Save The Tomcat (The US Senate Maverick Act)

clm2112

clm2112

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Just wanted to make a request to any fellow aviation nerds (and nerdettes) that they send a message off to their respective congressman.

The US Senate did something worthwhile for a change and passed a bill to save three Grumman F-14D "Tomcats" from the bone yard at Davis-Monthan AFB, and restore them as museum pieces, with the possibility of having one restored to air-worthy condition. It isn't going to cost the public anything, since it will be the museums who want to display them will be footing the restoration bill.

Now that Iran doesn't have much use for black-market F-14 parts, there really isn't a whole lot of reason to keep ours locked away instead of out where the public can see them.

So, if you have a a few moments to let your representative in the House know that you would like this little bit of our national history preserved, please do so.

Thanks

(Hey, I'm not even a Navy guy, but I can still appreciate how historic the F-14 was. ;) )
 
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Best.
Fighter.
Ever.

I flew the F-14 Simulator at Miramar in 1979 :cool:

I was in VF-124 at the time, in training.

I have no idea why they transferred me to North Island after, since North Island had the same training as I got at Miramar, but I am sure glad I got to hang with the Cats! I was also one of one people qualified to work on both the Tomcat and Vikings in my shop.
 
Just to clarify something that might come up... there are currently about 50 ish F-14's of various models in museums or on static display around the US. None of these aircraft will ever fly again, they were stripped and structurally damaged internally to ensure they would never fly again or provide usable parts. I imagine, if you threw enough money and resources at all of them, you might cobble together one or two that could, but that would be akin to building an entire airplane from a kit, with a bunch of missing parts you had to make yourself.

What this bill is addressing are the last three aircraft in long term storage that could be put back into the condition to fly. AMARG can work miracles with old airplanes, but the F-14's are already out of their hands and in the hands of the shredders, so this is probably the last chance to preserve a flyable F-14, along with what is left of the spare parts, and at no cost to the taxpayer.

If I'm reading this right, the only stipulation of restoring these F-14's to flying status is the permanent removal of the armaments. In other words, no mounting points in the airframe for the 20mm canon and no hard-points to hang missiles. Probably just ballast weights added for the missing parts to keep the CG within limits.
 
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Iran bought 80 of them.
So, there's still a chance of a few of these still flying.
 
NavyVette said:
IIRC not all 80 were delivered, and I believe they were down to about 5 left in flying condition which were eliminated.
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Yeah, I think they are all gone now. The estimates I've been reading was a total of ten at the start of this fracas, with a big question mark about any of them being capable of flying.

If they even had one that was capable of flying, they would be flying it just for the propaganda value. For the islamists, this was always the reason why they kept them and tried to keep them in service... just to piss off the Great Satan. It has always been about the symbolism. Instead, the only thing they have shown flying was a surviving F-4 Phantom doing a lap over Tehran as soon as the cease-fire started.... and that is only if the footage was real, which is always a problem when dealing with this bunch of zealots. And it kinda makes sense, the F-4 was always easier for Iran to maintain under the embargo of spares by virtue of the sheer number we exported to other countries. Same goes for the F-5 and a few other western jets they had. The F-14 was the unique problem due to them being the only country we exported any to. We were the only source of spares for that aircraft.

I would put money on all of them being smoldering piles of junk at this point. All the more reason not to reduce the last of ours into piles of junk too.
 
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Bobster said:
But, but, what about "TopGun3: Maverick depends on Depends?" 🥺
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Well, I guess he'll be relying on the shoe-leather express... with his walker and colostomy bag. "I feel the need, the need to pee"

;)
 
The other reason to preserve at least one of these aircraft in flying condition is... well, sometimes you need to see something to believe something.

Computer modeling has come a long way since the 1960's, but there are questions that come up and the only real way to prove an answer is to have the real thing to try it out on. We can only speculate what the questions might be in the future because we live in the present.

A good example of this is the Rocketdyne F-1 engine. It was very publicly demonstrated to work... it took mankind to the moon on more than one occasion. But, decades later, there were some holes in the data on how it worked. The only way to fill in those holes was to drag one out of the Smithsonian, take it down to Huntsville, and light it off. (Well, at least the gas generator section of the engine which was impressive as hell on its own.) The people who sent the engine to the Smithsonian couldn't have know why it would be needed a half century later in 2013. They just knew that it was a piece of history that needed to be kept for future generations.
 
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