The US Navy Says Goodbye to the Tomcat

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday September 21, 2006 @02:47PM from the off-into-the-wild-blue-yonder dept.

jonerik writes "Though it's not being widely reported, this week marks the end of the line for the F-14 Tomcat in US Navy service. First flown in 1970, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was easily one of the world's most powerful, advanced, and deadly aircraft for many years, capable of flying at Mach 2.3 and firing its half-dozen Mach 5 AIM-54 Phoenix air-to-air missiles at targets as much as 100 miles away. Having been gradually replaced during the last several years by the newer F/A-18E/F, the last of the aircraft in US service will be officially retired on Friday, September 22nd in a ceremony at Virginia's Oceana Naval Air Station. However, at least a few F-14s will continue to fly for a few more years: Iran — which took delivery of 79 aircraft before the overthrow of the Shah — still flies the plane, though only a small number (perhaps ten or twenty) are believed to still be in service due to a lack of spare parts and attrition."

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Re:And so marches on the.... by SEE · 2006-09-21 18:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well, yes. The plane was designed for air superiority combat against a capable contemporary air force (read, the Red Air Force). Since we thankfully never fought a full war with the Soviet Union, we never had a chance to use the Tomcat for its intended purpose (in the Gulf War, Iraq refused to face our Tomcats, knowing its air force would be slaughtered). Similarly, we never used our arsenal of nuclear missiles, our subs, or any of other huge classes of weapons for their designed purpose, either.

Now, it's possible that if we'd never built these weapons of war to fight the Soviet Union, people like Brezhnev wouldn't have taken the opportunity to conquer Western Europe or at least extort from it money to prop up the Soviet Union, and accordingly the only reason we built them was to fund a military-industrial complex. It's similarly possible that, had Danzig been handed over to Hitler when he demanded it, World War II would have been averted, and the only reason Chamberlain stood up to Hitler in 1939 was to please Britsh armaments manufacturers.