Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

One of the F-22 threads had some F-14 "bashing."

I'd say the F-14 did its job as a fleet defense fighter but because of that was compromised as an air superiority fighter.

Any guys who know how it fared in DACT?

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I don't think the tomcat was ever really used for the job it was originally designed for: delivering Phoenix missiles to incoming bombers at long range.

Maybe the wording made it unclear. The plane had to carry a powerful radar capable of looking past ECM without AWACS support to down bombers. It had to fly out and orbit a long distance from the fleet on CAP. With those two factors there was no way it was going to be as good as the F-15 as an OCA platform.

Whatever you think about it, you have to admit that it's one badass looking jet. On a side note, I'm sure we remember that last dogfight scene from Top Gun where Tom Cruise has a MiG-28 (Northrop F-5) on his six. He gives us that classic "I'm gonna hit the brakes, he'll fly right by" line. Is that basically a variation on the Pugachev Cobra maneuver? You see his nose point up, but the Tomcat doesn't change altitude and it loses airspeed.

I'm guessing the F-14 could never actually pull off that maneuver? That is of course aside from the fact that you've got a great target for a heat seeker when you do something like that.

Last edited by haavarla on May 01, 2012 - 06:51 PM; edited 2 times in total

IceMaverick@
in real situation, for an F-14 to do such a manvere, it would be reckless and flatt out dangerous for any F-14 pilot.
The F-14 had some issue with spin in Yaw direction when stalling. IMO even bigger issue of recover from such situation. The Engines was not very helpfull eighter in these situation(airflow disruption).

It simply cannot replicate the Pugachev Cobra maneuver or some variant of it, not even during Display.
Let us just comes to term with the difference between move and reality here.

If you want to learn about the F-14 slow speed handlings, you should search for any USN pilot quote, or buy some Aviation books on the matter.

While the F-14 can fly slow, IMO landing on carriers, it had its downside on the same issue as well.
It was a though(hard) bird to fly, this is the stuff u get from USN pilot whom has flown both the F-14 and later on the F-18 and SH..

Anyway, close in fights was not what the designers had in mind with the F-14. It was more an interceptor than anything else. I'm not bashing the F-14. I just pointing out some of the short comings of the bird.

Edit:
Allmost all Jet aircraft(jet fighters too) will most likely loose control in roll direction first upon stalling. My point with the F-14 is that when on final approach it was quite difficult to keep the nose(YAW direction) on the Carrier ILS(Spike) system, due to the slow speed.
When u add landing in pitch black and in windy condition, it often was a nightmare to land the F-14(not that its easy in the first place). Laughing

On the same note, if the pilot did not pay full attention on the airspeed(KIAS), they could drop out of the sky, the engines on F-14 was not very responsive if u compair it with newer engine like F414 etc.

haavarla wrote:

All aircraft will most likely loose control in roll direction first upon stalling.

Most likely not, or at least models from between WW1 and 2 onwards as the wing is designed to stall the root first (or simultaneously in the worst case).

Most likely(normaly) loose control in roll, sometimes in yaw direction.
I guess you would know better than any BAE test pilot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqcHXbO3 ... ure=relmfu

Look from 06:00 min and he pretty much comfirm what i said.

@haavarla,
again you're mixing things.
What RAF pilot said there is something else from what you think he said.
In short, you can have stalled wings, but still not depart a controlled flight and you can have non-stalled wings, but your plane already departed controlled flight, which was the major design problem solved in between World Wars.
This was the point, you obviously missed.

Last edited by haavarla on May 01, 2012 - 10:48 AM; edited 1 time in total

Where does he state that?
He stated that a fully stalled jet would loose control, normaly in roll direction, and sometimes in Yaw direction. He mention it as a general rule, not specificly the Flanker on a display..

What mostly happen is that one wing stall before the other, starts roll over and then u loose the roll control. Quite simple really.
Thats what there is to it. This was my earlier statment above.

Any jet has to lower the nose to recover from a stall, but not all jet can recover, some do it eventually, and some quite fast. It all depends on the altidude, speed and Aerodynamic design.

This was before all the fancy FCS too.
But This is beside my point.
Stop mixing the subject here.

What didn't make sense to me about that move was that they had described the adversaries as smaller, lighter, and more maneuverable than F-14s, which means they should be better at that trick, and just stay with them, not blow by.

Agreed.
I might have worked if the chaser was sniffing his tail. But what about other potencial Bad guy(wingman) out there, a stalled or near stalled F-14 would make a nice target practice.
Well, its a Movie, and quite unrelistic as such.

haavarla wrote:

He stated that a fully stalled jet would loose control, normaly in roll direction, and sometimes in Yaw direction. He mention it as a general rule, not specificly the Flanker on a display..

LOL kid, Mr.Farley isn't "any BAe test pilot", but a very experienced "driver" and he can say what he said.
You can't.

Anyway, to avoid confusion he was talking about departed flight, or "fully stalled" for public, because kiddies don't understand him otherwise.
There are planes that fly in post-stall regimes while retaining a degree of control, which is called partially departed flight.

haavarla wrote:

What mostly happen is that one wing stall before the other, starts roll over and then u loose the roll control. Quite simple really.
Thats what there is to it. This was my earlier statment above.

