re: Story behind a famous Navy flyby

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mous Navy flyby
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What happened in '93? Was that when the Tomcat pilot was hotdogging for his parents on takeoff out of Nashville and ended up killing some people?

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yep

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mous Navy flyby
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What happened in '93? Was that when the Tomcat pilot was hotdogging for his parents on takeoff out of Nashville and ended up killing some people?


yep
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I googled the incident after I posted. That happened in Jan., '96. The pilot's parents were from Chattanooga, so they came to see him when he flew into Nashville on a training flight from San Diego. He requested, and was approved for, a full military power/maximum thrust takeoff. Basically, full burner when the wheels come off the deck. Apparently, the "rule" is not to exceed 50 degrees nose up. This guy went near vertical into a 2,300' cloud deck. He loses situational awareness and is still on full burner when he comes back out of the bottom of the cloud deck. Too late for he or his RIO to eject, and they fly right into a house with 16,000 lbs of fuel onboard.

He had already crashed a Tomcat off of Hawaii, but got a pass because, in the spirit of Naval Aviation, he was "flying aggressively".

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I'm not sure if there are anymore active F-14 squadrons


I can 100% assure you there are not.

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The Iranians may still be flying theirs, I'm not sure.

Dude. thanks for posting this. I love the tomcat. The F-14 was one of Americas greatest fighters and the pinnacle of the Grumman "cat" series of aircraft. The F-14 and the F-4 were the muscle beasts of 1970's navy fighter aviation. both muscle car types no longer seen.

No, no, below the hard deck does not count.

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Those SR-71s are way smaller than I expected them to be

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You ought to see one from inside the fuselage...


As for the Tomcat, I have never seen an uglier bird on the ground, nor a prettier bird in flight with wings tucked.
But I'll give you Navy guys this...that scene in Top Gun where Mav is walking to the back of the carrier and the 14 is sitting fully armed with wings tucked....Bad-azz!!!!!!

I actually got to fly with Snort in the back seat of a P-51 at the 1998 Fourth of July Airshow at St. Louis. I was walking down the flight line after practicing my demo and they were about to take the Mustang out, asked me if I wanted to jump in. Hell Yeah!! Got a little nervous after wedging myself into the jumpseat in the back. No controls, QD pins in the pilot seat-back to tilt it forward for entry. Got a little nervous when it seemed to take him a long time to go through the checklist. "I've been mostly flying the Corsair lately." Thanks, I feel a whole lot better now!! :-) Nice plane, clean enough to eat off of, and they babied the motor, believe me. Still felt like a Boss Hog Eldorado, lots of metal and a big-arse motor out front. We flew south along the river and "strafed" some trains. Great memory.

I'll eat my hat if the previous poster saw a Tomcat doing a 60 deg high AOA pass. The F-14D demo was a sight to behold, you could fell those afterburners resonate in your chest. Most likely a Hornet or Super Hornet demo. We flew at ~40 alpha in the F-18 demo and it was on the ragged edge. Lose a motor at 500 ft and you had about a second and a half to decide to get out.

The big Reduction in Force stretched from about 91-93. One third of the pilots were axed from the training program immediately. Those of us (OCS/ROTC) who came in with Reserve commissions had to apply for Augmentation to the Regular Navy if you wanted to stay in. I got to the Fleet in 93 and one of the Ltjg's in my squadron applied and was turned down and sent home.

I went through A-4 training with Stacy Bates, the pilot of the jet that crashed in Nashville. At the time he was one of the first NFO-to-Pilot transitions, as he had already done a tour in the back seat of the Tomcat. Many of them went on to fine careers in the pilot seat.

Lots of 10-20 year old info in this thread. During my 2 Gulf cruises in 93 and 96 we were still concerned that the Iranian's might be able to scrape an airworthy 14 together. I suspect they don't worry about it too much these days.

The Tomcat was a great Cold War fleet defense interceptor, but by the mid 90's radar and avionics advances were starting to pass it by. We weren't so much worried anymore about the Russian Backfires and Foxbats that could be successfully engaged with the Phoenix and the development of active radar missiles that the enemy could fire and forget negated the Tomcat/Phoenix range advantage. At the same time, the rise of "smart" GPS guided weapons required huge avionics upgrades that weren't cost effective to turn the Tomcat into the Bombcat and they were becoming more maintenance intensive by the day. We flew mixed section with our sister squadron, the VF-21 Freelancers, on a lot of sorties over Iraq. I saw many 14's launch to go over the beach during Southern Watch that I wouldn't have been caught dead in.

Bottom line, sweet plane flown by some shite hot guys that had its moment in the sun as the king of the hill, but time and tide wait for no man.

Dude, you should write a book about your career!!

Well, technically Tailhook happened first.

Thank God I didn't make it that year, because my drunk photo-bomb exploits are legendary.