F-14 Questions Answered - Ask Away

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
Years ago I saw something about the bomb load capacity of an F-14, and if I remember correctly it can carry more weight in bombs than a B-17, or a B-24 could.

42,000# empty weight. 44,000# empty weight with bomb racks and drop tanks. 16,200# internal fuel, 4,000# more in drop tanks. 72,000# max catapult weight...more on that later...

But, roughly, you could carry 8,000# of ordnance easily, more if you downloaded the drops, or left them empty...as a practical matter, 4,000# was about right...good balance between mission requirements, air-air weapons, and fuel reserves left during landing (which was at 54,000#).

Max numbers are always interesting...but not always practical...

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
I think it was an F-14 that lost a wing and managed to land without it. Any comments about that one?

An Israeli F-15 lost most of a wing in a mid-air...and managed to land...great story.

USN F/A-18 lost more than half of its wing (including trailing edge flap) with damage to its vertical stab and managed to land at Oceana in 1997...knew both guys in the Mid-Air...they fly for Delta and United (or used to...who knows with furloughs, etc. these days...).

There were a few F-14s that had aft wingsweep landings. As the airplane aged, and parts began to fail, aft wingsweep happened a few times...not common, but a few times...

You could not land a Tomcat on a carrier with the wings aft of about 35 degrees of sweep...unless a few very unusual conditions existed...

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: spasm3
Where did the phrase "Anytime Baby" originate?

I believe these guys:

http://www.f-14association.com/stories-02.htm

It was around when I first flew the jet in 1989...and the phrase was legendary then....

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: JimPghPA
Were F-14 used to patrol for surface ships, or even submarines, and how long can an F-14 stay in the air in low throttle patrol flight before requiring refuel?

And speaking about refueling, are there consumables such as engine oil loss that limit the air time even with in flight refueling?

We flew whatever mission was required...the airplane was optimized for air superiority -with long range, high speed dash, good loiter, powerful radar, excellent ECM, lots of missiles.

So, we would do SSC (sea/surface control) and search for ships...often the Mark 1, Mod 0, Pilot eyeball was the best tool...when we found a contact of interest, we would "rig" it, fly down one side, do a 270 degree turn, cross the stern, another 270, fly up the other side. RIO would take pictures in detail to provide intel on the ship/boat/whatever....I usually flew low, really low, for the best photo angle...if we really wanted their attention, we would do the turns in full AB...

Many of our jets were configured to carry a TARPS (Tactical Air Reconnaisance Pod System) in place of one of the aft weapons stations. The TARPS was about 2000#, changed the CG and drag on the jet, and could take really great (film) pictures, including stand-off pictures, and IR pictures. We flew a lot of TARPS missions during Desert Storm, mostly mapping Iraqi troop/military positions in Kuwait for the upcoming ground campaign (which we were certain was going to include amphibious assault). In my squadron, the TARPS jets were all the good ones - new airframes, motors running at the top edge of tune (Turbine Inlet Temp had an acceptable range...closer to the upper limit meant more power...). I would cruise up the cost of the entire country at supersonic speed using Zone 2 AB (of 5 zones) with the cameras running...good fuel economy and good speed at relatively low altitude...Speed was Life on those missions...remember: what makes a good camera platform also makes a good gunnery target...

We refueled all the time. The jet held 16,000# internal, another 4,000# in the drops...but we didn't like to get below about 10,000#, so that we had the fuel to light full AB, intercept, fight, and leave. I once got extended on station (Combat Air Patrol) over Iraq. 4 inflight refuelings (to keep the combat package up) and I landed nearly 8 hours after I launched from the boat...strapped tight into an ejction seat with minimal padding for that long is a young man's game...even my 20-something body hurt after that...

Fuel flow at max endurance was about 5,000#/hour, so we could stay in the air for quite a while...but that was at low speed...at a tactically prudent airspeed, particularly over enemy territory, we burned closer to 6-7,000#/hr...The Tomcat's variable wing really helped with this. Though it was considerably bigger/heavier than a C-model Hornet, it burned about the same per hour, with those big wings straight out like an airliner...surprisingly, the F-14 max range speed was really slow, it depended on drag/configuration, gross weight, air temp and a few other things, but was roughly 0.75 Mach...close to a 737...while most other fighters had max range speeds closer to 0.9 Mach. Aerodynamics is not a simple science...

There was no way to check consumables like engine oil or hydraulic fluid...but the consumption rate on those things was really low. LOX was the real consideration on a flight that long...we had replaced one of the two LOX Dewar's bottles with a videotape recorder for the gun camera...we were required to have our masks on 100% of the time in the air, but the LOX would have run out...so, we didn't exactly follow that rule completely and breathed cockpit air for a while when we could, saving the LOX for a potential intercept/engagement..

