FREE THE F-14 TOMCAT STORY PDF

Tony Holmes | 128 pages | 29 Apr 2010 | The History Press Ltd | 9780752449852 | English | Stroud, United Kingdom Tales | F Tomcat

You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Everything is welcome about the first flight, the th or th trap, cruise The F-14 Tomcat Story, accident reports, squadron celebrations - whatever you want to go public anonymously with. The birth of the Tomcat logo began in the early '70's by a request from Norm Gandia former No. He asked me to draw. The F Tomcat Association P. Written by Paul Pompier FAs flying vs. Member Login. Remember Me. Featured Products. He asked me to draw Another Tomcat Tale. Written by Jerry "KarateJoe" Watson. The Birth of the Tomcat Logo. Written by Jim Rodriguez. The story of FA, Aircraft No. Written by William Barto. The day I shot myself down. Written by Pete Purvis. My most tense moment in the 26 years of flying Fs. Written by Dale Snodgrass. Crash landing a crippled Tomcat. Written by Anonymous. Written by David Baranek. The F-14 Tomcat Story by the Jolly Rogers. Eject on a familiarization hop. F The F-14 Tomcat Story Air-to-Air Victories. I hope there is a place Written by Paul Pompier. FAs flying vs. German F-4Fs. Written by Hubert Peitzmeier. Written by Bob Norris. The Last of the Jolly. Written by Bob Frantz. Sports Writer Earns The F-14 Tomcat Story Callsign. Written by Rick Reilly. Sunset Glows on the Tomcat. Written by Ward Carroll. Written by Dave Baranek. Zone 5 Afterburner Photo off the Coast of Vietnam. A Grumman Christmas Turkey. Written by Bob Belter. Confessions Of A Navy F Fleet Pilot Turned F-5 Aggressor

The Grumman F Tomcat The F-14 Tomcat Story an American supersonictwin-enginetwo-seat, twin-tail, variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. The F was the first of the American Teen Series fighters, which were designed incorporating air combat experience against MiG fighters during the Vietnam War. The F first flew on 21 December and made its first deployment in with the U. The F served as the U. Navy's primary maritime The F-14 Tomcat Story superiority fighterfleet defense interceptorand tactical aerial reconnaissance platform into the s. Iranian Fs reportedly shot down at least Iraqi aircraft during the war, while only 12 to 16 Tomcats were lost; at least half of these losses were due to accidents. The Tomcat was retired by U. Beginning in the late s, the U. Navy sought a long-range, high-endurance interceptor to defend its carrier battle groups against long-range anti-ship missiles launched from the jet bombers and submarines of the Soviet Union. The U. McNamara wanted "joint" solutions to service aircraft needs to reduce development costs and had already directed the Air Force to buy the F-4 Phantom II, which was developed for The F-14 Tomcat Story Navy and Marine Corps. Weight and performance issues plagued the U. With the FB program in distress, Grumman began studying improvements and alternatives. The F- 14 Tomcat Storythe Navy awarded Grumman a contract to begin studying advanced fighter designs. Grumman narrowed down these designs to its design. ConnollyDeputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare, flew the developmental FA variant on a The F-14 Tomcat Story and discovered that it had difficulty going supersonic and had poor carrier landing characteristics. He later testified before Congress about his concerns against the official U. Department of the Navy position and, in MayCongress stopped funding for the FB, allowing the Navy to pursue an answer tailored to its requirements. The Navy studied the need for VFAXan additional fighter that was more agile than the F-4 Phantom for air-combat and ground- attack roles. The company continued to refine the design into VFX called for a tandem two-seat, twin-engined air-to-air fighter with a maximum speed of Mach 2. It would also have a built-in M61 Vulcan cannon and a secondary close air support role. McDonnell Douglas and Grumman were selected as finalists in December Grumman was selected for the contract award in January Upon winning the contract for the F, Grumman greatly expanded its CalvertonLong Island, New York facility for evaluating the aircraft. Much of the testing, including the first of many compressor stalls and multiple ejections, took place over Long Island Sound. In order to save time and forestall interference from Secretary McNamara, the Navy skipped The F-14 Tomcat Story prototype phase and jumped directly to full-scale development; the Air Force took a similar approach with its F The Marine Corps pulled out of any procurement when the development of the stores' management system for ground attack munitions was not pursued. An air-to-ground capability was not developed until the s. Firing trials involved launches against simulated targets of various types, from cruise missiles to high-flying bombers. Another unusual test was made on 22 Novemberwhen six missiles were fired within 38 seconds at Mach 0. With time, the early versions of all the missiles were replaced by more advanced versions, especially with the move to full solid-state electronics that allowed better reliability, better ECCM and more space for the rocket engine. Approximately 65 FAs and all FDs were modified to carry the pod. In the s, with the pending retirement of the A-6 Intruderthe F air-to-ground program was The F-14 Tomcat Story. Trials with live bombs had been carried out in the s; the F was cleared to use basic iron bombs in Following Desert Storm, FAs and FBs underwent upgrades to avionics and cockpit displays to enable the use of precision munitions, enhance defensive