Wings Over The Pacific
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Grumman F-14 Tomcat

The truly mighty Tomcat opitimizes the supreme fighting plane in almost every aspect. In the late 1980's the US Navy  outlined the need for a new carrier based fighter. Grumman was chosen as the successful proposal in late 1969. The original intent of the VFX program was to produce a small high performance, lightweight fighter. It was to be superior to the MD F-4 Phantom and also to be able to exceed the performance of current Soviet aircraft.

For more photos of the Tomcat click on the gallery to the left.

Some of the design features of the F-14 are; variable geometry wing sweep (20 degrees) controlled automatically through the Mach sweep programmer, or with a manual select override, also incorporated into the wings  are two small glove vanes which extend forward during supersonic speeds, flaps, spoilers, slats, outward canted twin rudders, and fins. The engine air intakes have controllable inlet ramps. The seating is a two place design, with the rear seat being occupied by the Naval Flight Officer. The sometimes problematic Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-412A turbofan has been upgraded in some of the earlier models F-14A, the later models being F-14B, F-14D and F-14D(R).

Specifications; Engines (two)  93 kN. (20,900 lbs. st.) afterburning Pratt & Whitney TF30-P412A turbofans, later models use or were upgraded to (two) 120. kN. (27,000 lbs. st) afterburning General Electric F110-GE-400 turbofan engines, Wing Span; 19.55 m. (64' 1 1/2") (unswept), 11.65 m. (38' 2 1/2") (swept), Length; 18.89 m. (61' 11"), Maximum Take off weight; 33,724 kg. (74,348 lbs.), Maximum level speed; Mach 2.4, Range; 3,214 km. (2,000 miles)(ferry), Armament; (one) General Electric M61A-1 Vulcan 20 mm. cannon, four, six or eight missiles, a variety of bombs, TARPs  pod in a reconnaissance role.

Wings Over The Pacific was updated November 08, 1998