F-14 Questions Answered - Ask Away

How often did you fly DLC off approaches to the boat?
Rarely. It was always on if it was working.

If a spoiler computer, or hydraulic system, or out board spoiler module, or other system failure required it to be off, then it was off.
 
I was watching some interview of a former F-14 pilot who claimed that the GE F110 engine was prone to blowing up. Not sure if it was just his opinion, but others seemed a bit surprised at that claim. Of course the PW TF30 was notorious for compressor stalls.
 
I was watching some interview of a former F-14 pilot who claimed that the GE F110 engine was prone to blowing up. Not sure if it was just his opinion, but others seemed a bit surprised at that claim. Of course the PW TF30 was notorious for compressor stalls.

It was this. Captain Tom "Trots" Trotter. I've got it set up to right where he talks about the GE engine "falling apart".

 
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@Astro14

In the intro to, "Top Gun Maverick" they show several shots of the hold back bar. These appear to use a type of disposable shear pin designed to break away at a certain force when the catapult is fired. Allowing the aircraft to accelerate down the flight deck.

Are these designed to help keep pressure off the nose gear as the catapult increases its forward force? And they must have a ton of these replaceable shear pins on a carrier for a variety of different weight aircraft?

How are these things set up and handled, to assure the proper bar is attached to the right aircraft? Who is responsible for them? It would seem a mix up could cause a disaster.

And there are very few things more hectic than carrier launch and landing operations. A lot of different things are happening at once.... And at a very rapid rate. Providing an almost perfect environment for mistakes.
 
It was this. Captain Tom "Trots" Trotter. I've got it set up to right where he talks about the GE engine "falling apart".


This was a misunderstanding of what was happening. In several ways - "pushed it too far, it would get into a spin". No. If you were stupid with pushing the airplane, you could get a spin.

Back to the engine - When the GE F110 was adapted for the F-14, (the GE F110-400 version), they lengthened the AB liner by about 26 inches. The AB liner was cooled by bypass air that was forced in from outside the liner to create a cooling boundary layer - but the amount of bypass air wasn't increased, while the liner had the same number of perforations per inch, so the engine was not maintaining the cooling air in the augmenter (AB) section.

The faster you were going (High Q), the greater the pressure in the AB, and the more likely the AB flame would melt the steel liner.

This caused liner burn throughs - and we kept seeing AB liner burn throughs with no consequence. Then we lost a couple of jets in quick succession. The one with Scooter Lamareaux, that he mentions in the video. The Discovery channel jet.

And the one that killed Bill Daisley and my friend and former Jolly Roger, Fred Dillingham. I was the one who noticed the jet had not returned on time and I was part of the search, and later, mishap.

When the AB liner burned through on their airplane, they were doing about 1.4 Mach at 10,000 feet. The AB flame melted the engine casing, and then propagated outward, melting the control rod for the starboard horizontal stab. Which was then free to move.

The airplane pitched nose down and rolled at full control deflection at over 800 KIAS. It shredded itself from the negative G, which was over -10 G. The crew never knew what hit them.

The debris field was 10 miles long. We never found the bodies. But we got most of the airplane, including engines, and airframe, from the shallow water.

The final realization on the severity of the problem wasn't from the Discovery channel video, it was from the pieces of our jet on the hangar floor - where you could see the scorch marks and the burned parts. You could trace the flame front from liner, through the engine, and the control rod.

The F-14 B/D was prohibited from using afterburner until GE redesigned the liner with more robust cooling.

And I don't blame the airplane, as the video does. I blame GE, for not properly engineering the AB liner when it was lengthened for this airframe. We had 50+ AB liner burn throughs, and they didn't redesign it until it started killing people.
 
@Astro14

In the intro to, "Top Gun Maverick" they show several shots of the hold back bar. These appear to use a type of disposable shear pin designed to break away at a certain force when the catapult is fired. Allowing the aircraft to accelerate down the flight deck.

Are these designed to help keep pressure off the nose gear as the catapult increases its forward force? And they must have a ton of these replaceable shear pins on a carrier for a variety of different weight aircraft?

