FlightMan

End of the F-14 Tomcat.

http://www.navytimes.com/static.php?...ight080206.php

I remember being wowed by this as a 12 year old kid at Farnborough. 18 hours of maintanence for every hour flown is a telling stat though.

Still a cracking jet.

Simon C

can't beat driving round mildenhall's runway in a car with a sunroof just as they take off. Boy are the close to the road!!!

A sad day indeed, many a happy boyhood hour sitting in Thetford forrest watching them, and the A10's.

Think it was the 40th Fighter wing IIRC the big *** sign outside!

dsmith

Fantastic aircraft.

I was one of those with an 8ft F-14 poster in my room for much of my teenage life.

Only ever saw it a couple of times live though . One of the best was walking along the seafront @ Felixstoew on a very murky day with very low cloud. Suddenly 2 Tomcats dropped just out of the cloud flew parrallel to the coast for a few mins (rolling their wings) then disappeared into the murk.

They must have been a) very lost and b) very low - but meant I got a very good look.

Geddon

Love these to death
Love the way they did 7 officers launching the last one though- class

Steve vRS

Sad, but the navy probably have little need for such a specialised fighter when most of the current adversaries can muster little more than an RPG7 or a 10 year old stinger.

Steve

Buckwheat

The youngest F-14 is now 16 years old since Dick Cheney ordered the tooling destroyed in 1990 for some bizarre reason. The advanced models proposed by Grumman would have been awesome, especially armed with a Phoenix replacement.

The USN may live to regret scrapping the Tomcat since the Hornet doesn't have the range or missiles to carry out long range fleet defence, especially as both China and India have expressed an interest in acquiring the TU-22 Backfire....

Markus

Lovely aircraft, sad to see the end of it. Just had a couple of F16's, and F18's, a F15 and the F22 dancing around the skies here. Would have been nice if the ol 14 had been on the schedule.

mart360

"I feel the need...............the need for speed"

awseome plane, just as the phantom and the F1-11 used to let rip from mildenhall and lakenheath, its another sad day for these awe inspiring machines.


apart from the raptor that looks remotley interesting, our next gen stuff looks bland

mart

mattstant

Dam Ithought they'd burnt all know copies of the film for a minute :

Sbradley

Umm, chaps... [Planespotter mode] They're F15 Eagles at Mildenhall... The F14 Tomcat is a US Navy fighter.

[/Planespotter mode]

But it's a sad day for aviation nuts regardless. I've got a hop in one when I was on exchange at NAS Miramar in the '80s. One seriously cool aeroplane, and so far ahead of its rivals of the age that it made everything else seem like a joke.

SB

NotoriousREV

You didn't fall in love with one of your intructors when you were there, did you?

Kyl3cook

Top Gun won the F14 over for me, although I was always an F15 man myself.

New_scooby_04

iTrader: (4)

It wa a stunning looking plane with those swept back wings and by all accounts a great plane to fly too!

I didn't like Dick Cheney before and I like him even less now!!

Ns04

bootsy

thinking the same thing i only live 20 miles from mildenhall and i've never seen f14's there i wish had.a sad day for fans

Kuro

F15 - aka the Starship as pilots like to call it

As far as I know no F15 has ever been shot down - can anyone confirm..?

Sbradley

Well now you come to mention it... no.

I was too busy having immense numbers of deep meaningless relationships with the local bimbos who thought I had a cute accent

SB

Sbradley

I believe that's correct. Though more due to the quality of target/level of risk in the mission that they've been involved with than anything inately special about the aircraft.

The Israelis have used them in anger the most but again the targets have generally been pretty soft.

In both gulf wars the high risk targets were dealt with by the RAF using Tornados, Buccaneers and pilot skill...

The F15 also has a spectacular record (again in USAF hands) of shooting down friendly aircraft. At least 2 I can think of.

As an aside, we were invited to take a couple of helicopters to Lakenheath a few years ago. One was an ex DDR Hind-E which I was flying, the other a Lynx. To avoid confusion (a Lakenheath F15 pilot had recently shot down a US Army Blackhawk in Iraq, having mistakenly identified it as an Iraqi Hind) we had "HIND" painted on the Hind in flouro orange. And "NOT A HIND" on the Lynx.

They denied us permission to land. No sense of humour, it seems...

SB

Daz34

BOB.T

[cough]Lakenheath[/cough]

Daz34

Now that was an awesome aircraft

Sbradley

Good point. I knew that (see later posts)...

They're KC10s and C17s at Mildenhall still I take it?

SB

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

Bit like the classic Scooby in comparison to the new age WRXs or STis

mattsan

What sort of maintanence takes 18 hours for each hour of flying? That seems alot a lot of time,just to be able to fly for an hour.

TopBanana

That's presumably 18 man hours?

mattsan

Yes,but what do they do that takes 18 man hours?

davegtt

Knowing the RAF lads probably spend 16 hours dossing and joking around and then 2 hours servicing the plane

Simon C

Sorry guys, but I have diffinatly seen a twin tail plane swing wing at Mildenhall. Just done a google search on F14 and 15's. Most were 15's but I have deffiantly seen a 14 flying from there (maybe on a way to an airshow?)

Sbradley

Yeah but it's the US Navy.

So:

2 hours doing a risk analysis
1 hour whooping and congratulating the risk analysis team on a job well done
1 hour soda break
2 hours finding someone with the right security clearance to read themanual
1 hour whooping and congratulating the manual reader ("Good job, dude!")
2 hours travelling time to get the necessary parts and tools (Have you seen the size of a Nimitz class carrier?)
1 hour whoopng and congratulating the techician 2nd class who got the bits ("Hey, like totally awesome, man. You so should get promoted for that")1 hour replacing the parts
1 hours self congratulation ("Damn! We're the best! Yeah!")
1 hour checking the job
1 hour recrimination when it's found to have been done wrong ("Like I totally said that was the port engine, man. You shoulda listened. This is, like, so f*cked up")
2 hours fixing the f*ck up.
1 hour fudging the maintenance report
1 hour whooping and self congratulation, ("We are so like totally the best there is. God Bless America!") signing bits (To Saddam, Love from 350NFS), getting a soda etc.

18 hours, easily.

SB

PS I love the yanks really. Just find some of their working practices a little, um, tiresome...

Sbradley

Hi Simon,

Not questioning it, mate, just saying that the F14 you saw wasn't resident there...

Shame, 'cos it would have made Suffolk a lot more interesting

SB

PS Mildenhall is/was used for staging at various times - nice big runway and plenty of hangar capacity for visiting aircraft plus less likely to get involved in a sudden scramble as there aren't any fighters there. So the F14 may well have been passing through en route to an airshow or even rejoining the carrier after a deployment elsewhere.