F-14 makes last flight

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F-14 Tomcat makes ceremonial last flight

By SONJA BARISIC, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago

The F-14 Tomcat, the dogfighting Cold War fighter jet immortalized in
the movie "Top Gun," made its ceremonial final flight Friday in a
display that suggested the timing was right for retirement.

Pilot Lt. Cmdr. David Faehnle and radar intercept officer Lt. Cmdr.
Robert Gentry gave a final salute from inside their cockpit before
aircraft no. 102 taxied down the runway and out of sight at Oceana Naval
Air Station.

The plane that actually took off as thousands applauded and whistled,
however, was aircraft no. 107, with Lt. Cmdr. Chris Richard at the
controls and intercept officer Lt. Mike Petronis in the back seat.

The first jet had mechanical problems — "a common occurrence with the
F-14," said Mike Maus, a Navy spokesman. The second jet had been on
standby just in case.

Before the flight, Adm. John Nathman, commander of U.S. Fleet Forces
Command and a former F-14 pilot, said the retiring jet with the
moveable, swept-back wings was "sometimes tough to fly" and tough to fix
— but it was resilient.

"The legacy of this aircraft is not the 'Top Gun' movie," Nathman said.
"The legacy is found in America's commitment to win the Cold War."

Built by what was then Grumman Aircraft Corp., the F-14 joined the Navy
fleet in 1972 and originally was intended to defend U.S. aircraft
carriers from Soviet bombers carrying long-range cruise missiles.

Its dogfighting capabilities were glamorized in the 1986 film "Top Gun,"
starring Tom Cruise, but the need for such aerial feats dropped steeply
when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The Navy retooled the F-14 as a ground-attack jet, and it dropped bombs
over Bosnia and Kosovo in the late 1990s, and helped support ground
troops in Iraq as recently as this year.

The jet's replacement is the F/A-18 Super Hornet attack fighter. The
Navy's last 22 F-14 aircraft deployed came home to Oceana in March, but
one squadron continued to flying the jets until this month.

Gentry likened retiring the Tomcat to "losing a member of the family."

"It's a bittersweet moment to look and realize that pretty soon you
won't be flying that aircraft," he said. "There are few aircraft that
elicit such a strong bond between the air crew and the maintainers and
the people who build them."

About 3,000 guests — mainly former aviators, mechanics, suppliers and
builders — were on hand for the jet's official retirement. The last
flying F-14s will go to museums such as the Virginia Aviation Museum in
Richmond, which received one last week.

Mike Boehme, the museum's executive director, expects the F-14 to be a
big draw. "There's a certain mystique about it," he said.

___

On the Net:

Tomcat Sunset: http://www.tomcat-sunset.org/

F-14 information: http://www.anft.net/f-14

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