How are these things set up and handled, to assure the proper bar is attached to the right aircraft? Who is responsible for them? It would seem a mix up could cause a disaster.

And there are very few things more hectic than carrier launch and landing operations. A lot of different things are happening at once.... And at a very rapid rate. Providing an almost perfect environment for mistakes.
The hold back was once a breakable shear pin. It's now a spring loaded holder and completely reusable. Available in different holding strength levels. It provides holding power on the order of several tons. I don't know the precise amount. When the cat fires, it overcomes the holdback before moving the airplane.

The purpose of the hold back is to get rid of all the slack between the airplane launch bar and catapult shuttle into which it is hooked, and to allow full cat pressure, before the airplane moves. A tiny bit of slack can cause huge shock loads when the cat fires.

Also, as the steam is first introduced, the pressure isn't all there for a few milliseconds, so the hold back allows the cat to be at full pressure. I don't think that is a concern with the new EMALS, but I don't honestly know.
 
This was a misunderstanding of what was happening. In several ways - "pushed it too far, it would get into a spin". No. If you were stupid with pushing the airplane, you could get a spin.

Back to the engine - When the GE F110 was adapted for the F-14, (the GE F110-400 version), they lengthened the AB liner by about 26 inches. The AB liner was cooled by bypass air that was forced in from outside the liner to create a cooling boundary layer - but the amount of bypass air wasn't increased, while the liner had the same number of perforations per inch, so the engine was not maintaining the cooling air in the augmenter (AB) section.

The faster you were going (High Q), the greater the pressure in the AB, and the more likely the AB flame would melt the steel liner.

This caused liner burn throughs - and we kept seeing AB liner burn throughs with no consequence. Then we lost a couple of jets in quick succession. The one with Scooter Lamareaux, that he mentions in the video. The Discovery channel jet.

And the one that killed Bill Daisley and my friend and former Jolly Roger, Fred Dillingham. I was the one who noticed the jet had not returned on time and I was part of the search, and later, mishap.

When the AB liner burned through on their airplane, they were doing about 1.4 Mach at 10,000 feet. The AB flame melted the engine casing, and then propagated outward, melting the control rod for the starboard horizontal stab. Which was then free to move.

The airplane pitched nose down and rolled at full control deflection at over 800 KIAS. It shredded itself from the negative G, which was over -10 G. The crew never knew what hit them.

The debris field was 10 miles long. We never found the bodies. But we got most of the airplane, including engines, and airframe, from the shallow water.

The final realization on the severity of the problem wasn't from the Discovery channel video, it was from the pieces of our jet on the hangar floor - where you could see the scorch marks and the burned parts. You could trace the flame front from liner, through the engine, and the control rod.

The F-14 B/D was prohibited from using afterburner until GE redesigned the liner with more robust cooling.

And I don't blame the airplane, as the video does. I blame GE, for not properly engineering the AB liner when it was lengthened for this airframe. We had 50+ AB liner burn throughs, and they didn't redesign it until it started killing people.

Thanks for filling in the pieces. His explanation seemed a bit terse and didn't go into any technical details other than some brief comment about the lining not containing the damage. I was wondering if what the issue was if it was fixed, and if it might have affected versions of the F110 used on other aircraft. I do remember hearing that the engine was extended to get it to fit in a Tomcat. Did you know Captain Trotter?

I did find this article from the Virginian-Pilot that was somehow archived in a Virginia Tech research archive.

In the younger Lamoreaux's case, the jet was flying low at high speed, simulating an enemy missile, when it crashed. Diving units later retrieved the aircraft's two engines from the ocean floor, and the right engine was found to have a mysterious hole burned in its lining.​
 
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I didn’t know Captain Trotter.

The F110 didn’t have problems in other installations, like the F-16 and F-15, because the flow, pressure, and cooling of the AB liner was done right the first time.
 
During the time I worked on F110 -100 and -129 (not -400) we didn’t see burned augmentor liners and we were working on flight test engines so they would have shown up.
For the Super Tomcat, and Tomcat 21, GE offered the F-110-429. A lengthened -129 with about 29,000# of thrust in AB. That would be just over double, yes double, the thrust of the TF-30 in the F-14A.

