Talk:Grumman F-14 Tomcat/Archive 4

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3 Archive 4

P&W TF30

The Pratt & Whitney TF30 engines' characteristics are not listed here. Although perhaps none of the Navy's jets still had them (I am only guessing), the Iranians surely still use the original TF30. So when the article lists its performance, there is no listing for the original engine and the engine as flown in Iran. I like to saw logs! (talk) 03:37, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

The TF30 engine is covered multiple places in the text and has its own article. The specs are for the F-14D, the last main Tomcat variant which used a newer engine. -Fnlayson (talk) 11:18, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I know those points well; however, the article doesn't mention that the specs are for the updated Navy version (D model). All current (still flying) Tomcats are Iranian and they do not have the performance advantage of the GE added 20 years later. The article should cover this by listing the A model's performance separately or prominently. Most other military airplane articles list multiple specs for different models, and usually start out with the as-built performance. I like to saw logs! (talk) 22:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The article clearly says Specifications (F-14D) as the title of the specification section, it is normal only to list one set of specifications on aircraft articles which is normally the more common variant. The fact that Iran is flying a different model to the specifications is not normally a consideration for changing the specs. MilborneOne (talk) 22:53, 6 December 2013 (UTC)
(e/c) I don't believe there is that much difference in the specs from F-14A to F-14D, but I can check. The Aircraft project guidelines say only one specs table should be listed in general. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:11, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Shredding an F-14

Regarding shredding since I saw the edits earlier... Youtube has a video of an F-14 being torn apart and the pieces run through a shredder. Looks like they separated out the stronger stuff like landing gear and removed the engines prior to shredding. --Dual Freq (talk) 22:39, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I recall seeing article(s) where they started shredding them. I have not seen anything about that being completed. I need to really look for this... -Fnlayson (talk) 22:50, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

FWIW, http://www.amarcexperience.com has inventory files, the latest csv file says there are 4x F-14A, 2x F-14B, 3x F-14D and 1x NF-14A remaining at AMARG/AMARC.Here is the summary, 10 F-14's. They also have transfer records, looking at 2007, many F-14's left AMARC and the handful I clicked said, to HVF West, Tucson, AZ scrapped. I assume that means "shredded." To much primary sourcing, I suppose. --Dual Freq (talk) 00:59, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

  • Thanks for the info. For now we can just say they began shredding them until they are all done. -Fnlayson (talk) 14:56, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

This says last 20 to be scrapped were taken by Aug 2009 with 11 left in storage at that time. Still appears to be 10 still at AMARG in 2014. 2 of them are in Celebrity row, there is no way to know what will happen to them, perhaps museum or scrapped. As a side note, in searching for this info, there seems to be a belief in forums that "all" F-14's were not scrapped. And that that must be some conspiracy since the government said "all" were to be scrapped. I also found some news about 4 F-14's being seized in 2007 from California museums and the production company for Jag.[1] Maybe more than is needed for this article, but interesting to note. I'm not sure I understand why there was such a hurry to scrap them, since there are 270 F-4's and almost 150 A-4's sitting around at AMARC, but I guess it doesn't matter now. --Dual Freq (talk) 21:23, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

I guess the urgency with Iran subsided and then the budget cuts came, which probably made the shredding job not so critical since 2009. -Fnlayson (talk) 21:35, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

MiG-25

The MiG-25 is not comparable to the "Tomcat". The "Foxbat"-Interceptors were solely designed to intercept the planned XB-70 Valkyrie mach 3 bomerbs, with their AA-6 Acrid AAMs.

All other armament merely was for self-defence or SR attacks against the XB-70.

The specs. for the F-14 demanded a "multirole-fighter" for, CAP, QRA and escort duties.

--87.78.20.187 (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Mach speed erroneous?

It is stated for the F-14 a top speed of 2,485 km/h, this Wiki page gives a speed of 1225 Km/h for Mach 1. Shouldn't the top speed of the F-14 be Mac 2.02 insted of 2.34? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.68.3.80 (talk) 07:52, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

The article you linked to states "The speed represented by Mach 1 is not a constant; for example, it is mostly dependent on temperature." Mach 1 is 1225 Km/h at sea level. Mach 2.34 for the Tomcat is at high altitude, not sea level. - BilCat (talk) 09:55, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Double redirect

  • Arado, please note that nobody doubts you. Also, we know that the F-14 is indeed a jet fighter but the link you added actually creates a redirect back to Fighter Aircraft and then into the sub-section, thereby taxing the server. Please keep things simple. Thank you. --Dave ♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫® 17:46, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
OK, revert my jet fighter edits all over Wikipedia, i have better things to do than argue over taxing the server.--Arado (talk) 18:05, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Granted but please don't be so sensitive, we're all here to improve Wikipedia. Nobody is arguing with you in this discussion. --Dave ♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫® 18:11, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
  • All in all this is not a major thing either way. Keep up the good work, carry on. -Fnlayson (talk) 18:14, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I think engine spacing is 13ft, not "1 to 3ft".

