F-14 Design Evolution

Summary

Highlights

• Mike Symon shares the F-14's evolution at the Western Museum of Flight. ✈️
• The F-14 Tomcat boasted innovative variable sweep wings for better performance. ⚙️
• Advanced radar systems allowed superior target tracking and engagement. 📡
• Despite initial engine troubles, the F-14 remained a top-tier fighter through upgrades. 🔧
• Collaborative engineering played a crucial role in the F-14's success and impact. 👷‍♂️

Key Takeaways

• The F-14 Tomcat evolved from post-WWII designs, reaching iconic status. ✈️
• Innovations like the variable sweep wing and advanced radar were game-changers. 🎯
• Challenges included early engine issues, but enhancements led to success. 🛠
• Collaboration among engineers and military was key to its longevity. 👥
• The F-14 left an indelible mark on aviation and inspired future aircraft designs. 🚀

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The chapter titled 'Introduction' begins with a welcoming atmosphere, enhanced by music, as it introduces viewers to the Western Museum of Flight located in Torrance. The setting is Peninsula Seniors out and about, hinting that the content will revolve around senior activities and possibly aviation history or exhibits featured at the museum.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Welcome and Speaker Introduction The chapter titled 'Welcome and Speaker Introduction' begins with an enthusiastic welcome to the Western Museum of Flight by Cindy Maka, the museum director. She highlights the museum's lecture series, which has featured numerous notable aerospace personalities. Cindy expresses gratitude for speakers who not only share their experiences but also support the museum consistently.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Mike Symon on F-14 Evolution The chapter focuses on Mike Symon, highlighting his impressive achievements in the aerospace industry and his strong support for the museum. The speaker expresses gratitude for having Mike as a friend and introduces him as a notable figure in aerospace.
• 03:00 - 09:00: Development Background of F-14 The chapter discusses the evolution of the F-14 Tomcat aircraft, highlighting its development and historical significance. It begins with a visual comparison between the F-14 and the earlier F6F Hellcat, emphasizing their shared reputation for performance and durability. This sets the stage for a deeper exploration of the F-14's development history.
• 09:00 - 26:00: F-14 Technical Specifications and Innovations This chapter discusses the key personnel and organizations involved in the development and longevity of the F-14 aircraft. It highlights the contributions of Navy civilian and military personnel, as well as engineers from companies such as Grumman, Northrop Grumman, Hughes, and GE. These collective efforts ensured the F-14's operational effectiveness and its service span of nearly 40 years. The chapter is a tribute to these individuals, acknowledging their vital roles in making the F-14 a success.
• 26:00 - 30:00: Titanium Wing Center Section The chapter titled 'Titanium Wing Center Section' discusses the resources and literary references used in creating the content. The author mentions utilizing their personal library and archives for gathering information. Key references include books by James Perry Stevenson and John Lake, as well as 'The F-14 Tomcat' by Admiral Gilchrist and works by Arthur Read. Additional insights were derived from Bob Cress, the chief engineer on the F-14, and articles by Irv Wollen, another prominent engineer.
• 30:00 - 36:00: Comparison with Other Aircraft This chapter discusses a Northrop Grumman representative, Carlos Paez, who contributed valuable insights into the development of the F-14's wing box, based on historical conversations with engineers like Harvey Idenoff. The narrative aims to transport readers to the post-World War 2 era, specifically starting from 1947, to explore the development and engineering feats of that period.
• 36:00 - 43:00: Engine and Weapons Systems The chapter titled "Engine and Weapons Systems" starts with a historical reference to the development of the XF10F Jaguar, highlighting the transitions in aerospace technology. It proceeds to discuss the geopolitical climate of the 1960s, focusing on the perceived threats from the Soviet Union. The chapter then delves into the VFX competition, which pertains to the F-14 fighter jet, outlining its capabilities and significance. In 1967, during the Domodedovo Airshow, the Soviets made a substantial impression by showcasing five new aircraft, signifying advancements in their aviation technology.
• 43:00 - 51:00: Operational History and Legacy The chapter titled 'Operational History and Legacy' discusses the development and impact of various aircraft designed by Sukhoi and other companies. It highlights the Mach three MiG-25 Foxbat, developed as a counter to the B70 Valkyrie. Additionally, it mentions the MiG-23 Flogger, noted for its variable-sweep wings, and the SU-15 Flagon. This chapter also underscores the growth of Sukhoi into one of the leading aircraft design companies globally.
• 51:00 - 60:00: DVD Presentation on F-14 Tests and Development The chapter talks about the DVD presentation on F-14 tests and development, highlighting the variable suite version of the aircraft. It also mentions the multitude of bombers, including the Tu-95 Bear, a high-speed turboprop bomber with a significant range, which poses a threat due to its continuous modernization and capacity to carry long-range air-to-surface missiles. The importance of countering these threats to protect fleets is emphasized. The chapter also promises a discussion on the history of variable-sweep wings.