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: spasm3
Has the loss of the f-14's range affected how they orchestrate missions? I know the f-18 even with drop tanks does not match the tomcat. Unless I'm wrong drop tanks on the tomcat did not take up any weapons pylons. Is the radar in the hornet as powerful? I'm sure it has more options etc but is it as powerful an emitter? During the 80's were the Russians and Libyans truly afraid of the tomcats range ? Both Libyan encounters turned out bad for the Libyans.

Most countries feared the Phoenix missile system...with good reason...not only did it have several times the range of anything else out there (we get to shoot first, by a long ways), but it was designed to bring down a bomber with 135# of warhead (contrast with 17# for the sidewinder)...it wouldn't just bring down the plane, there would be nothing left...bad news if you're the pilot...

I shouldn't comment on too many technical details, but yes, the Tomcat had 2 dedicated drop tank stations, and 8 weapons stations. The Super Hornet is similar, and added 2 weapons stations vs. the older Hornet precisely to increase the endurance and range. The Super Hornet has considerably more internal fuel carriage, up from 10,700# in the C/D to 14,400 in the E/F in addition to those tanks.

Radar power is a function of transmitter power...bigger airplane has room for a bigger transmitter...beamwidth determines resolution potential for the radar (simple physics) and the bigger the antenna, the tighter the beamwidth, which allows discrimination of targets at greater range as well as greater resistance to ECM. The phased array radar in the APG-79 in the Super Hornet (retrofitted to some C/D Hornets, I think...or they may have just gotten the APG-73) has some really great capabilities - all that beam shaping is done with sophisticated processing...

Orchestration of missions is an art...and operational details are classified...but the point is this: weight and fuel drive everything. More fuel, more range/options for mission profiles...we used to fly over 500 miles from the ship on CAP...a long way from mom...

So, let's talk weight for a bit: The zero fuel weight of an airplane is just that: crew, engine oil, hydraulic fluid and that's it. For a slick F-14A, it was 42,000. Add some bomb racks, it was up to 44,000, slightly higher in the B/D models, and slightly more with the LANTIRN pod (laser targeting/IR pod).

The max landing weight is the maximum for carrier landings. For the F-14 (all models) it was 54,000. So, the difference between ZFW and Max Trap is your "bringback"...how much fuel and ordnance you can bring back aboard. For the Tomcat, then, this was a big number, 9 to 10,000 in a Tomcat, slightly less for the TARPS jets...

This was one of the issues with the C/D Hornet, as it grew in capability, it grew in weight...and the bringback shrunk.

You really need to have a minimum amount of fuel for landing on a ship...things can go wrong with just the one runway...so you have to be able to hold for a little while, go around if the deck is fouled (men/equipment in the landing area), and then get to a tanker (if out of range of land) or a shore field and not flame out. Generally, at night, about 5,000 was a good number....as low as 3,500 in the day...

So, for a Tomcat, with 9,000+ bringback, you could carry 4,000# of weapons back to the ship and still have plenty of fuel. The 9,000# of bringback on the super Hornet was a design requirement. You go on patrol without finding the enemy, you need to be able to bring your weapons back aboard...they're expensive...and it happened a few (well, maybe more than a few) times that C/D Hornets had to jettison weapons if the weapons weren't expended on the mission...

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: Slantman
Did you fly with/ for "snort"?

He was CO of VF-33 when I was at Oceana...his JOs were my peers, and many are still friends to this day. I've flown with Snort a few times, brought an airplane to an airshow for him and swapped lies (I mean stories) at the Oceana O'Club...he was a really, really great stick (pilot) and could fly the jet to its full potential...

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: Win
What did you do your primary flight training in, and what were the intermediate aircraft you flew before the F-14?

How many hours did it take to transition into the F-14?

The handful of times I have seen the F-14 on a ramp, I was taken aback by the sheer size of the aircraft. It's just huge, at least by my standards! I can't imagine the forces involved in launching or recovering a mass of that size.

edit: did you fly before military service?

Win - I went through flight training in the late 80s. At that time, we flew the T-34C (a single engine turboprop airplane), then we selected for pipeline, in which we were trained in either jets, props, or helicopters. This selection was based on flight training grades in the T-34...you were graded on tests, in the air, and in the simulator. The week that I selected for jets, there were 10 of us who had completed, and the Navy needed 8 helicopter pilots, one prop pilot, and a jet pilot.

In the jet pipeline, I flew the T-2C Buckeye, a twin-engine jet trainer. Then we transitioned to the TA-4J, a trainer version of the attack jet used in Vietnam. From the grades in both of those airplanes (and we were graded in the air, in tests, in simulators, and our carrier landing grades were added to the mix) the Navy selected us for assignment to the "fleet" and my class of 20 had a few select for the F-14, a few guys in the S-3, a few in the EA-6B, one girl whose only choices were A-4s flying adversary support (this was the 80s) and the rest got A-6s.