In case someone reverts my edit as "unreferenced", a 3ft spacing is impossible given the swept span of 38ft. 3ft is almost touching each other..45Colt 04:50, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I've reverted your changes as unreferenced, as you're basically guessing that the separation is 13 feet. The text states, "The twin engines are housed in nacelles, spaced apart by 1 to 3 ft (0.30 to 0.91 m)." it seems to be referring to the spacing between the nacelles, not the engines within them. One foot does seem too close, but three feet seems more reasonable than 13 feet. On a scale model, it's easy to see that the inner nacelles are angled, and get closer together towards the rear of the aircraft. I have a good book on the F-14, and it has good details. I'll check it later when I have access to it. - BilCat (talk) 06:02, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

It looks like it was added in January 2008 as 1 – 3 ft, without a clear citation.[2] It absolutely can not be 1 ft as the AIM-54 is 15" diameter and two can easily fit in between. I don't think we should be guessing and 1 – 3 ft is impossible, I think the sentence should be removed completely. I have a book with a 63 page section on the F-14 and it does not even spell out the exact spacing, so I don't think it's worth specifying an exact number here either. --Dual Freq (talk) 14:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

For the sake of discussion, if we were going to guesstimate / WP:OR, I have a huge coffee table book with an 63 page F-14 section in it, written by Mike Spick (ISBN 0-517-63367-1). It talks at length about the design and the wide engine spacing, but it doesn't seem to say exactly how wide that area is. Tail fin spacing is not specified either, but it goes into detail about how the design was almost a single tail aircraft. The book does specifically say the wing pivot spacing is 8.92 ft from center line (17.84 ft). The wing pivot point is a few feet outside of the 4 ft diameter engine nacelle. anft.net has a nice drawing with BL numbers listed in inches. It lists BL 107" for wing pivot which matches what my book says: 8.92 ft. Looking at the Glove vane pivot, it is listed as BL 68.5" (5.7 ft or 11.42 ft spacing). The glove vane pivot looks to be fairly close to center line of the engines, though just outside of it. anft.net has another page that says 10'8" for the tail fin spacing, which seems plausible for the root of the tail fin, though the drawing says it is for the tops. It's not enough to list a specific number in the article, but 10 to 11 feet seems to be the correct spacing to me. --Dual Freq (talk) 14:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

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adding a map of all the remaining Tomcats

Hi ,

I made a map of all the remaining Tomcats :

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FAORCeD_pinQJVFsOKEppG_mLrs&usp=sharing

I tried to add it to the page put it was deleted. Did I sth wrong? Thx — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:7E8:C970:1100:C07E:A7DF:B649:32FA (talk) 22:34, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

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Abandonment of swing-wings

For a while there, American high-speed jets (F-111, F-14, B-1, SST) seemed to be big on swing wings, but now, those are passé. Clearly, there was something about them that was sub-optimal, or they would still be used. What was the problem? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 17:04, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Short answer: Weight and computers.
Long answer: This is more of a forum-type question for this article's talk page. The last paragraph of Variable-sweep wing covers your questions. If that doesn't answer your questions, you can use that article's talk page, as further questions could be addressed in the article. - BilCat (talk) 17:53, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
@Piledhigheranddeeper: PS, it wasn't just American designs, as the Soviet Union also had several such types, and several European designs were developed, though the Tornado was the only production type. - BilCat (talk) 17:56, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Improved wing designs using Supercritical airfoil probably helped in the late 1960s/early 1970s before computer flight controls came into use. --Finlayson (talk) 18:04, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
I thought weight and/or reliability of all that additional machinery might be the answer. Thanks. --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 19:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Yes, I believe the improvements in wing designs along with other improvements helped make it where the extra hardware & complexity for swing wing design was no longer needed. --Finlayson (talk) 20:39, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

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Characterization of service with Iran

I made an edit to the Iran subsection of the Operational history section. This explains the rationale behind the change.

It's accepted among the most current, scholarly Western sources that the Iranian Air Force, with its F-14s, performed well during the Iran-Iraq War. Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop are not the only Western sources who conclude the F-14 was an effective counter-air asset for the Iranians. I can't find a scholarly source stating a Western estimate of 4-5 kills by F-14s (it might be from a publication from the 80s which stated how many Iranian air-to-air kills were actually observed by DOD assets in the region during the war). Regardless, that estimate doesn't reflect the preponderance of analysis on Iranian F-14 performance during the Iran-Iraq War found in the most current publications on the subject. The following are some scholarly Western sources concerning Iranian F-14 and Iranian Air Force performance during the Iran-Iraq War starting from most current to least current:

1) TRENDS IN AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT - IMPLICATIONS FOR FUTURE AIR SUPERIORITY by John Stillion, 2015

- In the study Stillion states: “Their crews, all trained in the United States, were credited with over two hundred aerial victories including sixty-two kills by F-14 crews using AIM-54 Phoenix missiles.”

