So as a maintainer what was it like compared to other aircraft? My father in law worked on the F-14 in the 80s on the Nimitz and he did not like working on it.

Would you recommend that job to a young man these days ? ( it's not me, ha ha )

Underpowered with F110? I have heard the opposite. With 60,000 lbs of combined thrust, the GE-110 engines gave it a 1.05:1 thrust to weight ratio and they were the most powerful engines ever put into a fighter. I have heard, the airframe limits were exceeded a few times where it had difficulties coping with the power. The airframe of the F-14 also generated lift and had the lowest wing loading, which is why the thrust to weight ratio was not as big of a deal. Dale Snodgrass said, he used to regularly pull 9.5g even in the lowly F-14A and has actually demo videos of pulling 9g and over. When Dennis Romano went up against the F-15 in a back to back demo, the Shah of Iran was extremely impressed when Dennis pulled a 9g 360 tight turn in an F-14A with sustained 400 knots speed producing big vapor clouds over the wing. The F-15 did a 7.5g in the same maneuver. The Shah of Iran ended up choosing the F-14 because Dennis Romano was so good that he ended up making the F-14A look more agile and nimble than the F-15 (which was not the case in reality).

The F-14 B/D could vertically climb at a rate of 50,000 feet per minute (compared to 35.000 feet per minute for the F-14A), which was the same as F-15C, but higher than the high wing loaded F-16's 45,000 feet per minute. The configuration where F-14's thrust to weight was calculated with is the typical dogfighting configuration (and not long range bombing mission one's where there are bigger missiles and additional fuel tanks making the weight close to 70,000 lbs). An empty/airshow F-14 weighed 40,000 lbs. About 52,000 - 55,000 lbs in dog fighting configuration and 70,000 - 75,000 lbs in long range bombing mission configuration. In that case, there are sidewinders, sparrows, AIM-54 and fuel enough for the mission and the better than 1:1 thrust to weight was calculated in a dog fighting configuration. Although, yes the F-14 could really tuck its nose in very hard in tight turning situations due to the variable geometry wings giving it more lift while turning in tight. Although, F-15 fanbois look at the 7.5g Grumman rating and think it could not do 9.5g peak like the F-15 could, which is nonsense since F-14 was a Navy fighter so it went through a lot more abuse landing/taking off on a carrier, which is why Grumman rated it conservatively for airframe longevity. It could turn in 9.5g sustained easily while making a full 360 degree turn in less than 19 seconds.

Not sure about that. The F-14 weighs exactly 39,600 lbs empty according to the official specs by Grumman. I find it hard to belive there will be over 15,000 lbs of only fuel for particularly dog fighting configuration, which typically is not long range. Then fuel (it did not carry as much much fuel in dog fighting/intercept configuration where it had to be relatively short range) and dog fighting configuration of 4 sparrows, 2 phoenix and 4 sidewinders all add up to 53,.000 - 55,000 lbs of weight in dogfighting configuration. No fighter jet has a 1:1 thrust to weight with high fuel and weapons load. For example, the F-16 weighs 21,000 lbs completely empty. It weighed over 30,000 lbs in dog fighting configuration while the GE-110 makes 28,000 lbsf in the version used in the F-16.

I don't want to argue about it. I am quoting exactly what the Grumman engineers and Navy said that the F-14 B/D had a better than 1:1 thrust to weight ratio officially. I don't know what fuel level they used to determine that, but it calculated to almost 1.05:1. Besides, the GE-110-400 engines produced a combined 60,000 lbs of thrust. Not 54,000 like you are stating according to the F-14 chief/ VP Mike Ciminera. It was exactly according to official specs 30,200 lbsf per engine at Mach 0.9 with a total of close to 60,000 lbsf in full afterburn at mach 0.9. At sea level, it was 23,400 lbsf per engine or 46,000 lbsf combined at sea level. I am not making this up. It is the official specs.

Also, the F-14 B/D could actually accelerate in a vertical unrestricted climb. The engine power and low wing loading made it possible. F-16, F-18 etc. cannot do that because they cannot overcome the drag at higher speeds. The F-15 can with a variant of the same GE-110 that makes less power (but, F-15 is 7000 lbs lighter than the F-14) can do it, though.