The Navy had a "quality spread" approach to assignment then, each aircraft type got some of the best students, and some of the others...that way, a $75 million EA-6B with 4 guys in it got a reasonable pick for student performance...I finished 2nd in that class and I got my first choice: F-14s at Oceana...but the other guys who got F-14s were in the middle of my class. They washed out of the F-14 RAG. It was a demanding jet...and proved to be more than they were up to...perhaps if they had been assigned something less demanding, they would have been successful...

I had no experience flying prior to the Navy. Remarkably, I flew a turboprop airplane, with retractable gear (complex aircraft) solo after 20 hours of instruction...this was typical. I got 70 hours of flying in a T-2 (and lots of simulator time), and then flew it solo to a carrier and got my 6 arrested landings...solo...so, with fewer than 100 hours, I was flying a twin-engine jet aboard a carrier for the first time.

First trap: April 1988...remember it like it was yesterday...

The transition to the F-14 was demanding...the big fighter had complex systems: Afterburner, flight controls, inlets, swing wings and it was flown in complex tactics...we learned the basics: maneuvering, then radar work, then air to air gunnery, then air to air combat tactics (dog-fighting) and finally, carrier qualication, including our first night landings. I took 9 months to learn the F-14, pretty typical time in training...and had about 100 hours in it when I was sent to a front line fighter squadron. A year later, with a few hundred more hours, I was on my way across the Atlantic for Operation Desert Shield in response to Saddam's invasion of Kuwait. The war kicked off when we arrived (I like to think they were waiting for us...but maybe that's just me...).

 

[shell_user]

Astro, you never said which carrier you were first deployed or on. Also, could a pilot land a F-14 with wings fully retracted on a carrier? When did a pilot fly a f-14 with the wings fully retracted? Did you have a nickname like "iceman, goose" etc? So I take it from what you posted above, it was only the cream of the crop got to fly a F-14 or should say you had to be pretty da** good or fly somethin else eh?

adam

 

[Cujet]

Do you find any conventional aircraft "fun" to fly?

We operate an experimental EA-300L (bigger engine and EFIS) and I really enjoy it. But, it's a piston powered toy compared to jets.

I own and fly a Cessna 177RG, and I find it stunningly underwhelming, because I'm spoiled by real airplanes.

 

[raaizin]

I have a question about flight training. You mentioned some washed out of flight training in the F-14. What happens to these folks, do they get to train in a less demanding airplane or are they out of the military.

 

[JimPghPA]

Raaizin regarding your question, I have at least one example:

I once talked to a retired Navy man while at the local airport watching aircraft. He told me he trained on jets and the first time he went out to land on a Carrier he radioed back where is it? He went back to land and an instructor said don't get out, and got in with him and they landed on the Carrier. He said that from altitude the carrier looked smaller than a postage stamp, and he said to the instructor "were going to land on that?" He could not handle landing on a Carrier and ended up being a radar man on a Carrier. He then went on to talk about the speed some of those surface echos traveled at including that while even those speeds may be classified, you hear things in the news about the time a Carrier left a United States coastal port, and the time it arrived on duty in someplace like the Persian-Gulf.

 

[JimPghPA]

Astro14, I saw from a distance what I think must of been either one of the new F22 or F35 after a local air-show. It was in low flight leaving Allegheny County Airport, just about to fly over Rt 51. That aircraft was amazing in the speed it seamed to effortlessly cruse at. I know low aircraft are supposed to stay below 200 but that clean machine seamed like it was pushing more than that even with the short distance since it had just left the airport, and it was amazingly quiet for something cutting thorough the air that fast. The whole scene spoke of the clean aerodynamics that airplane must have. It was impressive to say the least.

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
Do you find any conventional aircraft "fun" to fly?

We operate an experimental EA-300L (bigger engine and EFIS) and I really enjoy it. But, it's a piston powered toy compared to jets.

I own and fly a Cessna 177RG, and I find it stunningly underwhelming, because I'm spoiled by real airplanes.

I really enjoyed the 747 and the Stearman to mention a few. Would love to fly an Extra or other aerobatic plane, just haven't had the chance...none of them have the raw power of a fighter, but they're still fun...

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: raaizin
I have a question about flight training. You mentioned some washed out of flight training in the F-14. What happens to these folks, do they get to train in a less demanding airplane or are they out of the military.

It really depends on the needs of the service at the time. The two other guys that washed out of the Tomcat left the Navy, they weren't offered anything else. Right now, we're downsizing, so options like flying another airplane or going to another career track aren't options. In 1985, a very good friend of mine washed out of T-34s and at that time, was able to become an aviation maintenance officer. He's finishing up a very successful career as a Captain.

