A friend of mine was a part the USMC to "look over" the F-14. His
impressions from a technician' s POV was the plane was a horrible
design for maintaining.


On May 2, 9:50 pm, "Flashnews" wrote:
there was one F-14 for the Marine Corps just being transferred from the
Navy to VMFA-531 at Miramar and in days the Marine Corps (Gen Tom Miller
DCSAir) cancelled the program for the reasons that did drive the Corps
into the quest of their own ships and aircraft so not to share deck
responsibilities with the Navy on Navy missions. At this time it was the
Harrier "B" Program. Not sure if the transfer actually happened but the
first 2 squadrons were forming up to take on their Tomcats. It was a
sad day, Mike Gunther (F-14 lead instructor on to ACMI fame) came into
the ready room and said "Any Marines in the brief" - after the "yea,
yea", a simple "You're outta here"... and it was over.