Rifle Twist ...... I thank so to BUT WHO ARE WE ..... FOR ME I AM WITH YOU ON THAT ONE

WE NEED F-14S FOR CARRIER DEFENSES, f-18s cant do it!

Did you listen to this presentation all the way through? He said the F-14D even with all the upgrades is no match for the JSF (F-35). Go to 39:00

@@eriktml and yet the F-18's have been doing it for a while now! Shocking!

DCS World - Digital Combat Simulator - just added a F-14b. Said to be the best simulator out there, many fighters available. Strong Island!

Thank you for your service ! I went on the Enterprise for a short and very memorable visit. It was anchored in Port Everglades in Florida. It was sparkling clean, a truly beautiful ship !

***** Other than precision nav and attack, I agree F-35 is a lemon! Stealth is over-rated anyway, at least in the current principles on it, most of it is detectable through many non-traditional methods combined with modern processing power. An F-35 isnt any safer over a modern 2016 threat, than the F-117 was over Serbia in 99!

Carrier launch ability for the 14. The 15 can't land or be modified to land on a carrier, which changes its role significantly (it has a hook for emergency landings on the ground though.) There are sacrifices made when building a jet to land and launch from a carrier, so the Airforce had their 15, and the Navy had their 14. I think at some point there was talk of an Airforce F14, but it didn't pan out. There are many other differences, both role and mechanical, but that's the big one.

Yes, he is on the internet. LA area.

Johan Smith Telephone polls or Phoenix missiles.

@@Make-Asylums-Great-Again too bad you don't believe it :) cause its true anyways.

Yup, and upgraded cockpit and maybe also upgraded (thought it was the best radar) radar...done by the russians.

