Phantom-II development story

"Tony Volk" histoo wrote
in message ...
Lost an engine twice in a F-4, in the 'break' at Cubi, and A/B blowout
off
the
cat...never had any other problems in the F-4 or Turkey.

You never had any problems in the Turkey? Did you fly the -B or -D,
because I thought the TF30s regularly suffered from compressor stalls and
turbine blade failures (especially early on before it was modified). -A
pilots I've spoken to talked about having the fly the engine just as much
as
having to fly the plane. So I would've thought that it'd make a great
posterboy for the 2-engine argument, or were they exagerrating? Thanks,

In approx 1000 hours, I had one F-14 engine fuel control failure. It was a
gradual rollback to the point the engine was below idle in flight with no
throttle control. I experienced 1 engine that would predictably generate
compressor stalls (more than one because I was doing a post-SDLM check and
wanted to document the engine's stall mode AOA, A/S etc).

Throttle transients at high AOA (and the Turkey could momentarily generate
BIG AOA, albeit could not sustain ala F-18) would stall the motors. The
engine didn't like high altitude (45K+) much. The early TF-30's had weak
compressor sections ... lost a few that way. The last iteration I saw,
TF-30P414, was adequate, but not nearly as sweet as the J-52, J-57, J-79.

Only engine prob I had with a J-79 was an oil pressure failure. Shut one
down in the break at Cubi (hmmm, something in the air there?) but that was a
function of a fuel control that had insufficient fuel flow on snap-back and
a bit of excess smack in the break. Relit without a problem.

The real issue with the TF-30 powered Turkey was it was plain flat
underpowered. A VX-4 guy once told several admirals the only thing the F-14
needed was Tumanski engines. That was a career-ending statement.

R / John