Interesting F-14 Article
- Thread starter JamieDimonsBalls
- Start date
Tom Clancy wrote impressively about F14’s in Red Storm Rising. It was indeed a badass fighter.
My favorite F-14 movie scenes are in The Final Countdown.
Splash the Zeros.
I watched The Final Countdown often, F14s and zero reproductions = movie gold. It would have been an all-time great if they showed more of that and gave up what little plot there was.
Here is the story of those Zeros. We saw a 1976 CAF bicentennial air show in Colorado Springs where these Zeros were used in a mock attack. Someplace buried in my 1,000’s of old slides I have pictures of that show.
I’m not a huge fan of time travel stories, but I thought this was one of the better ones because it involved more than a single person or robot.
I am not sure if I have seen those, I have seen a lot of air shows with zeroes and of course they are all reproductions. The plane was great for Japan, cheap and good. It had drawbacks, but their biggest drawback was training, which wasn't its fault.
It is amazing to me the things that don't survive preservation attempts. Only two authentic zeros exist, out of 11,000 made. That article mentioned the Fokker, no Fokker triplanes survived nor did any of the schematics. In the latest episode of Grand Tour, Jeremy drove a Vietnam PBR in the Mekong. He had to have it custom built for 100,000 pounds because not a single PBR survives
When we toured Normandy several years ago, I asked our guide what happened to all the destroyed and disabled equipment. He said that the French had a large program to immediately gather the busted stuff, melt it down, and make new stuff. Only few jeeps and vehicles survived the war.
Pilots that flew F-14s and F/A-18s have told me that the F-14s were like muscle cars and F/A-18s more like touring cars. They universally loved the Tomcats. They liked the Hornets too, but considered Tomcats special.
