Perhaps like no other fighter jet in history, the F-14 Tomcat has represented American air power more effectively than any other. This recent documentary focuses on this legendary aircraft and features interviews with those lucky enough to have piloted them, maintained them, or served as radar officers in the back seat. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the United States Navy's premiere air defense fighter jet from 1975 until its retirement in 2006. Unlike most other jets, it is easily recognizable among movie fans thanks to its prominence in the Tom Cruise film Top Gun. The plane was designed in order to succeed its Vietnam War era predecessor, the F-4 Phantom, in every way, and was a complete success. Lessons learned during vietnam showed the powerful but big Phantom to be a bit of a lumbering target to surface to air missile sites, not to mention Soviet made north vietnamese MiG fighters. Designers at Grumman worked hard to produce a radically new plane unlike anything ever used by the navy before. In the late 1960s, the navy was looking for a jet specifically made for defending american aircraft carriers from long range soviet bombers and decided a modified version of the F-111 Aardvark was the way to go. The F-111B (as it was called) was grossly overweight, had numerous accidents, and was in general a disaster. Grumman took up the challenge and the F-111B was grounded. A program known as VFX eventually became the prototype for the F-14, and the plane was to feature variable geometry wings that swept forward or back in order to accomodate different speeds, an insanely powerful radar for spotting distant targets, and the longest ranged missiles ever used on an american aircraft. In the early 70s, Grumman started to build Tomcats at its main facility in the eastern part of Long Island. Like most other planes, it had a slew of problems at first, and once these were ironed out, two squadrons, VF-1 Wolfpack and VF-2 Bounty Hunters became the first navy squadrons to operate the new plane. Not many know this, but the Tomcat's debut in action came during the very last day of the vietnam war, when F-14's from VF-1 provided air cover for helicopters helping to evacuate civilians from the south vietnamese capital city of Saigon, although they encountered no enemies. Going into the 1980s, the plane was involved in two incidents years apart both situated on the Libyan coast, in which F-14's shot down planes belonging to Gaddafi's regime. In the 90s, Tomcats participated in the Gulf War and it was upgraded to fulfill a ground attack role. The plane could be fitted with a reconnaissance device known as TARPS that could take high quality (but monochrome) images of priority targets. It could also carry laser guided bombs usable under any weather conditions, and even paint targets with a laser designator so that other american planes can attack them easier. After September 11th, Tomcats once again led the way into Iraq, turning a great deal of Saddam Hussein's armored vehicles into scrap metal. The plane was finally withdrawn from US Navy inventory in Autumn 2006. The only export customer for the Tomcat was Iran, and a number of the jets were sold to the country prior to the Islamic Revolution. Today, Iran is utterly hostile to the US but continues to operate F-14's, albeit not often because replacement parts are becoming more rare. Ironically, the Tomcat's replacement, the F-18 Hornet, is nowhere near as capable depending on who you ask. The Tomcat was a one of a kind and has a higher top speed, could engage multiple targets simultaneously, had a better radar, and was the only platform for the Phoenix missile, the longest ranged missile in the american arsenal. However, defenders of the F-18 will say the Tomcat was a maintenance nightmare due to its movable wing mechanism and was an overall more expensive plane to use. As usual, it all comes down to money. While the film doesn't really go over the backstory to the F-14 itself, it does have many experiences told from its pilots themselves. Many of them tell harrowing stories about deaths they witnessed while serving on aircraft carriers, as the Tomcat was not an easy plane to land. It's difficult enough to land any plane normally, but trying to land one on a floating airfield in the ocean (especially at night) is another thing entirely. The film explains how jet pilots had to pay attention to an optical device carriers had onboard, called "meatball." Basically an array of lights meant to show the pilot whether or not they were on the right heading and speed for a good landing. Landing signal officers called out directions over a radio and told pilots to abort the landing if they were too high, too low and at risk of crashing into the ship, or had some other problem. You can't possibly imagine how stressful this all was. As one pilot says, the F-14 had a whole community around it, and everyone involved with it took care of each other. I can't think of another plane that has that kind of camaraderie, and planes are one of my favorite things to read about. Today, the F-14 fanbase is as strong as ever and it remains one of the coolest looking planes of all time, despite being over half a century old. Not bad for a company that makes mail trucks.
