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âWeâre getting blown, AGGH!! AGGGHHHH!â is still my favorite radio chatter ever.
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Holy crap, did the Tomcat in back start to taxi off the deck there?
Well, thatâs what @near_blindâs radio chatter was about - they were being blown off the deck I think by the jet on Cat 4 in-front.
Everytime I watch that I am amazed at how fast they eject. I guess the nose of a running jet pointing at the water is highly motivationalâŠ
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Caveat emptor.
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Hereâs an article from 22 years ago about the F-14âs accident rate (at the time): F-14 Crashes Raise Questions of Age, Safety
I think the majority of the article is sensationalist hyperbole, but I recall reading recently that the USMC has been combating a very high accident rate over the past few years. In relation to the F-14, it raises the question of just how accident prone was the aircraft, and was this primarily in the peace dividend years or for the aircraftâs entire length of service? I think thereâs no doubt that it was an aircraft that took some serious work and a lot of training to learn.
Interesting. I guess the reality is that whenever an aircraft has handling âquirksâ, while you can have procedures to stay within the safe envelope, the probabilities will eventually catch up with you and this will show in the statistics.
From memory, at least F-104 Starfighter, F-105 Thunderchief (âThudâ) and Harrier all have quite grim safety statistics because of their handling characteristics. Unsure how the Tomcat stacks up here.
Anytime Baby
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-serial-date.htm
Take a gander at that. For reference, the F-14B was introduced in 1989. The F-14D was introduced in 91. Even past that day by the vast majority of losses are F-14As.
Outside of mistakes and stupidity (ran out of gas, ran into something, yada yada), the main driver of operation F-14 losses were the engine. You take an engine that becomes more prone to stalling at low speeds with high alpha and drastic throttle input, and put it on an aircraft that lands at low speeds, with high alpha, and potentially drastic throttle inputs, and youâre going to have a very bad time.
The other part is yes, old jets are break. There were no new built F-14s after 1991. Half the fleet survived for 15 years by mortgaging the other half. Replacement parts were getting ripped out of already used up aircraft, that leads to higher potentials for failure. As you pointed out the F/A-18, which was vaunted through out the 80s and 90s for its reliability and ease of maintenance had a very nasty run of very tragic accidents and is still facing atrocious availability numbers.
MOAR CHARTS
Interesting, because that list shows that of all the losses, only 14 were from the B and D. The peace dividend canât really be pointed as the cause as the 90s only represent 1/3rd of the total losses. The 80s have the highest number of losses, at 63. One would think that a high number of losses, attributed to the engine, would incur a refit program ASAP. The flip side is that other aircraft powered by the TF30 donât seem to have accrued the same accident rate as the F-14, so perhaps it was less of a bad engine and more of a bad engine for the airframe.
bad engine for the role too.
A great table!
I was onboard for the 3 JAN 1987 - night landing accidentâŠalignmentâŠright wing clipped some A-6âs (hit drop tanks) lined up on the right foul lineâŠfireâŠbig fire. Crew ejected safely. Iâve told the story at least once on this forum.
The 25 MAR 1988, also at night, was a âspit shuttleâ about a third of the way down the launch stroke. It was a MIL Power launch (light on fuel; quick hop to the beach). The pilot lit the ABs but the RIO reported only 85 KIAS as they went off the pointy endâŠsplashâŠbig splash. Crew ejected safely.
So thatâs one human factors cause on the pilot and LSO (contributing factor-massively pitching deck) andâŠactually another human factors. UI airman checked launch bar position (it was off); instructor failed to catch it.
Re engines: A âbad habitâ was getting a compressor stall when shooting an AIM-9âŠthe smoke from the missiles being ingested. We had that happen during a misslex. If you think about it, in a dogfight, the second after you pull the trigger on a FOX-2 is a lousy time to stop and take care of an engine issue.
I wonder if Heatblur will replicate that tendency. After all, they have done a pretty god job modeling compressor stalls in the Vigen.
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It was best miltiary turbofan of itâs era. It was coincidentally the only turbo fan of its era.
TF-30 started life as part of the Navyâs Fleet Defense Fighter concept. They wanted a big, slow fighter that could loiter for ever and chuck huge missiles at bombers that got through the Crusader/Phantom/Banshee blob. Turbojets consumed too much fuel, so the Navy opted to go with the very new technology of Turbo Fans. The TF-30 was one of the very few that existed. The FDF was cancelled, but General Dynamics picked it up, and asked for an afterburner to be attached to it for the entry in the TFX program. The rest is history.
The problem with the TF-30 was that it was an immature design. The first stage compressor was unable to consistently stabilize airflow to the compression chamber, and that meant the engines performance was dependent upon the regime in which it flew. At high speeds with âcleanâ airflow, it was capable of generating thrust in excess of the 25,000lbs itâs rated for. At slow speeds, or high AoA, it choked itself and died (throttle exacerbated this).
I can think of three tactical aircraft that used the TF-30.
The F-111 is the obvious choice, but the F-111 lives well inside the TF-30s comfort zone: it goes fast, it lands fast, it turns are measured in states rather than feet.
