renrich
Chief Master Sergeant
I don't claim to have the tech expertise of most of you, but have always liked the F14 a great deal and have at least one good book about the design and development of the Tomcat(as well as the F15.) Also had a long conversation with a Tomcat driver at an airshow in (believe it or not) Gunnison, CO. The book states that F14 was designed at first as a kind of "sniper" with a lot of loiter capability. To lie in wait for enemy bombers like the Backfire and shoot them down from long range with the Phoenix. When the Navy pilots began to turn and burn with the Tomcat it was found that the PW engine it was equipped with did not handle well the sudden and frequent throttle inputs. Thus the eventual switch to the GE engine. I have read that the F14 performance is not much degraded by the weapon stores because the weapons are carried conformally(in the tunnel) whereas weapons carried under wing like the F15 and F16 and F18 significantly impact performance. Can youall illuminate that factor. I still theorise that a newly manufactured Strike Tomcat would have served our Navy better than the F18 E-F.