With the retirement of my beloved Tomcat I feel compelled to offer up a tribute of sorts. What better way to do so than in the way I know best… PIKSHURS!!! LOL
I’ll attempt to post some of the better quality images I’ve come across and also try to represent each unit that operated the F-14…
[size=9]Photo credits given when known.[/size]
[hr] VF-1 ‘The Wolfpack’
Badgering some Badgers…
USN photo
VF-1 MISSILEX…
I have conflicitng info for these two shots. There are several photos showing both of these jets and the accompanying captions give two dates… December 12, 1988 and January 1, 1991. So I dunno when these photos are from, but I do believe that they were both taken during the same MISSILEX.
USN photo (Lcdr. Art Legare)
USN photo (Lcdr. Art Legare)
The rest of these photos show VF-1 Tomcats in markings they carried during the Gulf War…
David ‘Mr. Tomcat’ Brown photo
David ‘Mr. Tomcat’ Brown photo
These next two shots show VF-1’s ‘Hip Killer’ from the Gulf War…
Great pics! If you guys want some more great pics and some really good stories, you should pick up the book “Tomcat : Bye, Bye Baby” Its a couple hundred pages of great photos and stories from the crews and maintainers. I bought it yesterday and finished it last night [:D] The Hornet is a good looking jet, but not nearly as sexy as the Tomcat… man, they are gonna have to do something!
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. I was in Crash on theUSS Ranger when the “Hip Killer” came back from that mission. IIRC, the crew kept the Sidewinder umbilical as a “trophy” of sorts. I’ll post my photos of the Tomcats in VF-1 and VF-2 while I was on CV-61 in a different thread. Thanks again for putting these up for us to enjoy.[:)]
Nice pix Blackwolf, thanks! It’s sad to see such an imposing show of strength being retired[:(] Dont’t get me wrong, the Hornet will probably do alright, but the Cat will never be able to be replaced. Can’t wait til you get to VF-84! Look forward to it![:D]
Nice post! It was cool to see #114 as the first photo. My hero growing up was my neighbor behind our house. He was a LCDR in VF-1 when they first got the Cat. Photo of a group photo shows him and the rest of the Squad in front of the CDR’s bird. He said they usually would have two sets of names at times on the planes or none at all considering how many thay would have active at any given moment. He flew 111 quite a bit, but of course the decals I used for a model I gave him…111 would mean having to extend the red stripe…that wasn’t gonna happen. So now he sits at the ready in 114! As much trouble as those Cats gave them early on, he said the old saying was “In a rainstorm, the wettest place to be was under a Tomcat”, he still loved that plane. Thanks again for showing the plane that we should have kept flying.