systems, and apply structural improvements. However, the upgrades would have taken too long to implement to meet the gap, and were priced in the billions. Congress considered this too expensive for an interim solution. The pod was carried on the right wing glove pylon. The F Tomcat was designed as both an air superiority fighter and a long-range naval interceptor, [32] [33] [34] which enabled it to both serve as escort The F-14 Tomcat Story aircraft when armed with Sparrow missiles and fleet air defense loitering interceptor role when armed with Phoenix missiles. It features variable geometry wings that swing automatically during flight. For high-speed intercept, they are swept back and they swing forward for lower speed flight. The F's fuselage and wings allow it to climb faster than the F-4, while the The F-14 Tomcat Story arrangement offers better stability. The twin engines are housed in widely spaced nacelles. The flat area of the fuselage between the nacelles is used to contain fuel and avionics systems, such as the wing-sweep mechanism and flight controls, as The F-14 Tomcat Story as weaponry since the wings are not used for carrying ordnance. Such an aircraft would typically be diverted from an aircraft carrier to a land base if an incident did occur. The F has flown safely with an asymmetrical wing-sweep during testing, and was deemed able to land The F-14 Tomcat Story a carrier if needed in an emergency. This has two benefits. The first is that weaponry can be fitted on a pylon on the fixed wing glove, liberating the wings from having swiveling pylons fitted, a feature which had proven to add significant drag on the FB. When carrying four Phoenix missiles or other heavy stores between the engines this advantage is lost and maneuverability is reduced in those configurations. Two triangular shaped retractable surfaces, called glove vanes, were originally mounted in the forward part of the wing glove, and could be automatically extended by the flight control system at high Mach numbers. They were used to generate additional lift force ahead of the aircraft's center of gravitythus helping to compensate for mach The F-14 Tomcat Story at supersonic speeds. Automatically deployed at above Mach 1. They were later disabled, however, owing to their additional weight and complexity. The bottom surface is split into left and right halves; the tailhook hangs between the two-halves, an arrangement sometimes called the "castor tail". De Laval nozzles were also fitted to the engine's exhaust. The performance of the TF30 engine became The F-14 Tomcat Story object of criticism. John LehmanSecretary The F-14 Tomcat Story the Navy in the s, told the U. A high frequency of turbine blade failures led to the reinforcement of the entire engine bay to limit damage from such failures. The engines also had proved to be extremely prone to compressor stallswhich could easily result in loss of control, severe yaw oscillations, and could lead to an unrecoverable flat spin. At specific altitudes, exhaust produced by missile launches could cause an engine compressor stall. This led to the development of a bleed system that temporarily blocks the frontal intake ramp and reduces engine power during missile launch. With the TF30, the F's overall thrust-to-weight ratio at maximum takeoff weight is around 0. The wings have a two-spar structure with integral fuel tanks. Electron beam welding was used in the construction of the titanium parts. The landing gear is very robust, in order to withstand catapult launches takeoffs and recoveries landings needed for carrier operations. It comprises a double nosewheel and widely spaced single main wheels. There are no hardpoints on the sweeping parts of the wings, and so all the armament is fitted on the belly between the air intake ramps and on pylons under the wing gloves. The cockpit has two seats, arranged in tandemoutfitted with Martin-Baker GRU-7A rocket-propelled ejection seatsrated from zero altitude and zero airspeed up to knots. Only the pilot has flight controls ; the flight instruments themselves are of a The F-14 Tomcat Story analog-digital nature. The aircraft's large nose contains a two-person crew and several bulky avionics systems. Cruise missiles are also possible targets with the AWG- 9, The F-14 Tomcat Story can lock onto and track small objects even at low altitude when in The F-14 Tomcat Story mode. Global Positioning System later was integrated to provide more The F-14 Tomcat Story navigation and redundancy in case either system failed. The RWR system consists of several antennas on the aircraft's fuselage, which can roughly calculate both direction and distance of enemy radar users; it can also differentiate between search radar, tracking radar, and missile-homing radar. The radar and the AAX-1 are linked, allowing the one detector to follow The F-14 Tomcat Story direction of the other. The F was The F-14 Tomcat Story to combat highly maneuverable aircraft as well as the Soviet anti-ship cruise missile and bomber Tupolev TuTupolev TuTupolev TuM threats. Operationally, the capability to hold up to six Phoenix missiles was never used, although early testing was conducted; there was never a threat requirement to engage six hostile targets simultaneously and the load was too heavy to safely The F-14 Tomcat Story aboard an aircraft carrier in the event that the missiles were not fired. Navy, both over Iraq in[50] [51] [52] but the missiles did not score any kills. Iran made use of the Phoenix system, claiming dozens of kills with it during the — Iran—Iraq War. Due to the shortage of air-to-air missiles as a result of sanctions, Iran