• 60:00 - 96:00: Audience Q&A The chapter titled 'Audience Q&A' discusses the XF 10 F variable-sweep Jaguar, a project initiated in 1947. The Jaguar evolved into a lady variable-sweep wing and featured an all-flying horizontal tail. The discussion highlights several unique aspects of the XF 10 F, including its translating variable-sweep wing, the incorporation of 80% Fowler flaps, and the use of paddle spoilers.
• 96:00 - 97:30: Conclusion In the conclusion, the discussion revolves around Grumman's unconventional approach during the development of their aircraft. Traditionally, aircraft design allowed for gradual innovation, incorporating one new element at a time, as enforced by Bill Swindled, the chief engineer. However, a significant shift occurred as the chief designer, Gordon Israel, was permitted to implement multiple innovations simultaneously in the XF 10 F project. The most notable advancement was the variable-sweep wing, which successfully reduced the aircraft's approach speed by over 20 knots and increased its range by almost 50% compared to the F3H Demon. This decision marked a significant departure from conventional design methods, illustrating a bold move towards broad innovation at Grumman.
• 97:30 - 98:00: Closing Remarks The development of the F-111 aircraft is traced back to 1959, stemming from John Stack's proof of a successful variable sweep design. This innovation was built on a fixed pivot concept, sparking General Everest's decision to pursue a common design for both air force and naval operations.

F-14 Design Evolution Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] welcome to Peninsula seniors out and about today we're at the Western Museum of Flight in Torrance for one of their
• 00:30 - 01:00 celebrity lectures let's go see what cindy has for us today good morning everyone and welcome to the Western Museum of Flight my name is Cindy maka and I'm the director of the museum in this lecture series we have been blessed with an impressive array of illustrious aerospace personalities who have been willing to share their experiences with us it is a double privilege when an illustrious speaker is also a constant and sincere supporter of our museum
• 01:00 - 01:30 today we have been blessed with that double privilege mike symon era having accomplished many many impressive achievements in our industry is also one of our staunchest supporters i am personally grateful to be permitted to call him a friend so now i am especially pleased to introduce my friend our museum's friend and aerospace luminary mike symon era [Applause]
• 01:30 - 02:00 [Music] good morning everyone it's good to see so many young warriors out there I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to brief you on the evolution of the f-14 Tomcat as you can see from this picture you see the f-14 flying with guess what the f6f hellcat both were known for their outstanding performance and their durability this speech is dedicated to
• 02:00 - 02:30 all of the Navy civilian and military personnel that made the f-14 happen as well as the engineers from Grumman Northrop Grumman from Hughes from GE you name it that made the f-14 happen and and its lifespan to last over almost 40 years it's really their story not my story I'd like to acknowledge several people and several periodicals that I
• 02:30 - 03:00 use to generate this obviously I used my own library in my own archives but you can see some outstanding books there by James Perry Stevenson by John Lake the f-14 Tomcat by Admiral Gilchrist by Arthur read and what have you and Bob cress who was the chief engineer on the f-14 and I also would like to draw upon the fact that I looked at some articles by Irv wollen the chief engineer of of
• 03:00 - 03:30 Northrop Grumman carlos paez is in the audience he was generous enough to send me his his article on the development of the wing box on the f-14 and some good conversations with Harvey iden off and several other engineers who actually pioneered the development of the f-14 now I'm going to tell you a story and what we're going to do here is we're going to go back in time to the post World War 2 time period to the 1947 time
• 03:30 - 04:00 period when the X F 10 F Jaguar was developed and then move up to the 60s to talk about the Soviet threat and the VFX competition which was really that that particular group of letters refer to the f-14 competition and then talk about its capabilities now in the 1967 time period the Soviets put on an airshow every six years literally and at the Domodedovo airshow they shocked the world by flying five new brand-new
• 04:00 - 04:30 airplanes and four major revisions this is the Mach three mig-25 Foxbat which was designed to counter the b70 valkyrie and in this chart on the lower left you see the mig-23 flogger which was an a variable-sweep airplane at the time and on the top you see the su-15 flagon now that was the beginning of sukhoi really major portion to be won in one of the top designing companies in the world today and down below you can see the
• 04:30 - 05:00 variable suite version of the fitter now in addition all the fighters they had a lot of bombers as you well know and flying today's the venerable team tu-95 bear this is a high-speed turboprop bomber with a range of probably six to eight thousand miles but the the tough part about this is they keep modernizing it and carry these long-range air-to-surface missiles which can provide havoc to our fleets if they're not countered now let's go back and talk about the variable-sweep history this is
• 05:00 - 05:30 a shot of the XF 10 F variable-sweep Jaguar this was started in 1947 it morphed into a lady variable-sweep wing and it had an all flying horizontal tail you can see that right here on this particular chart now there were a lot of unique features about the XF 10 F it had a translating variable-sweep wing it had 80% Fowler flaps and paddle spoilers
• 05:30 - 06:00 Grumman in a non-traditional sense through all their eggs into one basket which was not the way we designed airplanes back then bill swindled the chief engineer allowed one new thing at a time but he allowed the chief designer here Gordon Israel to do that there were too many innovations but what really happened on the XF 10 F is that it proved that the variable-sweep wing would lower the approach speed by over 20 knots and almost a 50 an increase in range over the f3h demon
