re: Story behind a famous Navy flyby

Holy crap. Tailhook. There is something I haven't thought about in forever. Can you imagine the melt these days if that got on social media?

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
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It's been ~25 years and i've seen a shitload of jets and airshows. Maybe I'm mixing up my memories. But I'm almost positive that it was an F-14 that lit the infield of fire. It could have been an -18, I suppose. But I'm positive that it was practically on the the deck. Possibly 80' or 100', but much more likely between 25' and 50'. Nose up attitude was easily 45 degrees. I thought it might have been 70 or 75 degrees, but I put 60 because I didn't think anyone would believe me.

Great stories guys! I really appreciated reading them.

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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.

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Didn't the -14 have an advanced camera that could spot/see enemies from 40 miles out? In today's airbattlefield, do you think that would still be a good sensor system to have? I'm assuming that when SHTF in air combat, ECM technologies will negate radar

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Quite possibly the most beautiful and cool aircraft ever built. At least in my opinion.

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The F-4 Phantom says "Hold on buddy!"

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I don't know why, but I always thought the F-86 was the coolest plane.

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My FIL flew the F-86 in the Air Force. Beautiful plane.

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Saw one mock dogfight a Mig 15 at an airshow. One of the coolest things I've ever seen. 

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I saw the same thing at Oshkosh years ago, really cool.

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FlyinTiger

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Awesome pic. Is that you? What aircraft?

Back in the late 80's a local pilot flew F-14's. I was told he did a low pass over lake Decade and made a huge arse rooster tail across the lake.

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shades of Kara Hultgreen?

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Should have never been allowed to continue training.

777Tiger, were you AF or Navy? What years?

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Back in the late 80's a local pilot flew F-14's. I was told he did a low pass over lake Decade and made a huge arse rooster tail across the lake.

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