tried to use other missiles on the Tomcat. The modified missiles were successfully tested in and one or two were used in combat, but the project was abandoned due to guidance problems. The F had its first kills in U. Navy service on 19 August over the Gulf of Sidra in what is known as the Gulf of Sidra incident. The Fs evaded the short range heat seeking AA-2 "Atoll" missile and returned fire, downing both The F-14 Tomcat Story aircraft. Its first sustained combat use was as a photo reconnaissance platform. Navy's primary tactical reconnaissance system. While the Tomcat was being used by Iran in combat against Iraq in its intended air superiority mission in the early s, the U. Navy found itself flying regular daily combat missions over Lebanon to photograph activity in the Bekaa Valley. At the time, the Tomcat had been thought too large and vulnerable to be used The F-14 Tomcat Story land, but the need for imagery was so great The F-14 Tomcat Story Tomcat aircrews developed high-speed medium altitude tactics to deal with considerable AAA and SA-7 SAM threat in the Bekaa The F-14 Tomcat Story. The first exposure of a Navy Tomcat to an SA-2 missile was over Somalia in April when a local battery was unaware of two Tomcats scheduled for a TARPS mission in a prelude to an upcoming international exercise in the vicinity of Berbera. An SA-2 was fired at the second Tomcat while conducting 10,ft mapping profile at max conserve setting. The Tomcat aircrews spotted the missile launch and dove for the deck thereby evading it without damage. Commercial "Fuzz buster" type radar detectors were also procured and mounted in pairs in the forward cockpit as a stop gap solution to detect SAM radars such as the SA This hampered the Tomcat from using its most powerful weapon. Furthermore, the powerful emissions from the AWG-9 radar are detectable at great range with a radar warning receiver. Iraqi fighters routinely retreated as soon as the Tomcats "lit them up" with the AWG Blake Coleman and Lt. The official final flight retirement ceremony was on 22 September at Naval Air Station Oceana and was flown by Lt. Chris Richard and Lt. Tales of the F | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine

The F is the heaviest—and probably the most famous—fighter ever to be catapulted from a carrier. Nothing in the fleet today can match the long reach of its radar or the clobber of the six Phoenix missiles it could carry. The F program promised to produce an airplane ready for first flight 17 months after contract go-ahead, which would be January As chief test pilot, I would make the first flight, and Bill Miller, The F-14 Tomcat Story project pilot, would occupy the rear seat. The F program was led by a vice president who had previously spent The F-14 Tomcat Story heading up the Preliminary Design Department. He was a very aggressive leader with a short attention span. It was his goal to fly a month earlier than the optimistic schedule had promised. By December 30th, everyone was back from a Christmas breakbright-eyed, and the weather was bluebird day. The First Flight, taking the Tomcat up and making a few simple turns, was made on December By agreement, we would swap seats and Bill would sit up front. The weather The F-14 Tomcat Story CAVU and cold, with about 20 knots of wind out of the northwest. After takeoff we climbed to 10, feet, lest there be any hydraulic or mechanical mischief in the system. Immediately after raising the The F-14 Tomcat Story handle, our A-6 chase pilot said we were venting fluid out of The F-14 Tomcat Story right side of the airplane. At the same instant, the combined hydraulic system gauge went to zero. Twenty-one gallons of hydraulic fluid had just left the airplane. We started back to home base at knots, The F-14 Tomcat Story limit airspeed because the flaps were still extended. In about ten minutes, we were lined up with our runway about three miles out when we blew our gear down with the nitrogen bottle, since our flight hydraulic system only powered the flight controls. At this time, our chase said we were venting more fluid, and our flight hydraulic system gauge went to The F-14 Tomcat Story. The airplane then went through about two cycles of gentle but uncontrollable pitching, and then snapped violently nose down. At this point we were about a half-mile short of the runway, about 25 feet above the trees. Bill quickly initiated the ejection sequence using his face curtain. A sensitive accelerometer on the nose strut recorded and telemetered back to the ground the little blips showing the firing of the canopy and then the ejection guns on the two seats in turn. That all took 0. Both chutes deployed nicely, and neither of us was injured. The F had an all-titanium hydraulic system with an gallon-per-minute pump on each engine with no accumulators, all in the interest of saving weight. Each pump had nine pistons, which were varied in output by a swash plate. As it turned out, each time one of the nine pistons did its thing, it sent a pounds-per-square-inch pulse down the basic 3,psi system. Apparently, without accumulators to dampen the pulses, a resonance occurred which fatigued the lines. Engineering duplicated the failure on a full-scale mockup of the system in 1. When the line was changed to stainless steel, the line failed in 23 minutes. The answer was not material, but proper forming and clamping of the line to prevent resonance. The second F did not make its first flight until May 24, There were no hydraulic problems again on the F program. As an embarrassing The F-14 Tomcat Story, this whole episode could have been avoided if we had not been in