A Goodbye For An Icon

I had to link to this for all the members of the armed forces for whom this particular piece of American engineering is an icon. The US Navy has officially retired the F-14 Tomcat fighter. It never had to do what it was designed and built to do, thankfully. But it was the very embodiment of the US Navy to many people. It never went to war against the foe it was designed for, the Soviets, but it did every other task the Navy assigned it with flair and panache. It even survived Tom Cruise.

VIRGINIA BEACH — In a ceremony today that reminded guests of why it was retired, the Navy holstered the F-14 Tomcat, the top gun in its Cold War arsenal and one of the most recognizable warplanes in history.

Maintenance costs for the F-14 have soared, and its replacement, the F/A-18 Super Hornet, is more versatile and cheaper to maintain. The maintenance issue appeared again at the plane's retirement ceremony.

Pilot Lt. Cmdr. David Faehnle and radar intercept officer Lt. Cmdr. Robert Gentry gave a final salute from inside their cockpit before aircraft 102 taxied down the runway and out of sight at Oceana Naval Air Station. The plane that actually took off as thousands applauded and whistled, however, was aircraft 107, with Lt. Cmdr. Chris Richard at the controls and intercept officer Lt. Mike Petronis in the back seat.

The first jet had mechanical problems — "a common occurrence with the F-14," said Mike Maus, a Navy spokesman. The second jet had been on standby just in case.

The Super Hornet is unlikely to surpass the F-14's following. Furiously fast, deafeningly loud and lethal to enemy aircraft, the Tomcat had attained legendary status by the 1980s. The 1986 film Top Gun, in which Tom Cruise portrayed an F-14 pilot in training, cemented the supersonic warplane's reputation in the popular culture.

"There's something about the way an F-14 looks, something about the way it carries itself," says Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations, the Navy's top officer. "It screams toughness. Look down on a carrier flight deck and see one of them sitting there, and you just know, there's a fighter plane. I really believe the Tomcat will be remembered in much the same way as other legendary aircraft, like the Corsair, the Mustang and the Spitfire."

About 3,000 guests — mainly former aviators, mechanics, suppliers and builders — were on hand for the jet's official retirement. The last F-14s will be mothballed in the Arizona desert or go to aviation museums.

The Tomcat was designed in the late 1960s with one enemy in mind: the Soviet Union. The jet was typically launched from an aircraft carrier, and its twin engines could propel it at twice the speed of sound. Its armaments deterred Soviet bombers designed to fire missiles at U.S. Navy ships.

It is a sad day for a lot of people, I suspect. People who have worked with, swatted over and fought in the various aircraft the US has deployed over the years become very attached to them, indeed. So it is that former B-17 flight crews volunteered so many man-years of work to restore and maintain those old warbirds. I'm sure there will be no shortage of volunteers to help out with the F-14s donated to various museums.

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  By old_dawg, Friday, 22 September , 2006 @ 10:16 pm

  I understand that there is a photo floating around of the last carrier launch of an F-14. Apparently, every Naval Aviation big-wig that would make it showed up to “launch” the aircraft, giving us about a dozen launch officers (or whatever the right term is) to launch one aircraft.
  What I really want to know if why the Navy PR system is so much better that the Army’s when the Navy spokesman is Mickey Mouse?

Other Links to this Post

1. Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Top Gun — Saturday, 7 October , 2006 @ 6:19 am