Warbird Information Exchange

Randy,

You're dead-on, balls-accurate.

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Cheers,

Craig

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The YF-117 was not saved by any museum because nobody could afford the 1.4 million dollar de-mil price tag that went along with it.

Plenty enough F-14's have been preserved. I suspect the 29 remaining might be the number still at AMARG awaiting disposal and not the many many aircraft in musuems. The Navy made a tremendous effort to ensure that any organization with the means and the desire obtianed a Tomcat before the remainder were sent to AMARG

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Losing faith in humanity one individual at a time

Forgive me Randy, as I don't follow that many threads on here. Thanks for your service, btw.

I'm just a little confused. Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you arguing that they should be destroyed because they might fall into enemy hands?

I would think the fact that a known enemy has them (albeit in small numbers), that keeping some flying to train pilots to fight against them would be a good thing. Am I wrong? Isn't this why Top Gun/Agressor Sqdrns exist?

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Rich Kolasa
www.crystalgraphix.com

If I remember right a front company for Iran was buying surplus F-14 material then trying to export it.

Mike

So, if a company tries to illegally sell A-10 parts to one of our enemies, we should destroy our A-10s?

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Rich Kolasa
www.crystalgraphix.com

BINGO! So well said. I'd say they want 85% preserved with 50% flying. Less than 1% on poles. Polish warbirds are not popular here.

It is the 'wix factor'.

Hey PinecastleAAF,

What's wrong with airplanes from Poland? haha

-David

I think this argument is closer to "Bingo fuel" than "bingo". Many of us want our tax dollars to go to the most prepared and well-equipped military we can have. According to some pilots I've spoken to, the Tomcat was a better aircraft than the Super Hornet, which was a political action more than an aircraft born of need, IMHO.

I think most of us are well aware of the amount of Tomcats in museums, so we are maybe more concerned with their destruction as being a potential weakening of our military more than a sentimental outpouring of affection.

The B-52 is still in service because it is the best platform for the job. Many of us feel that the Tomcat would have been a better platform to deal with potential threats that the "all Hornets all the time" Navy. Oh, save the "cost" thing. There's not a lot of threads complaining about the cost of the Osprey, Apache, and a few others that seem to be a bit of a waste of money.

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Rich Kolasa
www.crystalgraphix.com

There are two -- maybe three -- different discussions that are all getting mixed into one big mashup here.

Let's try and sort out the different issues:

1) "The F-14 should not have been retired." Moot point, since they're all ready gone...but the fact is that they were VERY maintenance intensive and thus very expensive to fly. They didn't offer any unique capabilities that were relevant anymore -- even the "Bombcat" concept was a jury-rigged idea that isn't nearly as capable as the Hornet in terms of avionics integration. Those two facts together sealed its fate. It would be "neat" to keep airplanes like that around -- hell, I wish we still flew Phantoms, because I think those are cool as hell. Unfortunately, the military exists to win wars and capabilities matter.

2) "F-14s shouldn't have been de-milled." The main argument here seems to be that they should have been preserved. Again, my question is, "how many are enough"? There are plenty in museums preserved for posterity, IMHO. Many are angry that the government hasn't allowed any to be preserved in flying condition. I agree, that's too bad -- sure would be cool to have a couple in private hands. BUT...Even if the gov't allowed them to fly in private hands, they're phenomenally expensive to maintain and operate. Only one or two or three in the WORLD would probably even ever fly if allowed because of the expense involved.

3) "The government's reason for de-milling the F-14s -- the Iran threat -- is false, fear-mongering, and evidence of the heavy totalitarian hand our government has!" Again, scoffing Iranian F-14s is easy to do from the comfort of your living room. I bet you'd think differently if you were staring down a wall of them from across the Arabian Gulf. For my money, I think we should go to any length to keep US military property from getting into the hands of our adversaries.

Funny you should say that: http://warbirdinformationexchange.org/p ... highlight=



Exactly. You don't have to get the whole airplane, it may only take a circuit board or even access to the parts to provide the "ah-ha" moment to someone who's trying to replicate a part or system. No, the F-14 isn't cutting edge but history shows that intel is typically the sum of info pieced together, not one neat package.

For the record, I also wish DoD sponsored some sort of Legacy Squadron so that F-14s, F-4s, F-86s, and P-47s could be maintained and flown by our military - but I don't think we'll ever see that come to pass.

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"Take care of the little things and the big things will take care of themselves."

There are much easier "aha-hah" sources than a gutted fuselage on a pole. That argument has holes in it considering the Iranians already have all the parts we sold them originally along with the support equipment and blueprints to maintain everything to begin with. There is zero reason to do what was done to the F-14 fleet, because the US sold all that information to Iran to begin with decades before. We sold a whole maintenance infastructure to the Iranians when they got thier F-14s. They just didn't magically get a bunch of F-14s and no means for upkeep.

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F-84F Simulator Project
www.f-84f.org

They don't have the blueprints AFAIK. You can reverse engineer some things, but not everything. Having spare parts on the shelf is different than having the manufacturing methods, processes and procedures (the knowhow) at your fingertips.

I gotta admit I kinda hope Iran gets some of their F-14s back in the air. I mean are they really going to be that much of a threat? There are far more capable aircraft in this world that Iran could get easier and cheaper and would be better then the F-14. Mig 29 comes to mind. I gotta say I dont really care for the U.S. veiws of "We can do it but they can't" system. Dont we have some Mirage III's in our inventory? I don't see any otehr country trying to prevent us from obtaining parts to keep them airworthy. All I'd really like to see is to see at lest 2-3 F-14's kept flying in the USN for airshows. You know perhaps for heritage flights. Why not the USN can afford it!

Oh boy flame suit on!

The F-14 is to the F-18 as the F-15 is to the F-22. Times change.

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CAF SoCal Wing http://www.cafsocal.com/

Did you really not read anything Randy said? Only in movies do you want to show up and dogfight to see how good the other guy is. When lives are on the line the only thing that matters is winning. (Maybe Truman said that?) The USAF would be happiest to destroy the enemy and his IADS with such force and surprise that they never turn a wheel - whether it's MiG 29s, F-14s or Cessna 150s.

Okay, I get it, I'm on Candid Webcam. You wanted to be flamed. That's an odd pastime.