such a bloody hurry. During one of the all-night engine runs a few days before First Flight, I was running the engines under the lights during systems check at a. I looked over the side and saw a large puddle of hydraulic fluid. I asked what happened, and he said it must have been a loose B nut. Well, there was only a handful of B nuts on the airplane, since most of the hydraulic connectors were the super-dry Cryofit connectors. We were all sleepy, so we went home and thought no more about it. Vincent Devino was the head of cockpit design and avionics installation on the F from the time Grumman proposed the design in In designing the cockpit, we worked with the project pilot who went through system by system with each of the engineers in order to whittle down the number of discrete controls in order to justify every one The F-14 Tomcat Story the engineer thought was necessary. In the flight control system the number of caution and warning indicators was reduced. Some of the engineers wanted a first level warning The F- 14 Tomcat Story every first level system, but we simplified the number of cautions and warnings. Since the airplane was capable of a long-endurance mission—six hours in the airplane—we tried to make the cockpits comfortable. We had people sitting in the mockup for 6 to 12 hours in the configuration that we intended to produce, so we The F-14 Tomcat Story up with a comfortable cockpit. Packaging some of the stuff to fit the narrower contours of the F was a challenge, but we never wound up with boxes left sitting on the desk. Integrating the head up display was a problem. Given the technology at the time, The F-14 Tomcat Story was a huge box: the optics were about ten inches in diameter. Being able to fit the reflector plate under the windshield at an angle that would avoid double images was tough. The line of vision is collimated at infinity. The HUD has a flat reflector plate, and you end up with refraction problems that can cause double images if the curvature of the windshield is not correct. A flat window fit into the windshield gave more ballistic protection; it was more bullet-proof than the two side shields. We got it right because somebody else had made the mistake before we did. The F had a sharply raked windshield for aerodynamic reasons and it created problems. Then we come along and put a bump there. He worked on an assembly line while in high school, in I learned more in that one month on the assembly line than in the rest of my career. We took an F and instrumented it, flew it, and compared fatigue measurements to fleet data. We found it had 20 percent more life left in it. Well, I guess it was two lives, since it was 20 percent. We had this great 8-inch by 8-inch display in the back seat. With that and the Lightning pod, the F could carry a 2,pound weapon. It became the number one choice for fleet missions We implemented the Lightning pod, laser-guided and GPS guided weapons very quickly. We went from turning on the pod to implementing it in the fleet in six months Charlie Brown, a Vietnam-era combat pilot who flew Bearcats and two years in Phantom IIs, was part of the F design team as well as an experimental test pilot with Grumman. We actually tested The F-14 Tomcat Story airplane for Mach 2. I flew it 2. On December 30, Grumman took its new warplane for its second flight. It ended in a crash, and accusations were made regarding the choice of materials. They wanted to get it in The F-14 Tomcat Story air that year. The first flight [lead pilot] Bob Smyth and [project pilot] Bill Miller were going to takeoff, circle the field and land. I think it was a minute flight. For the second flight, they took off and they got into the operations area and were testing, and the chase pilot recognized a loss of hydraulic fluid, being red and streaming on the airplane or streaming off the tailpipe. They proceeded to lose system after system At or feet from landing the airplane went full nose down so they punched out. What happened was simple and understandable. Before you put up for first flight you put it through systems mockup and ground testing for vibration and things A short time before flight the flight test department decided they needed a parameter to check hydraulic pulsations in the system. We used titanium lines to lighten airplane instead of tried-and-true aluminum They connected a pressure sensor somewhere around the pressure pump. It was this line that failed. The configuration had not gone through the full ground test workup with the rest of airplane and systems. This small line was not clamped adequately and the vibration of the second flight was enough to crack the line. How do you slow that air down? With moveable The F-14 Tomcat Story. Hydraulic pistons move in such a fashion to slow air down as it goes to the forward compressor section of engine. These are computer-controlled. The air coming to the engine also has to have a fairly smooth flow, particularly with the TF30 engine from the FB program [which was sensitive to airflow disturbances and rapid The F-14 Tomcat Story changes]. To get the airflow down in high Mach and maneuvering situations It was a challenge and we handled it…. The tools it had for this mission were ideal at long and short ranges…. The Phoenix gives you up to mile range. It launches and It was a launch-and-leave situation. You can launch six and track more than 30 The F-14 Tomcat Story. One step down was the Sparrow, at miles. Then you step down to infrared sidewinder. All variable geometry wing aircraft are descendants of two experimental airplanes built on opposite sides of the Atlantic in the s and s.