Ironically, once a pilot earns their wings, they're unlikely to get a less-demanding platform assignment. The folks in the other "community" don't want to be seen as the "reject pool" for fighter guys..

 

[Astro14]

Originally Posted By: shell_user
Astro, you never said which carrier you were first deployed or on. Also, could a pilot land a F-14 with wings fully retracted on a carrier? When did a pilot fly a f-14 with the wings fully retracted? Did you have a nickname like "iceman, goose" etc? So I take it from what you posted above, it was only the cream of the crop got to fly a F-14 or should say you had to be pretty da** good or fly somethin else eh?

adam

My call sign was "Astro"...derived from my college major (Astrophysics) and the name of George Jetson's pet...cleverly reflected in my BITOG user name...

Full aft wingsweep landings on a carrier simply weren't possible. The engineering limit for a Tomcat landing was the strength of the airplane hook and the ability of the arresting gear machinery to decelerate a 54,000 lb airplane. Those factors yielded a max engagement speed of 119 knots. In other words, the relative speed of the jet to the ship couldn't exceed 119 kts if the jet was at 54,000 lbs.

So, if the plane was lighter, then that speed could go up, but not much. Best I remember was about 126 at 51,000.

The airplane had to be at 15 units AOA for the landing - hook engagement angle, pilot eye height, landing gear compression, fuselage clearance were all calculated and verified based on approach AOA.

With the wings fully aft, the jet had an approach speed of roughly 220 knots at 15 AOA.

SO, to get a relative speed of, say 125 knots, there would have to be 95 knots of wind over the carrier deck...nuke ships are fast, but not that fast...

A Tomcat with no flaps and wings forward had an approach speed of 165 knots, and 40 knots of wind was very realistic...God bless those Westinghouse AW-4s when you needed them...

Now, we could fly the jet slow, well above 15 AOA, with the wings back, for important reasons, like looking cool...but we couldn't land it a ship that way.

I've had a few no flap situations, never had a wing sweep problem where they wouldn't come forward...it was a sturdy mechanism powered by 3,000 PSI Hydraulics


Airplanes? Was qualified (at various times) in: T-34C, T-2C, TA-4J, F-14A, E-2C, F-14B, F/A-18C. Also flew the S-3B, HH-60, TH-57, F-5E, F-16N.

In civilian life, hold type ratings for: 747-400, 757, 767, A-320. Have also flown, Piper Warrior, PA-44, Cirrus SR-22, Cessna 172, 182, and Citation.

Cruised/deployed on CVN-71, USS THEODORE ROOSEVELT and CV-67, USS JOHN F KENNEDY. Have landings on CV-16, USS LEXINGTON, CV-61, USS RANGER, CVN-65 USS ENTERPRISE, CVN-69, USS EISENHOWER, CVN-70, USS CARL VINSON, CVN-72, USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (actually, that was a shake-down of nearly 3 months), CVN-73, USS GEORGE WASHINGTON and CVN-74, USS John C. STENNIS (another shake-down). I have also been to sea aboard CVN-75, USS HARRY S. TRUMAN, and CVN-76, USS GEORGE HW BUSH.

Looking at that list, I feel old..

 

[shell_user]

Thanks for the info Astro. Darn, you were on a ton of carriers then.

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
it would accelerate going straight up if it was clean...pretty cool to have 90 degrees of pitch and watch airspeed increase...

I have seen this at an airshow before, obviously stripped of any ordinance or other drag. The pilot could make that big thing dance.

Only thing I have seen more impressive was an F-22.

I believe Grumman was trying to sell an attack version of the 14 prior to it's retirement?

 

[Astro14]

Tempest -there was an advanced version that Grumman offered in the early 90s called Tomcat 21. Compared with F-14D, it had even bigger engines, increased internal fuel and increased sensors, including IRST, FLIR, optics and others...

The F-14B would carry a lot, and it would super cruise when clean. The better drag and increased power of Tomcat 21 would have been impressive...

All the Tomcats were air to ground capable. Bombs were tested on the airplane in the 70s... The addition of the LANTIRN pod, from the F-15E, made it a precision bomber beginning in 1995 or so...

 

[tom slick]

What did the F-16N feel like compared to the F-14 and F-18?

 

[Tempest]

Quote:
strapped tight into an ejction seat with minimal padding for that long is a young man's game...even my 20-something body hurt after that...

My mom used to work on electronic components for the ACES II ejection seat back in the day.

Quote:
All the Tomcats were air to ground capable. Bombs were tested on the airplane in the 70s... The addition of the LANTIRN pod, from the F-15E, made it a precision bomber beginning in 1995 or so...

I didn't know that. I always believed the Tomcat a dedicated air to air implement, mostly as a platform for the Phoenix.