The Tomcat 21 is essentially the same airframe as the vanilla F-14 Tomcat. The main difference comes from the electronics (under the skin). There was also a Fowler flap modification for the wing that would have affected carrier recovery positively. The Tomcat 21 never got built so all we have to go buy are Grumman's wind tunnel tests with a modified F-14 wing and projections of what could be done with the avionics -- flight control systems and radar. They were talking about putting in GE F110-IPE engines. They would have been equivalent to the 29,000lb thrust engines the Block 50 F-16s use but of course navalized against saltwater corrosion with some gearbox and piping rearranged to fit the Tomcat's engine nacelle pods. Grumman projectrf that with those engines and semiconformal carriage of weapons the F-14(-21) would probably be capable of supercruising at Mach 1.3... The F-14B and F-14D already COULD supercruise but it was a low Mach Number (1.1) and probably with only Sidewinders on the glove rails. Anything more than that might be too much drag for the plane and it would subsonic. Definitely would be subsonic with Phoenix missiles unless the afterburner was used. The big aerodynamic improvements came with the wing mods. They were going to put in a Fowler flap to increase lift at low speed. The effect of that would have been to drop carrier approach speeds 20kt to 100kt for landing. It would also have been possible to launch the modded F-14 without wind going across the carrier deck; yeah, it could have catapulted in ZERO wind conditions with the new wing. Besides lower deck recovery speed, the F-14 would have been able to land with a higher gross weight -- the equivalent of six Phoenix missile recovery believe it or not. That was something they couldn't do operationally with the F-14A, B, and D. They were talking about F-14's maneuverability improving from the net effect of the suggested engine and wing improvements... How much more, I don't know. Slightly faster-climbing, faster-accelerating?? Probably. The existing plane's main maneuvering issue really was the roll rate: it paid penalties because of the distance between the podded engines (9 ft!), a variable wingsweep (lowest roll rates at 62+ft extension; highest rollrates at full sweepback, 38 ft wingspan), and the heavy weight of the plane. All that off-center weight in the engine installations and the wingsweep mechanism raised the aircraft's inertial moment and it just didn't have the built-in roll mechanisms to maximize the initial roll rate. Aside from exploiting any instability inherent in the design with a modern fly-by-wire system -- which the F-14 did NOT Use; it was the last pre-FBW fighter built in the US) --, the only way to practically increase the roll response of the plane would be to use thrust vectoring engine nozzles. Those are kind of a pain-in-the-butt to use and install. They require well-tested flight control software -- the engine nozzle movement has to be integrated with the main flight control system which can run millions of lines long in code -- and very, very strong engine ducts which raises the weight (and cost) of the plane! The plane still has to be balanced, FBW controls or not, so it would have had to have had extra weight put in the nose to balance weight growth in the rear! With Tomcat-21, at least one of the proposals had remodelled glove areas to carry extra fuel (1,000lb per side) in a recontoured area roughly equivalent to the old (extended) glove vanes the F-14A used for approximately 20 years of the Tomcat's operational life. I think Grumman was also looking at using that not only for extra fuel but additional lift and as a potential destabilizing point (at supersonic speeds) like the old glove vanes were to improve the aircraft's maneuvering power at supersonic speeds with the added benefit of extended range. The avionic improvements? At least basic air-to-ground modes to the APG-71 equivalent to the F-15E (which was never implemented because of costs and the fact that only 50 APG-71 sets were ever bought for the F-14D only)... If Grumman had gotten the go-ahead and enthusiastic support from the Navy, they would have suggested a next-generation evolution beyond this with avionics and radar kit developed for the A-12 but it didn't happen... The Navy went ahead and bought the "improved" F-18 based on some foolish, short-sighted advice and essentially castrated naval aviation. The planes they have today may have lower maintenance than what they replaced but they also have MAYBE half the potential range of what the Navy retired in the 1990s and early 2000s and nowhere near the speed and payload range, either. They'd better pray the Top Gun training is that good because they're stuck with fighters that are slower and shorter-ranged than a lot of the land-based opposition... The Navy has no equivalent to the F-22 let alone the F-15 right now. They have a multi-role plane in the F-18 but it is NOT a great air superiority machine. It lacks endurance and radar, period. The F-14 WAS the Navy's F-15 equivalent but the higher-ups didn't support the plane and developed it haphazardly through the late 1980s. From the mid-1990s, the frontline squadrons proved the F-14's worth as a medium-range bomber but it was too late because with no new airframes and limited supplies of spare parts, it was only a matter of time before they had to retire the plane... The Navy still probably did retire the F-14 at least a decade earlier than they had to but they did it to themselves!

Well, also Dick Cheney wanted F-14s gone at all costs. Iran had been busted trying to smuggle F-14 parts from a warehouse in Ft. Lauderdale to London to Tehran using internal connections. Bush administration was obsessed with putting the highest sanctions against Iran so Dick Cheney wanted to make sure the Irani F-14s are inoperable.

@@AvengerII Also, one of the most compelling arguments for retiring the Tomcat, its costly maintenance was also addressed by Grumman when they proposed the Super Tomcat 21

Joe John Actually it was Congress and the Based Realignment and Close Act that moved Fightertown to NAS Fallon. The Marines got the hand-me downs. An old NAS and small budget to spend fixing it up. But thanks for the compliment. It’s because of people like us you can’t have nice things:)

any top speed past mach 2 is very much a pointless statistic for fighters. Most cannot ever reach their top speed unless they are fully slick, eg, no payload or gas bags.. And when they do , the fuel burn is terrible, they would need to fly from tanker to tanker to get anywhere at that speed. So there's very little tactical use to that higher top speed. Other then that, yeah.. Blame Dick "shootyouinthe face" Cheney for killing off the Tomcat.

***** Sad state the Navy's in now! Chenney destroyed the F-14 community when he cancelled further F-14D production, or upgrades to D std! Retiring the A-6 was smart, but choosing superhornet over continued F-14 procurment was terrible! Yes the 14 is quite a bit older than the superhornet, but capability better. Entire military is in shambles since the 90s. The F-35 program is as old or older than my nephew who graduated from high school, yet not one in service yet! Well if it sucks its time to cancel it now than continue another 10 or more years of development and testing BS!