The A-7 is the second. The first three variants flew by the Navy, the A/B/C were equipped with a non after-burning TF-30 variant. My understanding is the A-7 suffered the same problems as the F-14 when it came to compressor stalls (a quick perusal of the operations manual has a whole section to clearing them). Iâve also heard stories that the hydraulic pressure caused by the sudden influx of air from a cat shot was enough to induce an engine stall in the A-7. The problem was solved when the Air Force was forced to adopt the A-7D by MacNamara, Pratt and Whitney was unable to account for the additional demand, and Allison was brought into subcontract. Allison offered a licensed copy of the Rolls Royce Spey instead, which had the benefit of being an objectively better engine in addition to being available. The Navy followed suit and adopted a variant for their A-7E. The TF-30 lasted a whole three years in front line Navy service with the A-7.
That leaves the F-14. The F-14 was never actually supposed to use the TF-30. Grumman included them in the proposal because VFAX was intended to capitalize on existing systems to reduce cost after the F-111B fiasco. After years of testing the F-111, the TF-30 was a known quantity to Grumman, and they knew it sucked. It was hoped that the longer intake tunnel would give more space for the air flow to stabilize, but at the end of the day they knew the jet needed a better engine.
The original game plan for the F-14 was a three phased release: The TF-30 powered F-14A would be akin to the F-4A Phantom. It would be built in limited numbers for operational testing and pilot familiarization. The F-14B was to be equipped with the Pratt and Whitney F401-PW-100, which was a derivative of the F100-PW-100 engine that was going into the F-15, and would be the main operational variant. The F-14C was to come at an indeterminate date later and upgrade the avionics to a new digital standard.
Problem is about the time this happens, the military budget falls out with the draw down in Vietnam. The F-14 is one of a number of space aged wonder weapons that are very suddenly over budget, past due, and seemingly unnecessary. Grumman and the Navy are told to get the plane into service or kill it, and they make deep cuts to do so. If it wasnât absolutely necessary to the job of air superiority or fleet defense, it got canned. The Navy didnât have the money to continue to fund the F401, which was running into all sorts of problems (read up on the F-15As engine trouble sometime), and the joint agreement with the USAF fell through (So did the A/G capability). For the time being the F-14 would just have to make due with the TF-30.
You can read the travails of eventually replacing them here
http://www.anft.net/f-14/f14-history-f14b.htm
At the end of the 1980s, it was decided the 90s would be spent rebuilding all F-14As into F-14Ds with the new engine, the F-14B being an interim step in the mean time. Then Dick Cheney killed it because he is the true devil of all earths and the very personification of human misery. He probably likes F-16s too.
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Read the history of any long-lived airplane and youâll find that they have a bell curve of accidents per flight hour. I say per flight hour because pure numbers arenât as illuminating as of course youâll have more total when the max number are in front line service.
When they are testing and first enter service, which is when piloting and maintenance quirks are being discovered and worked out, and at the end of their lives when aging equipment requires more time and money. There are usually fewer airframes around at those times, but percentage wise rates go up.
I doubt weâll ever see that pattern change without some paradigm shift in maintenance.
âŠand has at least one ardent fan at Mudspike.
I think, given the growth of Soviet military power about this time, the âfleet defenseâ task had the greater emphasis. Yes, every F-14 pilot styled himself as a fighter pilotâŠhowever, the fundamental mission of the F-14 was a long range interceptor (with the RIO doing the yeomanâs share of the work). âShoot the Archer, not the Arrowâ was the idea. Get out there with the AIM-54s and kill the Backfireâs before they got in AS-4/Kitchen range of the carrier. (Shooting down the âarrowââthe AS-4âis possible but much harder to do.).
Think about it. By the mid 1980s (and for quite a while before that) we had two 12-14 plane F-14 squadrons in an airwingâŠ24-28 planes! You donât ned that many fighters (and only fightersânot bomb capable) using up that much deck space, to mix it up in dogfights with a non-near peer adversary like Libya, Syria, North Korea, etc.
Bottom line is that underlying design criteriaâthe same criteria that made employing the TF-30 engine an acceptable compromiseâwas for a mission which, thank goodness, they never had to perform.
So we grump and complain about the T-30 nowâŠand there was a bit of puling about it during my days in the squadronâŠbecause the Tomcat was considered and is remembered as a fighter.
Getting back to the thread topicâŠsomething I have, admittedly, in the past, been recalcitrant to doâŠI hope that Heatblur accurately models the F-14A/T-30 with all its faults, and that it will be a noticeable contrast to the F-14A+ and B variants. I recall my CO in VF-32 was given a chance to fly an A+ as they were brand new. When asked how his flight went, he grinned ear-to-ear and talked all about the difference in power. That is the feeling I hope Heatblur can capture.
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AgreeâŠso is the FA-18 design for modular maintenance, especially the FA-18E/FâŠnot to mention the EF-A-18 Growler, so that the bulk of your airwing is essentially the same jet, that maintenance paradigm shift? I guess only time will tell.
The younger me would have hated an accurate modelling of the TF-30, but the older me thinks that having to do it the âtrueâ way is kinda interesting for this one (and Iâm definitely NOT a rivet-counter)