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By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot
© September 9, 2004
VIRGINIA BEACH — The last five of the Navy’s oldest F-14 Tomcats will head to the “bone yard” Sunday, retiring to the dry desert floor of Arizona to join thousands of other aging war birds.
About 80 younger models of the F-14 remain at Oceana Naval Air Station, but all will be gone by about August 2006, replaced by F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets.
The “thirtysomething” A-model F-14 jets from the Checkmates of Fighter Squadron 211 will mark the beginning of the end of the Tomcat family, which totaled 632 aircraft during the past 32 years.
Cmdr. C.J. Deni, the squadron’s skipper, will lead the last flight to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, near Tucson, where the jets will be available for wartime recall.
“We are the last true fighter squadron in the Navy,” Deni said Wednesday as his five Tomcats showed off in a formation fly-by over Oceana. “There no longer will be any more fighter squadrons. They will be multi-mission strike fighters from now on.”
Developed as a premier fighter for strictly an air-to-air mission to protect the carrier battle group, later versions of the F-14, known as B, C and D models, evolved in the early 1990’s to carry air-to-ground munitions. By the mid-1990’s, precision-guided weapons were added and the aircraft took on more of a strike mission, Deni said.
However, the A-models remained a fighter. They were never given the global positioning system (GPS) weapons the younger models had, which better supported the battlefield commanders.
Deni’s squadron, which retired its five other planes earlier, will now begin learning to fly and maintain the F/A-18 F Super Hornet.
The entire squadron of about 250 air crews and maintenance personnel will begin leaving in October for Lemoore Naval Air Station, 40 miles south of Fresno, Calif., for six months of training. Their 12 two-seat models are already waiting for them on the flight line, Deni said.
When they return with the planes in late March, or early April, they will be known as the Checkmates of Strike/Fighter Squadron 211.
While the younger Tomcat models still have plenty of life in them, Deni said they have become too costly to operate. In the last few months it required between 65 to 80 man hours of maintenance to keep an F-14 flying for just one hour. By comparison, the Super Hornet requires between 10 and 15 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight, he said.
Senior Chief Petty Officer Vaughn Ransom has been taking care of the F-14s since 1982, working on probably 75 different planes over the years.
He has hand-picked their maintenance crews and pulled solutions to vexing problems “out of our heads,” not computers. But he seems ready to let them go and join the Super Hornet community.
An engine change can take 16 to 18 hours on an F-14 if all goes well, he said. The Super Hornet’s engines can be replaced in less than two hours.
Trouble shooting isn’t by guess work. It’s simply a plug-in to a computer to find the cause.
Yet, for Lt. Cmdr. Mark Sullivan, the squadron’s former maintenance officer, flying his plane into retirement will be a sad day.
“We’ve always called the Tomcat the big sexy fighter,” Sullivan said. “I’m going to miss manning up that aircraft and watching that sight behind the boat. There is nothing more challenging than flying the F-14 on an aircraft carrier.
“They call it 'the turkey’ because that’s kind of what it looks like when it comes into land. It’s ungainly. It’s big. It’s tough. It’s predictable.”
The Tomcat was never the most forgiving plane to a pilot who tried to push it farther than it was intended, Sullivan said. The Super Hornet, while slower, won’t allow a pilot to abuse it in the same way.
The Super Hornets are easier to fly than the Tomcats, Sullivan said.
“And they should be,” he said. “They are safer to fly, but I will miss a little bit of the challenges. I had a plane that was pretty much as smart as I was.
“If I am doing something wrong, the Super Hornet will not let you put yourself in extremes. It’s a little smarter than me.”
Sullivan has put more than 2,000 flight hours and 13 years in the Tomcat and insisted on taking his plane on the last flight.
“I’d rather take it to the bone yard than the scrap yard, where is would be torn apart,” he said. “At least there they will be ready to fight again on the front line if we need them.”
Oceana is expected to acquire a total of 120 F/A-18 single-seat E and twin-seat F Super Hornets.
It has 145 F/A-18 single-seat C Hornets now.
