F-14 makes last flight

Yahoo! News
F-14 Tomcat makes ceremonial last flight

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago

The F-14 Tomcat, the dogfighting Cold War fighter jet immortalized in
the movie "Top Gun," made its ceremonial final flight Friday in a
display that suggested the timing was right for retirement.

Pilot Lt. Cmdr. David Faehnle and radar intercept officer Lt. Cmdr.
Robert Gentry gave a final salute from inside their cockpit before
aircraft no. 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 no. 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.

Before the flight, Adm. John Nathman, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces
Command and a former F-14 pilot, said the retiring jet with the
moveable, swept-back wings was "sometimes tough to fly" and tough to fix
— but it was resilient.

"The legacy of this aircraft is not the 'Top Gun' movie," Nathman said.
"The legacy is found in America's commitment to win the Cold War."

Built by what was then Grumman Aircraft Corp., the F-14 joined the Navy
fleet in 1972 and originally was intended to defend U.S. aircraft
carriers from Soviet bombers carrying long-range cruise missiles.

Its dogfighting capabilities were glamorized in the 1986 film "Top Gun,"
starring Tom Cruise, but the need for such aerial feats dropped steeply
when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The Navy retooled the F-14 as a ground-attack jet, and it dropped bombs
over Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s, and helped support ground
troops in Iraq as recently as this year.

The jet's replacement is the F/A-18 Super Hornet attack fighter. The
Navy's last 22 F-14 aircraft deployed came home to Oceana in March, but
one squadron continued to flying the jets until this month.

Gentry likened retiring the Tomcat to "losing a member of the family."

"It's a bittersweet moment to look and realize that pretty soon you
won't be flying that aircraft," he said. "There are few aircraft that
elicit such a strong bond between the air crew and the maintainers and
the people who build them."

About 3,000 guests — mainly former aviators, mechanics, suppliers and
builders — were on hand for the jet's official retirement. The last
flying F-14s will go to museums such as the Virginia Aviation Museum in
Richmond, which received one last week.

Mike Boehme, the museum's executive director, expects the F-14 to be a
big draw. "There's a certain mystique about it," he said.

___

On the Net:

Tomcat Sunset: http://www.tomcat-sunset.org/

F-14 information: http://www.anft.net/f-14

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The
information contained in the AP News report may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written
authority of The Associated Press.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

"Tiger" wrote in message
...

Yahoo! News
F-14 Tomcat makes ceremonial last flight

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago

The F-14 Tomcat, the dogfighting...snip

It's kinda sad how this type of thread is what this group was built around,
but now hardly anyone even looks at it. It's one of the few military
aviation threads on here. The rest is crap people should be churning out on
blogs. But then, no one wants to hear what they have to say anyway and
would never visit their sites. So I guess we're just stuck with this and
the old killfile....

BTW, it's sad to see the old 'cat go. It was truly an awesome weapons
system flown and maintained by a lot of quality people! With the reputation
it has, there's bound to be a Tomcat II a few generations down the road. It
would be nice if it were manned, but that seems unlikely.

Odd. I read elsewhere that it was planned for the other Tomcat with
'tanks' to depart since it was set to go to AMARC yesterday.

Tiger wrote:
Yahoo! News
F-14 Tomcat makes ceremonial last flight

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago

The F-14 Tomcat, the dogfighting Cold War fighter jet immortalized in
the movie "Top Gun," made its ceremonial final flight Friday in a
display that suggested the timing was right for retirement.

Pilot Lt. Cmdr. David Faehnle and radar intercept officer Lt. Cmdr.
Robert Gentry gave a final salute from inside their cockpit before
aircraft no. 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 no. 107, with Lt. Cmdr. Chris Richard at the
controls and intercept officer Lt. Mike Petronis in the back seat.

I recall reading somewhere that VF-31's (actually, the squadron had
already been renamed VFA-31) CO intended the last flight to be made
with the oldest aircraft in the squadron, an F-14Ds converted from an
F-14A.

Does anyone know whether this was AJ-102?

snip

Cheers,
Ralph

It is a shame to see it go. Beautiful jet, but I guess time marches on. On
the plus side, maybe some entrepreneur will grab one up and start offering
civilian flights!

TV

TV wrote:
It is a shame to see it go. Beautiful jet, but I guess time marches on. On
the plus side, maybe some entrepreneur will grab one up and start offering
civilian flights!

But imagine the price they would have to get (think maintenance hours).
The mind boggles.

--
St. John
Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful.
-Erwin Tomash

St. John Smythe wrote:
TV wrote:
It is a shame to see it go. Beautiful jet, but I guess time marches on. On
the plus side, maybe some entrepreneur will grab one up and start offering
civilian flights!

But imagine the price they would have to get (think maintenance hours).
The mind boggles.

--
St. John
Everything takes longer, costs more, and is less useful.
-Erwin Tomash


That's an interesting idea ! If all the military equipment is removed
and the flying
gear is replaced by basic digital control computers, it could become a
REAL
attraction. Hey, Walt Disney guys, do you listen ? To rewrite it's
mechanical
control laws on a simple target using simulink is a job for a month or
two,
integration could take few more months, and here we have a business.
To make things simpler, the wings can be fixed in the opened
position...

There are many ppl (especialy in this forum) that would pay few grands
for
a hour or so in the forward cockpit !!

Bar86
________________________________
Aircraft Performance and Flight Dynamics.
http://www.newbyte.co.il/

TV wrote:
It is a shame to see it go. Beautiful jet, but I guess time marches on. On
the plus side, maybe some entrepreneur will grab one up and start offering
civilian flights!

TV



Well you never know... In the meantime would you settle for a ride in a
BAe Buccaneer or a English Electric Lighting?

Thunder City in South Africa. http://www.thundercity.com/news.htm

The oldest F-14 in the squadron was 159600/AJ-111. The last I heard it
was scheduled to be broken up at Oceana.

Walt


On Sat, 23 Sep 2006 16:08:26 GMT, "Mike Dennis"
wrote:

"Tiger" wrote in message
...

Yahoo! News
F-14 Tomcat makes ceremonial last flight

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago

The F-14 Tomcat, the dogfighting...snip

It's kinda sad how this type of thread is what this group was built around,
but now hardly anyone even looks at it. It's one of the few military
aviation threads on here. The rest is crap people should be churning out on
blogs. But then, no one wants to hear what they have to say anyway and
would never visit their sites. So I guess we're just stuck with this and
the old killfile....

BTW, it's sad to see the old 'cat go. It was truly an awesome weapons
system flown and maintained by a lot of quality people! With the reputation
it has, there's bound to be a Tomcat II a few generations down the road. It
would be nice if it were manned, but that seems unlikely.





--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com