- Stillion describes Tom Cooper's and Farzad Bishop's research on the Iran-Iraq War as “among the best unclassified sources on the largest air war fought anywhere in the world in the past fifty years”

2) THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR - A MILITARY AND STRATEGIC HISTORY by Williamson Murray and Kevin M. Woods, 2014

The authors, both professional historians/researchers, use Iraqi documents obtained after the 2003 U.S. invasion. They provide some Iraqi perspective on the F-14 and how effective and intimidating Iranian counter-air capabilities were to the Iraqis. They also cite some of Cooper’s and Bishop’s research. The following are some descriptions of what was in the Iraqi documents they used which help characterize the performance of Iranian air defense/counter-air capabilities and their F-14s:

- Pg 104: Some Iraqi pilots were refusing to execute missions into Iranian air space just one week after the war started. In a transcript from 30 September 1980 during a meeting with Saddam Hussein, Hussein authorized the execution of pilots who refused to perform their missions; and he was upset Iraqis “have not downed even one aircraft” and stated the “pilots of the enemy are like rockets raiding us.”

- Pg 199: An Iraqi intelligence document from December 1981 states the Iranians had enough qualified fighter pilots to fly their mission capable aircraft. The Iraqis estimated the Iranian F-14 fleet at this point in the war was achieving a 20% readiness rate.

- Pg 196: An Iraqi intelligence document from August 1982 reported eight Iranian F-4s and four Iranian F-14s that were being prepared to carry out an air strike on Baghdad. (The attack occurred but the strike did not destroy the intended target.)

- Pg 236: An Iraqi intelligence document from 15 December 1984 states Iran had 72 of an initial 78 F-14s.

- Pg 237: In a transcript from 1988, Saddam Hussein claimed he orchestrated some of the Iranian purges of its F-14 pilots. He said: “The Iranian F-14s were assigned to defend Kharg as an alternative to anti-aircraft weapons. So we were watching out for them, because we knew they could hurt our airplanes in either the trip over or the trip back. So I asked a certain party to go tell the political leaders in a certain Gulf nation that there were some Iranian pilots who wanted to desert with their F-14 planes and if they could please allow them to land, because arrangements have been made to seek asylum in Iraq.” (Several purges of air force personnel occurred in 1983 and 1984.)

3) THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR by Pierre Razoux, 2013

- Pg 139: Describes the air war during the first several months of the war in 1980; “After three months of nearly daily air combat, the score was sixty kills to fifteen, in favor of the Iranians.”

- Other accounts of the F-14's performance throughout the book are similar to (if not taken directly from) Tom Cooper’s and Farzad Bishop’s research.

4) IMMORTAL - A MILITARY HISTORY OF IRAN AND ITS ARMED FORCES by Steven R. Ward, 2009

- Pg 208: Describes how F-14s were used conservatively under the Shah but that “Iranian Tomcat pilots later distinguished themselves” during the war.

- Pg 249: Iranian air strikes over Iraq “combined with the Iranian pilots’ victories in nearly all of the limited air-to-air combat, caused Baghdad to virtually ground its air force. The Iraqis did not return to the skies in force until Iran's maintenance problems reduced the number of Iranian sorties.”

5) ARABS AT WAR - MILITARY EFFECTIVENESS, 1948 - 1991 by Kenneth M. Pollack, 2002

- Pg. 218: Iraqi counter attack at al-Faw in February 1986, during which Iraq lost another “20-25 aircraft to Iranian F-14s and air defenses”

- Pg 232: “Throughout the war, Iraqi fighters were regularly defeated by the Iranians.”

- This book was completed before Cooper's and Bishop's research was published. Like in "Immortal", it characterizes air-to-air combat between Iraq and Iran as limited and that Iraqi pilots usually chose not to fight unless they had a "significant numerical advantage" (pg 214) of "three to one or four to one" with their Mirage F-1s (Pg. 232).

6) THE FAILURE OF THIRD WORLD AIR POWER - IRAQ AND THE WAR WITH IRAN by Douglas A. Kupersmith thesis for the school of advanced airpower studies, 1993

- This source doesn’t specifically state the F-14’s contributions to the war but states Iraqi aircraft losses at 200 two years and three months into the war (by Jan 1983) and that “the Iranian air force with almost no source of supply--could fend off the numerically superior Iraqi air force.”

7) FMFRP 3-203 LESSONS LEARNED: THE IRAN-IRAQ WAR VOLUME I, U.S. Marine Corps Publication, 1990

- "The Iranian F-4s were formidable, and the Iraqi Mig-23 was not a match for the F-14. In particular, the Iraqis seem t have feared the Phoenix missiles with which the F-14s were equipped."

I will try to figure out a way to incorporate some of this into the article once I have time. Agsftw (talk) 05:25, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

The Turkey

I've found a good source for the F-14 being nicknamed "Turkey" here, but I'm not sure the best place to add it in the article. The source gives the reason, the way it looked in flight on take-off and landing, along with the fact that the TBF/TBM Avenger had the same nickname for probably the same reason. - BilCat (talk) 06:03, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, taking a quick peek at the article I'd say your best bet would be putting it at the beginning of the USN operational history. Sario528 (talk) 11:45, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
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