• 06:00 - 06:30 which was operational in the fleet at that time that was a conventional swept-wing fighter now we move on to the f-111 a f-111b story this began in 1959 when John stack proved that you could actually create a variable sweep design and make it work with a fixed pivot and that led general Everest to move ahead with a commonality requirement he said
• 06:30 - 07:00 we can design an airplane that could satisfy the Yousaf needs in yellow and the Navy needs in in yellow shown in fleet air defense and fly supersonically at low altitude at Mach 1.2 for 200 miles to penetrate the Soviet Union defenses well Gd and grumman won that competition and they moved out and Grumman was responsible for the f-111b unfortunately it was canceled and the reason why it was cancelled it had
• 07:00 - 07:30 unmitigated weight growth and it had really not very good carry of suitability although later on they said they could do it it had very poor vision over the nose and the weight was just getting out of hand and the big thing about it it had no real air-to-air capability it could not outmaneuver the f4 phantom and as you know during the Vietnam War the exchange ratio was about one to one with a MIG 21s until our tactics and pilot training made it made it better but there were a
• 07:30 - 08:00 lot of things that were learned from the f-111b which we took on to future designs the treatment of base drag at the tail end of the airplane how n --lens how inlets interact with fan engines external drost store dragon materials as well as the use of guns and how missiles were real use in combat this is a picture of the f-111b one of the flight test birds it had quite at an advanced wing on it this is shown at about 26 degrees of sweep it had
• 08:00 - 08:30 double-slotted Fowler flaps and a movable variable-geometry glove to achieve a lift coefficient of about 2.9 it was not a good carrier suitability airplane in terms of approach vision over the nose and what-have-you the real drawback was as I'll tell you later the Phoenix missiles and the fact they had to operate on swivel pylons and what happens that was a very cumbersome unreliable and highly drag related item so with all this background the VFX
• 08:30 - 09:00 competition was launched in 1968 the VFX became the f-14a what the Navy wanted was a fighter for the fighter escort mission they wanted to fly 500 miles unrefueled with four Sparrow missiles and a gun and they got that now in order to carry that out that only used about needed about 14,500 pounds of fuel but the designers at Grumman had to satisfy the fleet air defense mission which required over 16,000 pounds of fuel so
• 09:00 - 09:30 what they did is they design the internal fuel capacity for the fleet air defense mission right but when they designed the airplane and they looked at a structural load factor it was all based on the fighter design gross weight of the fighter escort mission some very good thinking went on there and we were involved I was personally involved in preliminary design at the time and we did over 6,000 different studies of different airplanes and these are just some pictures of them the 303 60 the 303
• 09:30 - 10:00 C which had integral engines or engines side by side with a low variable-sweep wing then we went to the 303 D which had engines close together with a high variable-sweep wing and the 303 F which ended up to be about 5,000 pounds heavier because of the demands of carrier suitability to satisfy the Fleet Air Defense mission and other constraints and the competition responded in almost the same way north american aviation came in with a fixed
• 10:00 - 10:30 wing design and bought along with McDonnell Douglas came in with a variable sweep and one of the things that happened is that through George Spangenberg in the Navy he said you go look at the vault design after we want it and take a look at their manoeuvring slats which we adopted on the f-14 so the winning design was the so-called 303 e now and this is the first mock-up that was built one of the you can see quite dramatically is the tremendous vision of the pilot and the
• 10:30 - 11:00 radar intercept officer for a air-to-air fighter you had to have 360 degree visibility and excellent vision over the nose as you approach the carrier that they put into the beautifully designed shape of the forward module of the f-14 it had a single vertical tail initially the Navy said now we don't want that we want double vertical tails because of single engine out controllability and we got rid of those ventral that were used for directional stability at high speed
• 11:00 - 11:30 so we simplified the airplane now when we set up the genealogy of the f-14 the this is where the conservatism and and design philosophy of Grumman came in they said look we're only gonna take one thing at a time so the first thing they designed was a new airframe the structural heart of the airplane that's what gave the airplane its longevity in its life and its ability to handle the strike attack missions as I'll tell you later on and what have you then we would jump to the f-14 be with a new engine
• 11:30 - 12:00 and then to an f-14 C with advanced avionics now I have to tell you it really didn't turn out that way because of a lot of the funding problems that occurred I won't go into all that but it did happen in terms of an f-14 a and f-14 B and an f-14 D which I'll tell you about later on now there were a lot of white rabbits that made the f-14 happen aerodynamically and I'm going to just briefly mention them there were seven of them we thought we would get four but
• 12:00 - 12:30 these were the white rabbits along with the use of the titanium structure and the wing centre section that made the f-14 a reality we start with a variable-sweep wing we start with the fact that the wing was always sweeping automatically the pilot eventually learned that he didn't have to move it the computers took care of that which I'll tell you about the wing pivot selection was ultra critical in terms of minimizing trim drag and we use deflected leading edge slats and flaps
• 12:30 - 13:00 for both takeoff and landing but even more importantly for subsonic high maneuvering haiji aerial combat which I'll show you in some of the slides we incorporated glove veins which I'll tell you about and then we went to a widely spaced nacelle concept the engines were not close together they were moved far apart and we use something called weapons rails in order to mount all the stores on now when we look at the variable-sweep wing at the
