRAM sensors alone to attack without using the Intruder's radar (which might warn the target). TRAM also allowed the Intruder to autonomously designate and drop laser-guided bombs"
 
When I was a young engineer out of college, I worked for a company that made flight actuation systems for most of the military aircraft. We were designing a new system for what was called the A12, a plane that never made it into production. We were considering a design for that plane that was supposedly similar to the one used on the F14. We didn’t have the F14 system, so Boeing (the prime contractor at the time) pulled some strings and got us into the North Island F14 repair station in San Diego so we could investigate what was actually on the plane. Here I was, in my mid 20s, climbing on and around a number of F14s in various stages of disassembly. It was a great experience!
 
Chasgee said:
When I was a young engineer out of college, I worked for a company that made flight actuation systems for most of the military aircraft. We were designing a new system for what was called the A12, a plane that never made it into production. We were considering a design for that plane that was supposedly similar to the one used on the F14. We didn’t have the F14 system, so Boeing (the prime contractor at the time) pulled some strings and got us into the North Island F14 repair station in San Diego so we could investigate what was actually on the plane. Here I was, in my mid 20s, climbing on and around a number of F14s in various stages of disassembly. It was a great experience!
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the A6F got as far as prototypes flying before Congress killed it over the navy's objections and crammed F-18 down our throats. I was a A6E Instructor and had to spend 8 months working with Gruman writing a training course for a aircraft that had been canceled
 
@vaskeet , I knew an A-6 B/N from a west coast squadron. I was in college, so this was 1987-91. I was sold on going to AOCS and NFO to do that, but he said that the A-6 and F-14 were both headed to being taken out of service, so he dissuaded me.
 
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