Where does he talk about asymmetrical stall?

Quote:

LOL kid, Mr.Farley isn't "any BAe test pilot", but a very experienced "driver" and he can say what he said.
You can't.

What!?
http://www.harrier.org.uk/history/history_farley.htm

Was he a Test pilot for BAe or not?
So now i can't quote or use his quote as sources to prove you wrong, or prove my point?
I see you have a hard time adimtting your blunder here.

You claimed earlier that a jet would loose control in Yaw first and foremost. I proved u wrong.
For the record, i was not talking about WW1-WW2 aircraft and neighter did John Farley.
You can try to ingore or twist my point with your arroganse..
Learn some manner when debating here.
And i'm most certainly not any Kid, allthough in my advanced age i guess i should take it as a compliment..

Quote:

Where does he talk about asymmetrical stall?

He does at the start of that vid(Symmetrical airflow on the Flanker or the lack of it).
And i was putting it up on a simple visuall explenation.
Thats what happen when a jet stall, one wing would loose the lift/(stall) right before the other, and you get the wing drop(the jet loose control in roll direction).

Now i'm pretty sure you will try and prove me wrong sinse i do not produce any Aerodynamic formula to hopless complicate my point.

haavarla wrote:

So now i can't quote or use his quote as sources to prove you wrong, or prove my point?

No, you can't.
You don't know what he said in the first place, obviously you don't know what I said neither, you don't know how flow separation works in relationship with Reynolds number and angle of incidence, you don't know how's wing designed for controlled stall and you can't figure the Tail slide is a symmetrical stall.

So, you see, no.
You don't get to quote no one and particularly not him.

I just have to quote someone from another forum here. That forum isn't about planes, but they come up sometimes, and one guy there says he used to work in maintenance of F-14 avionics & fire control systems. (I don't claim he's lying about that, but don't consider him a good information source; he appears to be a teller of tall tales.) He has some interesting claims about his squadron of F-14s compared to Air Force counterparts...

Quote:

We... definately could eat up anything the Airforce or Navy could throw at us at the time. And thats without using the Phoenix. The very best anyone ever did against us was to die 4 to 1. Elite Airforce squandron out of Japan. Normally they died at 7 to 1 to 12 to 1.

Quote:

(I got to watch from the TACTs trailer!) One tactic in four on four combat, developed over months on the range and at sea was to close until a set range was reached, (20 nm?), just inside direct aquisition by the zoomies onboard radars, kill their *own* radars to hide, reverse course and accelerate away.

The Zoomies would get all "Woo hoo!" and give pursuit. The Tomcats would get 30 nm of seperation between them and their pursuit, out of visual and the F-15's radar range, (at the time) then the two on the left would break left and the two on the right would break right and they would do wide thirty mile turns at high speed.

The Zoomies of course, not seeing this, would continue their pursuit and then be horribly surprised when the Tomcats turned their radars back on, 10 miles out and off their port and starboard quarters. (Their biggest radar cross section). Then came the swarm of sparrows and 'winders. It was beautiful to watch.

And even you Airforce guys have to acknowledge that that is a good trick to pull. I never saw them come up with a good counter to that in my enlistment.

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Now the real show here are the aircrews, of course. These guys rocked. The line up was 25% noobs and transfers from other aircraft types, 25% TopGun grads, and 50% former TopGun instructors! Giving these guys Tomcats that worked as advertised just wasn't fair. A lot of them had dodged AAA and SAMS over North Vietnam. (I was in late 70's early 80's.)

So when we fought the Airforce we hurt them. Every time. The BEST they ever did was die 4 to 1 when some elite outfits flying out of bases in Japan challenged us. 7 to 1 was average and sometimes we would just eat reservists.

Quote:

The reason why I feel I can talk smack in the first place was because my squadron absolutely freakin' mauled the Air Force in every single war game excercise we went up against them in.

Navy F-14's vs. Air Force F-15's in most cases.

The very best the Air force had to offer, the forward squadrons out of Japan would die before us at a rate of four to one. State side was a constistant seven to one and Air Force reservists squadrons was twelve to one.

If any of you Zoomies want to check my math I was in VF-211 between '79 and '83. Fleet average on missile hits was 45%, my outfit averaged 103%, due to extra credit assignments, including downing an SR-71.

And then I got enough rank and rate to accompany the away team that went to Nellis Air Force Base during these excercises and was sort of amazed at how much Air Force ground crews seemed like postal workers.

Their barracks had house keepers. As in maid service.

When one of their ***** groundcrew got blown down by jet exhaust, *the pilot* got in trouble! Actually saw that happen, eyes on, twice in a week! Both times I saw it was going to happen a full minute before it did because both the ground crew guys were OBVIOUSLY not paying attention. We looked at that like arresting somebody because their teeth cut up your knuckles. Seriously guys, your on a freakin' flightline, pull your head out and pay attention! You're on a land based runway for God's Sake! I had to deal with 50 plus turning combat aircraft crammed into five acres of flightdeck!

Forum: Modern Military Aircraft

F-14, Turkey or Tom Cruise-Worthy?