• 13:00 - 13:30 time it was the only solution that really satisfied the Navy's requirements first they wanted to go Mach 2.4 that required minimal cross-sectional area and a very thin wing so when the wind was back at 68 degrees you had a very small thickness to chord ratio to satisfy the long-range escort mission of 500 miles you had to cruise out 500 miles on internal fuel so you had to have a very
• 13:30 - 14:00 high aspect ratio wing with very high lift-to-drag ratio and at the same time they said you know we want you to do the fleet air defense mission and land back on the onboard the carrier with six Phoenix missiles and 4,000 pounds of fuel that was roughly 10,000 pounds of weight at the time which was unheard of now let's talk about the next white rabbit which was automatic wing sweep now this is the first technical chart so bear with me we have a few of them in the briefing on the vertical scale you
• 14:00 - 14:30 have relative lift-to-drag ratio this has been declassified versus Mach number and what you see then is the variation of lift-to-drag ratio with various wing sweep angles and the dotted line shows how the mocks we program are through a central air data computer which was highly redundant actually swept the wing to maximize lift-to-drag ratio for the particular performance that was required now that you see the f4 and the mig-21 so the L over D of the f-14 was about 15
• 14:30 - 15:00 then the f4 phantom what depending on the version was between ten and ten point five and the mig-21 was about seven so there you can see the tremendous difference in terms of lift-to-drag ratio which related to turning performance that we were struggling to get in that time period the next point was wing pivot selection now we're getting a little deep technically but you got to stay with me what happened is that on the f-111 when they developed the pivot design the the pivot
• 15:00 - 15:30 was located fairly close to the central line of the airplane as the wings came back the center of pressure the center of lift moved aft which caused a tremendous change in trim drag and a lot of drag on the f-14 they moved the pivots outboard almost three feet more on each side and what happened is when the wings swept less of the wing actually swept back so the center pressure didn't move as much and guess what they had less trim drag and this
• 15:30 - 16:00 was all part of building the performance of the airplane now let's talk about all the control surfaces the f-14 had a lot of them it had a glove vane which I'll tell you about it had the wing in the forward position had leading edge slats and maneuver flaps and an aux flap and those flaps and slats had intermediate positions for maneuvering it also had an over wing fairing and an air bag which I will tell you about which is a very
• 16:00 - 16:30 interesting in the next chart now this happens to be a picture of the f-14 be at catapult at milt mil power coming off the angle deck and what you can see here very clearly if you see that dark area in the center of the airplane that's an air bag that's a canvas air bag that was treated that actually inflated and deflated because the wing sat on top of the fuselage and on top of the wing there was an overweening with titanium fingers so as the wing
• 16:30 - 17:00 swept the bag expanded and the fingers collapsed down so you had an almost an ear contour on top to minimize drag very interesting concept now when we talk about wing loading on an f-14 you have a totally different translation so to speak because classically the wing area shown in white was on the f-14 was about 565 square feet but because the the new cells were widely spaced it was literally a lifting body so when the
• 17:00 - 17:30 wing lift gave out the body was still lifting so the true wing loading and combat for the f-14 when you had instantaneous turning and very tight turns in aerial combat was more like forty four to forty eight pounds per square foot as compared with the f4 J and the mig-21 which were higher another another secret of the design and the good thinking by all the people that evolved the design another technical chart this shows the impact of maneuvers slat and flap on turn
• 17:30 - 18:00 performance here you see relative turning capability on the vertical scale versus angle of attack and on the lower portion you see the f4 the mig-21 running out of gas between 12 and 16 degrees well when the flaps and the slats were extended you saw the f-14 going all the way out to 24 degrees angle of attack with almost twice the turning capability and this is one of the secrets of how this airplane which was very big could literally turn inside
• 18:00 - 18:30 of a mig-21 and an f4 in aerial combat a lot of people didn't know that now we get to something called glove vanes now the glove vane shown is shown here on the right now this picture on the right me orient you you see the inlet right there and you see the landing gear and you see that triangular shape it comes out about 15 degrees now that was originally put in there for the air-to-ground mode because what would happen is that as the airplane was diving that would come out and create a
• 18:30 - 19:00 lift force forward of the center of gravity that would counter the forces that were being put on the horizontal tail and lower the structure loads in the rear fuselage and it was a tremendous load alleviation device but also it was used for supersonic turning and in subsonic combat and here you can see again this is the last technical shot plot this is relative turn capability versus Mach number the dotted
• 19:00 - 19:30 line is the f4 and there you can see the f4 with the vane retracted and the vane extended turning right at the structural limit in other words the f-14 could pull seven and a half G's at Mach two imagine at Mach two with an end constant nzw product depending on the weight it could pulled that it's really quite remarkable what was in the airplane now we get to the next set of white rabbits and these are the widely spaced in the cells on the left you see the orientation of the
