That’s an interesting take on crews at the end of the article.
I completely agree - I was there when we picked up the LANTIRN and the CAS mission. The young guys embraced the role - when some of the old guys were still stuck in the “not a pound for air to ground” mentality of the fleet air defense machine we had been since inception.
Some.
Not all.
When we were in Fallon in late 1995, and the Tomcat Squadrons got their first LANTIRN pods, our air wing commander, a former F4 driver, and current Hornet pilot, had Tomcats doing all the strike and Hornets flying the pure air to air missions.
The Hornet guys weren’t happy, but the Tomcat guys were ecstatic, we got to flex a new set of capabilities. I am certain I talked about it in my thread on the F11, but one of the big advantages of the F11 in the air to ground roll, particularly when it came to close air support was the ability of the airplane to “bring back “more weight. There was a lot more room between the aircraft zero fuel weight and max landing weight, and you could use that for both ordnance and fuel, where the Hornet was really tight. So the Hornet had to expend the Air to ground ordnance on the mission, which made for a real lack of flexibility, and frankly a waste of money, if we were carrying precision guided munitions.
We embraced the close support mission. One of the other advantages of the F-14 was the second set of eyeballs and the second brain to run weapon system and communications while the pilot was busy, maneuvering the airplane in a hostile environment.
I knew that “Hey Joe“ Parsons was working on another book. Sounds like I would enjoy it. I’ll have to hit him up for a copy.
Tony Holmes is working on another F-14 book, too. Should be out by the end of the year, I think.
By the way, the picture of the F-14 going vertical with bombs in the belly was VF-84. The pilot was Matt ”Speedy” Beck and the photographer was “Hey Joe” Parsons. It was a part of a photo shoot that put the F-14 on the cover of ”Aviation Week & Space Technology” - a flight of three, one equipped with the TARPS system, one loaded for air to air, and one loaded for air to ground.
Here is another shot from that day.
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