F14 comeback

Kingairer

Kingairer

'Tiger Team' Member
Read an article about brining back F14 as a stopgap against China until we can get something to match capability of F14. Any truth to this or some kids fantasy?
 
Not even close to possible. When they were sundowned in 2005-ish, the jets were literally cut into pieces shortly thereafter with acetylene torches to prevent the Iranians from getting their hands on any spare parts. Only Tomcats that still live in one piece are in museums or standing on sticks at military bases.
 
///AMG said:
Not even close to possible. When they were sundowned in 2005-ish, the jets were literally cut into pieces shortly thereafter with acetylene torches to prevent the Iranians from getting their hands on any spare parts. Only Tomcats that still live in one piece are in museums or standing on sticks at military bases.
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Duct tape.
 
///AMG said:
Not even close to possible. When they were sundowned in 2005-ish, the jets were literally cut into pieces shortly thereafter with acetylene torches to prevent the Iranians from getting their hands on any spare parts. Only Tomcats that still live in one piece are in museums or standing on sticks at military bases.
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That's really depressing. I remember looking at DM on Google Earth and seeing rows and rows of them thinking "what's a guy gotta do to get his hands on one of those things ..."
 
There's just a couple left in the boneyard, on museum hold I believe.

The rest of them there?

 
MikeD said:
There's just a couple left in the boneyard, on museum hold I believe.

The rest of them there?

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That is really disturbing. Sped up like that, with the potato chip crunching noise, I had the feeling of watching some animal playing with and shedding a toy.
 
One of the last intact F-14s in the boneyard I snapped pics of while walking through the place. Besides the F-14 displayed on "celebrity row" here and another one with its wings removed, this is the only one remaining fully intact.


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That's an old Buno Mike........havent seen something like that since I was flying A's and B's in the RAG or at NSAWC. Current squadron fleet is 16888X/lot 35-40 block II rhinos
 
rockman2343@aol.com said:
Was the reason they cut them up really so that the Iranians couldn't get spare parts? Seems like we should be able to prevent hat anyway.
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Parts, or even just measurements for tooling/castings to make parts.

Though like old Chevy Bel Airs in Cuba the Iranians have through force of will and some help managed to keep a handful of their Tomcats in some level of “airworthy.” And they’ve done it for far far longer than anyone would have predicted with the MX pig that is the F-14.


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Screaming_Emu said:
Yup. No idea what any of this means.
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Sorry.....BuNo is the Navy/USMC equivalent of the serial number that USAF aircraft carry on their tails. In the case of the Tomcat, it is that 6 digit number under the horizontal stabs. You can infer about when they were accepted into the inventory based on the leading 3 digits. Current aircraft are 168/169 ish, my vintage Hornets were like 163/164......162 is pretty old, like early 80's I believe. I think some of the F/A-18A/B's I flew were 161/162's (early 80's build), but I'd have to check my logbook to be sure.
 
rockman2343@aol.com said:
Was the reason they cut them up really so that the Iranians couldn't get spare parts? Seems like we should be able to prevent hat anyway.
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There was some level of a black market starting to develop if I recall correctly. Obviously the only people who stood to gain from such purchases would be the Iranians. I agree that it seems there could have been other means, but who knows.
 
///AMG said:
That's an old Buno Mike........havent seen something like that since I was flying A's and B's in the RAG or at NSAWC. Current squadron fleet is 16888X/lot 35-40 block II rhinos
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Looks like “F-14B UPGRADE” above the BuNo.
 
///AMG said:
Sorry.....BuNo is the Navy/USMC equivalent of the serial number that USAF aircraft carry on their tails. In the case of the Tomcat, it is that 6 digit number under the horizontal stabs. You can infer about when they were accepted into the inventory based on the leading 3 digits. Current aircraft are 168/169 ish, my vintage Hornets were like 163/164......162 is pretty old, like early 80's I believe. I think some of the F/A-18A/B's I flew were 161/162's (early 80's build), but I'd have to check my logbook to be sure.
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Gracias!
 
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