• 19:30 - 20:00 airplane from the front you see the widely spaced in the cells and from the rear you see it with the the convergent-divergent nozzles either open and closed and I just want to mention a few seconds about the two-dimensional external compression inlets and the convergent-divergent nozzles this was a very simple design the TF 30 was a bomber engine that I was tell use and it needed very clean air so we couldn't turn the air a lot so we had to have a
• 20:00 - 20:30 straight through flow and with the two dimensional inlets they actually positioned the shocks outside the inlet so nice slow air could get to the compressor face that was done very effectively in the back remember I mentioned on the f-111b that base drag was very critical this is where the air breaks away from the nozzles and causes drag on the f-14 we did not have that problem because of the convergent divergent nozzle they were very clean and you can see what happened now in
• 20:30 - 21:00 that channel between the cells is where we put all the stores and the secret of this was in something called a weapon rail now the weapon rail each one weighed about a thousand pounds it had its own internal hoist and you could literally bring up from the bowels of the carrier a weapon rail with a phoenix missile on it which weighed a thousand pounds you could hook four of them on the bottom of the f-14 in less than twenty minutes you could rearm the
• 21:00 - 21:30 airplane and you could land you could put bombs on it and what have you and what happened is that as opposed to the f-111b where they had an internal bomb bay we had everything external in the channel in a low drag and in a low drag installation and what happened is when we designed the airplane for all the structural load factors and what-have-you we didn't have to carry that weight penalty that was that was an overload condition so what saved a lot of weight and on the right here we see a
• 21:30 - 22:00 picture of the f-14 with SiC Phoenix missiles and in a vertical climb and you can see the very low drag installation with the fairings in front of the missiles now we get to a favorite subject of two of my colleagues in the back Carlos Pius and Harvey Ida Knopf who were really the structural pioneers in many ways on the f-14 carlos was responsible in large part for the design of the wing box and harvey was responsible for the fatigue aspects of the airplane and I say that with a great
• 22:00 - 22:30 deal of respect let's take a look at the structural components in orient ourselves in color in blue is aluminum roughly 40% of the weight that is to say the airframe manufacturers planning report weight was aluminum the Green was titanium that was six al for the titanium that was almost 25% you had boron epoxy used for the first time in the in the horizontal tail a long way
• 22:30 - 23:00 from the center gravity of the airplane where weight was very critical and we had and that saved about three four hundred pounds and the rest of it was steel now one of the things that happened on the on the airplane was the titanium wing center section that was really the heart and soul of the airplane what Grumman did they formed a titanium committee several years before the actual award and they began to study the use of titanium that would be key in
• 23:00 - 23:30 keeping the structural weight down to a low level as I'll show you when following charts they bought the electron beam welders shown in the background three of them from Boeing from the supersonic transport program they ended up creating an 80 thousand foot unique in the world titanium welding facility and what was created here after all many many many months and of testing in article testing was a titanium wing box shown there in the foreground that is as follows 22
• 23:30 - 24:00 feet long weighed about 2,000 pounds 900 pounds less than an all bolted steel box it carried go-home fuel in it it had 35 sub assemblies that were put together with 70 wells all done in a vacuum chamber with wells from a half inch to two and a half inches thick imagine what had to be done to put this together and it was probably one of the most unique structural things done in
• 24:00 - 24:30 the world at that time Lockheed was working on on titanium but they were using it for the sr-71 that was a black program the other part of this was the thing called fracture control and non-destructive testing because normally with this type of structure the Navy did not like welded structures in primary structure they wanted bolts things that you could hold onto so what had to be developed was a whole series of tests and analytics to determine that each one
• 24:30 - 25:00 of those wells was solid and indeed the first 36 of those boxes that were built were tested to 115 percent of limit low just to prove to the Navy that they worked and it worked extremely well now this chart may be a little hard to see but what you see here in the upper portion is the f-111b model and in the lower portion is one of the earlier at 14 models those used to be in my office which we use for giving briefings but you can't see it too well but on the
• 25:00 - 25:30 upper portion the f-111b had a crew escape module it had a bombe it had the gear retracting into the fuselage and the wing when it swept actually cut the fuselage bulkheads whereas on the f-14 the landing gear was external to the fuselage it had no bombe they had tandem seating so you saw nice long longer on runs from the nose to the tail on the f-14 and when you added this all
• 25:30 - 26:00 together you found out that the f-14 in terms of its primary structure because they were about the same size was almost 10,000 pounds lighter and when you looked at it very carefully you saw the use of titanium now the f-15 also had titanium in at about the same amount but the f4 only had about 9% you had the Mach suite programmer remember I told you how the wings swept automatic eliminate it limited the net the wing
• 26:00 - 26:30 bending moment that we had to design to electron beam welding save considerable weight in the airplane versus a bolted structure I talked to you about the ejection seats the weapons rails the landing gear the wings on top of the fuselage the straight flow through ducts and the bore on the epoxy tails all of those added up to almost a 10,000 pound reduction in the airframe weight and that was the key that allowed the f-14 to grow over in terms of capability over 40 years this is a picture of the glove
