Warbird Information Exchange

Well I guess if any collector ever wanted to get his hands on a restorable F-14, he'll be going to Iran!

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"If its red or dusty - DON'T TOUCH IT!

...or the U.S. Navy will be in the embarassing position to have to purchase F-14s from Iran (assuming friendlier relations occur when the Ayatollahs get tossed out) to have enough for the various supercarrier museums that may spring up.

My guess is Enterprise will probably be put on display near the USS Wisconsin in Norfolk...close enough that the Navy can keep an eye on her. Apparently, only the weather decks are open on the Wisconsin, as the Navy could still put her back into service if the need ever arose.

We have purchased aircraft before from other countries just so that they wouldn't hit the black market. The NMUSAF Mig-29 is an example of that.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

I know why they had to destroy all the Tomcats.....the US Government has seen too many Michael Bay movies!

Imagine the plot. Iranian sleeper cells around the country position themselves in cities in which museums have obtained Tomcats as well as around AMARC. With judicious use of gasoline based explosives they free the remaining entire tomecats, fire them up and take off on the museum parking lots and highways. They then use the Tomcats to raid US Nuclear plants for their uranium and fly back to Iran to begin their takeover of the middle east.....that is until THE TRANSFORMERS catch wind of the plot!!!!!

Sounds silly right? So does melting down every single piece of an entire line of very historic aircraft to keep any and every part (that could be reverse engineered anyway) out of the hands of a rouge country millions of miles away. Its a shame the only place in the world to see a Tomcat fly is IRAN! Hell the way they do their "airshows" every Tomcat will have crashed by 2018 anyway. Navy F-4 drivers out there are laughing as their Phantoms are still in the US inventory (in super small numbers) while all the Toms have been smelted. Arg.

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Cessna 195

My opinion (which is worth less than the electrons spent typing this response) ...

The government decided that the threat of Iranians getting hold of Tomcat parts necessitated tight control over them, and this ultimately ended up with an edict to shred them ASAP after their final retirement from the fleet. There was reason for this - many attempts, both successful and unsuccessful, were made to get parts out of the country. Unfortunately, government's hand was way too heavy and way too sweeping. The parts critical to Iran were not basic airframe parts, which they could fairly easily reproduce on their own. It was the electronics they were after. Those could have been removed and destroyed or whatever without shredding the airframes. Many Tomcats never made it to Tucson - they were scrapped on site at Oceana, Norfolk, and North Island.

Just another example of government going way too far to achieve a goal, and the 'blinders on' method of carrying out instructions to the end without questioning or revisiting them. Once a government program/edict is put into place, it is almost impossible to stop/modify it.

How many times in the past have we seen (just in aviation) where upgrade programs were done to aircraft just to have them delivered to the boneyard? Anyone remember F-111 Pacer Strike? The mods to F-111F aircraft made them one of the most accurate medium strike aircraft in the world. The modifications were completed in time for most of the airframes to be delivered directly to Tucson for retirement. Once the decision was made to retire the -111s prematurely, one would have thought that the very expensive upgrade program would have been terminated. Not our government, that's for sure...

Provided they could find enough people that could operate the weapons and propulsion system to fill out a crew. I'm not holding my breath.

I think that there are probably several tomcats "off the books" where the Navy can get at them if they were ever needed. . . maybe. . . .

It would be nice if there are a few of them pigeonholed somewhere, but it would be surprising. The SARDIP (stripping and scrapping) operations I saw at Oceana made it clear that once the birds were stripped of usable parts, the scrapper's torch was just a few hours away, right there on base. That was a pretty cold process that brought a lot of tears ... the base where they were stationed for 30+ years had to watch them being cut up with torches.

The rework facility at North Island may have a few still on site, but I don't know how it can be verified.

Norfolk and Nauticus have obtained full rights to Wisky and have the ok to crack the seals and start letting people go inside regularly for tours.

http://hamptonroads.com/2009/12/norfolk ... n-nauticus

But by next spring, Nauticus director Hank Lynch said he expects to begin offering tours of parts of the ship's interior. Within three years, he said, most of the ship's entire interior will be open, including the combat information center, berthing areas, and the barber and doughnut shops.

