Top Gun's Tomcat retired
From:
By David Nason
February 20, 2006
AN era of aviation history has drawn to a close with the US-made F-14 Tomcat fighter plane - the one flown into the danger zone by Tom Cruise in the film Top Gun - being withdrawn from active service.
The Tomcat is going into mothballs because advances in military technology have made its greatest attribute - the ability to manoeuvre at high speeds and in close combat situations - redundant.
Launch ... a Tomcat climbs on afterburners as it takes off from the deck of an aircraft carrier / file
Fighter planes no longer need such abilities because they don't dogfight any more. Instead, pilots shoot at each other with target-seeking rockets, sometimes from 20km away.
The Tomcats were officially retired from service last week, replaced by FA-18 Super Hornets that are cheaper to maintain, easier to operate from aircraft carriers and able to carry more bombs.
The F-14 requires nearly 50 maintenance hours for every flight hour compared to five to 10 hours maintenance for the FA-18.
Advertisement:
The F-14 entered operational service in 1974 when two squadrons were assigned to the USS Enterprise, replacing F-4 Phantom fighters that were eventually phased out in 1986.
The US Defence Department said the last Tomcat combat mission was a bombing raid in Iraq led by Captain William Sizemore, who said the Tomcat was one of the best planes ever built. "It's just a beautiful airplane," he said. "It's powerful. It has presence and it just looks like the ultimate fighter."
In the 1986 movie Top Gun, Cruise played Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, a brilliant but rebellious trainee pilot at the US Navy's elite flight school in Miramar, California.
The Tomcat was designed in the Cold War era to be the world's best fighter-interceptor. Its primary task was to defend aircraft carriers against cruise missile-armed Soviet aircraft.
A supersonic, twin-engine, two-seat fighter, the Tomcat is capable of attacking and destroying enemy aircraft at night and in all weather.
The upgraded F-14A version was equipped with General Electric F-110 engines that made it the fastest close-combat fighter plane in history.
But following the loss of three aircraft over four weeks in 1996, the US Navy restricted Tomcats from flying high speeds at low altitude and prohibited afterburner use except for operational emergencies.
Tomcats provided air cover for the joint strike on Libyan terrorist targets in 1986, downing six Soviet-made MIG fighters in two dogfights.
They also flew 781 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm in Iraq in 1991.
In 1995, as part of Operation Deliberate Force in Bosnia, Tomcats were nicknamed "Bombcats" for delivering laser-guided smart bombs to UN targets.
In the mid-1970s the US sold 79 to Iran before that country's 1979 Islamic revolution.