• 26:30 - 27:00 area I showed it to you before but there you can see the wing and the oversweet position of 75 degrees that's the that's the wing glove there and you can see the landing gear that retracts into the glove as opposed to cutting primary structure now let's talk a little bit about the engines this is a very interesting and somewhat sad story and yet it had a happy ending it took a little while to get there what we see on
• 27:00 - 27:30 the upper picture is a picture of the TF 30 engine which was inherited from the f-111b and we thought we could use it in the fighter because it would it had already been developed in the lower portion you see the F 110 engine the general electric f110 engine which was used in the f-14 a plus and B version now you really had 1960 versus 1980 technology the TF 30 engine was essentially a
• 27:30 - 28:00 bomber engine it suffered from compressor stalls because you have to remember the f-14 was turning a very high angle of attack very tight turns a pilot wanted to slam the throttle that engine could not tolerate that at all and we found that out very sadly as we got into operational service so they had to put operating limitations on it it still was able to perform very well in the a Mesa val test in 73 against the f-15 where they had a two-to-one advantage over the other adversaries because of its tight turning capability
• 28:00 - 28:30 subsonically but it wasn't until 16 years later that the final engine got into the to the 14 where the pilot could literally take the throttle and slam it back and forth with no problem at all and there you had an airplane with very high thrust-to-weight who could compete with almost an almost any airplane and you can see the difference in thrust the thrust-to-weight on the top and the bottom has to do with the thrust the weight of the engine you can see almost
• 28:30 - 29:00 a 50% increase in thrust away Dover the TF 30 versus the F 110 and by the way it was 50 inches shorter just incredible 10 change in technology now we're going to talk a little bit about the weapons system the f-14 would not be the great airplane that it was without the organized radar that was developed by Hughes Aircraft I say that with a great deal of sincerity because I worked very closely with those folks the Augmon in its day was at the top of
• 29:00 - 29:30 its class it had a very large antenna that's one of the flight test airplanes it had a an excellent fire control system in it and the Hughes was able to take almost 700 pounds out of the Augmon to put it in the f-14 from the f-111b and also reduce the amount of volume for all the boxes from 46 to roughly 30 cubic feet and the aim-54 missile down here I was about a thousand a thousand
• 29:30 - 30:00 pounds I mean it was a long missile very very big and the capabilities were really really remarkable when you looked at them first of all in the pulse top or mode it could detect targets in excess of 190 kilometers actually was much farther than that it had the ability to track while scan 24 targets at a time you could not do this with the Phantom and it had the ability to launch multi shot track while scan six phoenixes and I'll show you that in one of the test sequences and the later versions of the
• 30:00 - 30:30 frequency of the Phoenix also had electronic countermeasures capability because the threat the threat was actually changing and it had the ability to handle the Phoenix the sparrow the Sidewinder and the internal gun as well as internal weapons now this is a very interesting chart because when you look at it one of the things unique things that happen in the f-14 is when they put the f-14 out there with to see they began to develop a total strategy for air defense remember they both came up separately they put them
• 30:30 - 31:00 together and they could range the e2 way way out beyond the 400 miles you could add f-14 sitting on the deck getting all of that information shown on the tactical information display before he actually took off that was the beginning of what we call network-centric warfare on the f-14 e2 sees tremendous capability now I'm not going to dwell on this chart this shows all the radar modes but I thought we would have a few electronic folks in the in the audience just draw your attention to the fact to
• 31:00 - 31:30 the yellow in the pulse doppler search mode the range of the f-14 was two and a half times that of the f4 J in the range while search mode the volume was 15 times greater and the difference you realize the sparrow was a semi active guided missile that had to be illuminated by the radar at all times with the Phoenix missile you could launch it from as far as 60 miles away and had his own active terminal seeker so it went way up and over and came down
• 31:30 - 32:00 at over Mach 3 and could take out a target at 60 miles away you could literally out punch anybody at the time this is a picture of the pilots and the REO operator in the f-14 a on the left you see a classical heads-up display it's hard to see but he had a horizontal and vertical indicator group displays on the left and on the right the REO had the detailed data display for pulse doppler search and a tactical information display a big screen that
• 32:00 - 32:30 showed the whole radar world now the big thing about the f-14 you can see the visibility in air-to-air combat that guy in the backseat was looking all the time in terms of seeing where the enemy was it really meant a lot in air-to-air combat this is a look at the various air air weapon loads there are many different types of configurations one of the classical ones was to go down here second on the left from the bottom was for Phoenix to sparrow to sign right on a gun nobody could bring that capability into a into a into a for a
• 32:30 - 33:00 and what the f-14 prepared really wanted to do was take you out at long-range but if he had to get close he could he could he could maneuver with the best of them this is another picture again a larger one of the other the load with six Phoenix now we get to the f-14 be remember I said the f-14 be took about 16 years to mature remember the plan was to only bill 67 f-14 A's including the
• 33:00 - 33:30 prototypes and then go to the B unfortunately there were tough financial situations and way back in 1971 secretary Packard say we're not going to spend the money on it you live with the TF 30 and the Navy said yes sir but they were not happy about it so they kept pushing and pushing and pushing eventually after the number seven flew in 73 they had the super Tomcat flew fly with a derivative fighter engine at 81 and then eventually in 1986 and down to