There's limited space on the Norfolk side of the river, and Enterprise is the only nuke carrier that does all its overhauls at NNS rather than going up the river to NNSY for the incremental stuff. Assuming that the Navy does allow her to be put onto display of course. Senator John Warner, R-NAVY (and VA too!) tried VERY hard to get the USS Virginia for Nauticus and couldn't get the Navy to budge. Although as I said earlier I think Enterprise, like Nautilus, is a special deal. But even with the reactors yanked out they're still going to want to keep her as short a tow to NNS as possible. That would indicate a display berthing closer to the Roads.

It's interesting you mention that. Accoding to my brother-in-law, who was in the Navy at the time, when the battleships were first being modernized, the Navy had to recall World War II and Korean War vets to show them how the run the propulsion systems.

During the Reagan adminstration, there were also plans to modernize the Essex-class carriers (again!) still in Navy inventory. Again, the propulsion systems were the main reason this plan was discarded.

That's pretty awesome. I'll be in Norfolk this October...I'll have to make sure I leave myself time to tour Wisky.

Last time I was there, I got there too late to get on the ship. As I walked around the pier, there was a lone mallard duck paddling alongside her. The mallard had a look that seemed to say "Okay hunters, do you really want to mess with me and my big brother"? I snapped a pic of it with my cell phone, but the mallard only shows up as a black dot.

Technically that's not actually true. I was there in Sept 2012 and there were 7 x Tomcats visible. Not exactly the number we'd all like to see but better than nothing. There are two in celebrity row, one as a gate guard near some admin buildings and then a small group of four hidden away in the middle of the field.

Folks, the inside of the USS Wisconsin is open for tours. The Navy struck her from the list in '09, and turned her over to the city of Norfolk.

With regard to saving the Enterprise (CVN-65) as a museum, I wouldn't count on that happening. Too many difficulties involved with removing 8 nuclear reactors (much of the ship's "innards" will be disected to get them out!) and it would be seriously cost prohibitive set her up as a museum. The best "intel" I have on the subject indicates that several of the museum ships are in financial extremis, so adding a new one - even the venerable Enterprise - seems unlikely to me. The last I heard about it (from a current crew member) is that she will be scrapped after the reactors are removed. God Bless her and all who sailed on her.

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"Thou shalt maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground reach up and smite thee."

I will shed more than a few tears at this news. I was a Tomcat airframes/hydraulics tech for 3.5 years in VF 211. It is really sad. I shed tears when they retired the Tomcat in 2006. It didn't take them long to shred the majority of the fleet.

I remember thinking on the 1991 Westpac what a "girlie" airplane the F18 was. Everything the F18 could do the Tomcat could do and with so much more style! In 1992 VF211 and VF24 were the first west coast fleet squadrons to drop live bombs. Turning the Tomcat into the Bombcat.

We (VF211) went to sea in 1991 with the GE F110 powered F14A+ (later renamed the F14B), about half of our airplanes were remanufactured A models and the other half were brand new production F14Bs. I know that the design was getting old but the Navy was buying newly built airplanes. Also the F14B carried the APG71 radar of the F15 instead of the old AWG9 of the F14A.

I also remember when the Navy was talking about re-sparing the A6 Intruder. They opted not to and instead go with the F18 and in the process lost thier heavy attack capability. Dumb A**es.

Greetings all,

The following Tomcats are listed as being in AMARG in the Oct12 list:

F-14A 159437 2/11/1992 24
F-14A 160671 3/19/2007 27
F-14A 160928 4/2/2007 27
F-14A 161866 10/23/2003 DISPLAY ROW
F-14B 162691 9/21/2005 24
F-14B 163409 4/11/2005 24
F-14D 164341 9/20/2006 DISPLAY ROW
F-14D 164345 9/15/2006 24
F-14D 164602 3/28/2006 8
NF-14A 160378 8/21/2000 24

So there are a few left of each model.

Dave in NJ