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The Tomcat Legacy; 35+ years from Fleet Air Defender to Recce to Precision Strike
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and no i didnt get it from Air Forces Monthly sorry. I got most of the inforation from 'The Great Book of Modern Warplanes.' I suggest if you want to know all you can know about a cirtian aircraft to get this book. It has close to 500 pages(each page is huge)!!! I got it for $20.00 about two years ago at Borders. Each aircraft has about 20 to 30 pages dedicated to it with how it did during test and evaluations (fully colored too). The AV-8 for instance even has about 50. I suggest buying this book if you can find it anywhere. If you cant find it, look for it on Yahoo.
heerothewizard
Registered User
forget interservice rivalry....this is INNERservice rivalry...
just my 2 cents: (might as well comment and say something half-interesting if i'm going to post...) like it or not, the hornet is here to stay. the dod put enough work and money into it that there's no way it's disappearing (sp??) for a while...from what i've heard, the tomcat is going to be phased out. big loss to the naval aviation community, in my opinion. both fighters are great birds, but the glass cockpit sounds so cool!
just my 2 cents: (might as well comment and say something half-interesting if i'm going to post...) like it or not, the hornet is here to stay. the dod put enough work and money into it that there's no way it's disappearing (sp??) for a while...from what i've heard, the tomcat is going to be phased out. big loss to the naval aviation community, in my opinion. both fighters are great birds, but the glass cockpit sounds so cool!
The Tomcat although fast, when put side by side with any other world military's air to air interceptors will be outmaneuvered with a pilot of equal ability. Its age also limits support capability and aging parts requiring more maintenance=more unnecesarry (sp?) man hours spent repairing obsolete gear. The super hornets help the maintenance crew find the problems with electrical systems, I can only imagine was the JSF will be like to fix. The F-18 for those that don't know, was originally the YF-17 and was originally in competition with the YF-16 for a contract with the Air Force for a small, lightweight, medium range fighter that will be superior in air to air combat. The pilots liked the YF-16 better even though on paper the YF-17 should have been the better plane. The Air Force had no choice but to buy the YF-16 because of it's superior performance and cheap cost. The YF-17 was then picked up by the Navy and because of inter service rivalry they didn't want the YF-17 designation being that it was an airforce project so they renamed the fighter the F-18.
i practically lived and breathed F-14 and Grumman for the fist 10 or 12 years of my life. my dad mom grandma grandpa aunt and uncle all worked at either the Bethpage or Calverton grumman plants all designated to the F-14 teams. my dad was a structural engineer for the F-14 design team during the B and D super tomcat development stage. my dad also headed a team that designed the camera mounts for the movie topgun (similar to where LANTIRN is located). for me it's really sad to see the potential end of the "Cat" era, it's the family airplane, and i know especially for former grumman employees and family members of... theres a huge sense of pride to see a Tomcat fly overhead knowing that ur family was a part of one the most well known and respected aircraft in naval aviation. if u guys want any rare photos of some tomcats i have some grumman photos of pre-full production and testing phases on the F-14B and D models over calverton, LI. Gimme a holla and an email.
vegita1220
User
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The YF-17 is almost completely a diff plane from the F-18. That's like comparing the Bug to the Super Bug.
I've heard a counter to every Super Bug/Bug sucks argument except one...range. Fact is, Tomcat still beats every Hornet model in range/payload. That's why big planes are nice...which is why that annoying bastard kevin has a point w/the Su-27/37. Big planes carry more stuff, and the Navy's number one mission today is whacking T's.
Oh and zuggerat, my school's aerospace eng. hall is named Grumman Hall. Didn't really quite get it at first.
The YF-17 is almost completely a diff plane from the F-18. That's like comparing the Bug to the Super Bug.
I've heard a counter to every Super Bug/Bug sucks argument except one...range. Fact is, Tomcat still beats every Hornet model in range/payload. That's why big planes are nice...which is why that annoying bastard kevin has a point w/the Su-27/37. Big planes carry more stuff, and the Navy's number one mission today is whacking T's.
Oh and zuggerat, my school's aerospace eng. hall is named Grumman Hall. Didn't really quite get it at first.
kevin
Registered User
my point about the su37 is that it has the best features of our fighters roled into one. it's got the speed, payload and range of the 15/14, the maneuverability of the 16/18 (and a whole lot more), and a lot of good engineering. as far as avionics and weapons go, im no engineer and dont know a whole lot, but it seems to have it (at least from an air-air point of view, and with rearfacing radar). ground targeting it is lacking, but i cant imagine it would be overly difficult to reconfigure a design in these aspects to fit what youre looking for.
the YF-16 IS the F-16 and the YF-17 IS the F-18. Their roles were to support the air superiority fighters. I.e. the F-15 and F-14. After the AF took the YF-16, the Navy needed something to replace the A-6 so they took the YF-17, which is now the F-18. At the same time the AF was looking for a dual role fighter/bomber and it was a choice between todays F-15E and a modified F-16 with delta wings to increase payload, it looked a little freaky to me, needless to say the AF to the F-15E.