• 33:30 - 34:00 91 the f-14 B entered service it was a magnificent airplane because it finally reached the right thrust away for its size and and as I say the pilots had literally Bodie free performance they could slam the throttles back and forth with no problem and this is a picture of the f-14 be in a strike mode with four mark 83s now the interesting thing about the weapons rails is they could handle a 2,000 pound bomb and also the big gbu
• 34:00 - 34:30 bombs which I'll show you in the next charts because the because what was happening now as we were into the late 80s and into the 90s the technology was reaching the point where we could now really put into play a Strike Fighter which I'll tell you about in the next charts and here it is this is the ultimate f-14 it was originally the C and ended up being the D but what it had in it was an AP g71 radar again developed by Hughes Aircraft they took
• 34:30 - 35:00 pieces of the Augmon they took the the radar out of the f-15e the apg 70 and they created a wonderful system called the apg 71 the Navy said we want new computers in it to give us a bus architecture that could handle anything and we put the new engines in it unfortunately they only build 55 of them but I had the privilege of debriefing the crews when they came back from Iraq and in 2006 where they were the only ones that could provide the long-range strike that was needed in
• 35:00 - 35:30 the Iraq war in the early days because we couldn't get the fighters to operate from the bases then and the f-14s did that job this is a picture of the of the advanced cockpits in the D that had a brand new it had a brand new front cockpit with a multifunctional to display it had a redo of the aft cockpit for the REO again with a new functional display and it had a chin mounted infrared search and track as well as a TV dome in order to enhance its
• 35:30 - 36:00 air-to-ground capability at night etc and this was the final load out of the airplane you I told you a lot about the sparrows and the Phoenix missiles over here on the right you see the lantern pod the tops part and the and the guided bomb units the GPUs which are used so a lot today by the f-15e and a lot of the top airplanes this is just in one more picture showing the the loadout versatility of the airplane and the uniqueness of the weapons rails here you
• 36:00 - 36:30 see a tarp spot with a another jammer pod located a forward of it with Sidewinder missiles and what-have-you one small mention of the Tomcat 21 the f-14 was not over in the late 80s we started working on even an advanced version and the only reason why we could do that I won't dwell on this was the fact that we had a good airframe that could grow so we were looking at an all digital fly-by-wire system new engines new avionics greater weapon carriage
• 36:30 - 37:00 capability you could see the the glove area there was much larger and there were many many versions of that and we even started to look at stealth adaptation to the airplane but unfortunately that did not happen and then we get to a sobering thing called cost you remember way back on the f-111 beach art one of the things I didn't mention was cost well airplanes sell like chickens they sell by the pound and here's a plot of fly away price versus
• 37:00 - 37:30 takeoff gross weight and on the lower level is what was proposed in constant $75 some of you remember 1975 then if you went to 84 dollars it pitched up but if you put inflation in at the time you saw the real prices of the airplanes now obviously they are rate driven you could see the difference of the f-14 but the f-14 remember had almost 3,000 pounds of avionics in it as compared to the smaller airplane so obviously it was going to be more expensive but in those
• 37:30 - 38:00 days they sold by the pound the bigger the airplane the more expensive that's what it was now we're getting near the end now and I'm just going to say something in perspective that it was the first operational air superiority with a fully automatic variable-sweep wing it was quite a unique capability not no other airplane has accomplished that it had multiple and simultaneous missile guidance and look down shoot down at extremely small targets and as a Strike
• 38:00 - 38:30 Fighter it could carry 10,000 pounds of ordnance hundreds and hundreds of miles depending on the mission could reach out almost a thousand miles it's really quite quite remarkable and it did not lose the good carrier suitability on the lower left here with a V approach of 135 and a V stall of 150 knots so we're getting to the summary now and again I want to say that a great deal of of leadership and a great deal of credit
• 38:30 - 39:00 goes to the Navy uniformed and civilian leadership I can't mention all the people that I interfaced with but I did know Tom Connelly Admiral Tom Connolly and George Spangenberg as I know some of you in the audience knew who were really great leaders and fine engineers and visionaries who made the f-14 happen the design team led by Mike Pella hack he surrounded himself with the best and the brightest earth Woland was head of aero Irv is here and Carlos BIOS did the
• 39:00 - 39:30 titanium wind box and Harvey Ayten off was in charge of the fatigue so he surrounded himself with the best people and Bob kress was the chief engineer wonderful things it fulfilled all its mission roles over its life personally it could out punch anybody was like the sr-71 you couldn't touch it at long range because the Russians were actually afraid of it they stopped flying the mig-25s out of Baku over Iran in the early days because the f-14 could intercept it and
• 39:30 - 40:00 it retired at the peak of its performance the f-14 Dee's were still actively being deployed and their role is now being filled by some excellent airplanes the f-18 EF the f-35 the f-15e and the unmanned tactical systems which are which are coming along so ladies and gentlemen that's the end of my story I'm going to now move into a DVD which you'll find very interesting it shows
• 40:00 - 40:30 test sequences that you've never seen before that have never been seen because they are all old films that were made when we actually retired the airplane and showed it to the retirees [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the first things that you're going to see here are some of the design 303 and