I've supercruised a slick F-14B for hundreds of miles.

A Tomcat equipped with -429 engines would have been able to supercruise easily, and with weapons. That was part of the plan for Super Tomcat and Tomcat 21.
 
Astro,

When you run the airplane up that fast and keep it there for any length of time, does the front windshield, (the flat sloping part), become hot?
It does. Lots of the airframe parts get warm at that speed, even though the air is about -60 degrees, the total air temperature is much higher. It’s a combination of skin friction and the kinetic energy of the air being converted to heat.

 
@Astro14. How do you think the f-14 pilot training was in the 70's-80s vs the last years the tomcat was in service. How would an earlier tomcat pilot compare to the 90s to 2000's ? All similar or was the combat maneuvering training better in the later years.

Another question. Did you always have a RIO? Were tomcats flown on delivery or from place to place without a RIO ? Or was there always one there when in the air ?
 
@Astro14. How do you think the f-14 pilot training was in the 70's-80s vs the last years the tomcat was in service. How would an earlier tomcat pilot compare to the 90s to 2000's ? All similar or was the combat maneuvering training better in the later years.

Another question. Did you always have a RIO? Were tomcats flown on delivery or from place to place without a RIO ? Or was there always one there when in the air ?
I started training in 1988, left the Navy in 1997. I don't think that I am in a position to judge training before and after my time.

The folks I know from before my time had the benefit of being senior officers - so there is a "survivor bias" - where the really good ones got promoted, perhaps, and they didn't represent the average. I've mentioned how incredibly talented my old CO was, but he was the kind of guy that was dedicated to his craft, had a wealth of experience, and stayed in the Navy.

He may not represent the average guy from his time. In fact, I would venture that he certainly doesn't. He was vastly better than anyone I flew with later. When we started doing lots of different missions, the focus on pure air combat maneuvering was diluted. In casual conversation with some pilots from the early 2000's, I was stunned by how little they understood the aircraft systems, or how best to maneuver the jet. All they did was truck bombs in and out of Afghanistan.

They really didn't fly it like we did. I'm certain they were better at managing precision weapon delivery than I ever was, but hearing the falsehoods they believed about the airplane made me wonder if they had ever flown it anywhere near the edge of its envelope.

We always had a RIO. Many critical systems were operated from the back, and the airplane really wasn't safe to be flown by just the pilot.
 
Whose idea was this?

vf114pilot.jpg
 
Originally Posted By: spasm3
Where did the phrase "Anytime Baby" originate?


I believe these guys:

http://www.f-14association.com/stories-02.htm

It was around when I first flew the jet in 1989...and the phrase was legendary then....
This thread started over 10 years ago :oops:. I just have a serious amount of respect for Astro14 and what he has accomplished. Thank you for your service.

When I was in college back in 1987, one of the guys on my floor (suite next door) had some "Anytime Baby" T-shirts. His dad worked for Grumman on Long Island. He said his dad was one of the guys building them.

When my son was either late in Cub Scouts or early Boy Scouts we went to the Cradle of Aviation Museum. They had a whole thing on the Tomcat. IIRC they said it was able to target like 6 things at the same time. Amazing just seeing everything there.

@Astro14 - You Rock!
 
I'll just add that the aircraft in that photo appears to be an F-4, but it's my understanding that VF-114 continued to use those ugly orange flight suits when they transitioned to the F-14. Those are some real high visibility flight suits.

F-14A_Tomcat_of_VF-114_in_flight_1977.jpg
Not sure when they started the orange but your first post is an F-14 nose by the gun gas purge door. Always thought it looked a bit silly, but squadron traditions and esprit de corps are powerful things and it wasn’t my squadron.

We wore regular flight suits and our squadron color was black, so black T-shirts. A subdued look by comparison.
 
Naw, that's no F-4. It looks just like the section of the complete F-14 you posted at the bottom of the aircraft just forward of the pilot.

Edit. Oops, Astro beat me to the post.
 
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