• 40:30 - 41:00 these are some of the configurations that I showed you in the briefing these are the preliminary design studies that I personally was very involved in and there's the single tail mock-up and with the wing swept and there it morphed into the twin tail mock-up which I told you about this was a fully powered mock-up by the way there you can see the two-dimensional nozzle we've won the competition there's my fella hack and
• 41:00 - 41:30 there's the mock-up out on the field this is the engineering mock-up and manufacturing aid called the EMA which we use to actually figure out how to build the thing and that was quite an instructional thing you can see the various sections coming together this is the bearing that's being put into the platter each platter on the f-14 was two inches thick these are all the tests that were done to prove out the electron beam
• 41:30 - 42:00 welding techniques and you can actually see some of the welding going on right there this is the mounting of the boron skin on the on the composite stabilizer which by the way we couldn't read great we tested the four times light we couldn't break it this is a full-scale wind tunnel test which I'm sure remembers very clearly and some of the flow visualization tests to look at the drag and flow fields this is the
• 42:00 - 42:30 full-scale inlet test just to see the way the air actually flowed coming in this is the fuel slosh test now now you can see the wing box that had the fuel this is the hydraulic systems simulator I was talking to gentlemen here that would understood a lot of that and we actually is in psi system this was the windshield tests and rain removal test which we did we we established a systems
• 42:30 - 43:00 integration test stand out in California where we actually took all the equipment and put it together in its actual confines of the fuselage where we looked at vibration and temperature these are the gun firing tests using the m60 one can and I can tell you an interesting story about that these are the early tests on the TF 30 where the afterburner and there you can see the CDI er is opening up as we went to maximum after
• 43:00 - 43:30 burning power these are some shots of the flight test this is the second flight of number one we lost this airplane because the backup hydraulic system did not work and I can explain that to you little you can see the few can't see it too well but the fluid was leaking out they had roughly one second to deject and they did both pilots survived and they flew again another day this is number two first flight with an
• 43:30 - 44:00 Allsteel hydraulic system they made us take out the titanium we eventually put it back this was one X doing a very high alpha tests and in the upper right there you couldn't see it but it actually had an a symmetric wing sweep test we could actually land the airplane at with one wing at sixty degrees in one at twenty at about a hundred and seventy knots that was demonstrated on the field these are high angle of attack testy there you see the controllability of the airplane at very high angle of attack that's Joe
• 44:00 - 44:30 Burke taking number seven to over Mach two point four and this is the these are the catapult tests that we're done at at Lakehurst and this is the first carrier arrest meant that was conducted and they found out they had a winner in terms of its airplane handling qualities these were gun fire tests at high altitude and this was the production line at one
• 44:30 - 45:00 point we were building as many as six a month 72 a year building 10 wing boxes a month coming out of that titanium facility [Music] this is the production line Alan Calverton this is the six-on-six Phoenix shot that was conducted now I guess five out of the six hit their targets the
• 45:00 - 45:30 sixth one they say probably probably would have gotten it but it did miss but they had subsequent other multiple shot targets that worked very well this is the super Tomcat flying with the derivative fighter engine this is the one where we got like a 60 60 % increase in time to climb to altitude absolutely remarkable performance and this of course is the f-14 D which was the ultimate strike Strike Fighter that I told you about and there you can see the
• 45:30 - 46:00 engine installation these are pictures of the f-14s being deployed they kind of speak for themselves the nice part about it is as a big airplane it had an over sweep of 75 degrees so the spotting factor the silhouette on the deck was actually less than the f4 is really quite quite remarkable more palpable to it there they are an echelon configuration
• 46:00 - 46:30 now there's a there's an ACM shot with the wings being poured now remember a pilot in ACM did not touch the mocks it was all done automatically the wind position itself through the central air data computer it knew exactly where it was altitude temperature he go to static pressure total pressure Mach number and it moved that wing the pilot did not have to touch that moon at all [Music]
• 46:30 - 47:00 now these are just a couple of films that it was in there you see Kirk Douglas the final countdown in one scene he says launch the f-14 Tomcats and there you see some pictures and of course it was the it was the sweetheart airplane in Top Gun which is coming up next which many of you and your children have seen and it was really a wonderful picture in fact the head of vx4 is a
• 47:00 - 47:30 good friend of mine did these flight sequences against adversary airplane and these are really ACM shots that were taken now of course with Tom Cruise now this is the fighter fling which which really got involved with a lot of the tactical development on the airplane these are wonderful shots there's a shock waves forming some of the pictures with multiple loads arrests mints ACM
• 47:30 - 48:00 shots multiple takeoffs [Music] again some more ACM shots you're gonna see some low altitude capabilities now there you see them there you see in going into a turn with the Mach sweet program and working you see how fast it moves the wings swept at seven and a half degrees per second at 1g and four degrees per second at seven and a half
• 48:00 - 48:30 G's the f-111 only swept three and a half degrees at 1g and cannot sleep on the road so that shows you the difference in capability and this is some of the last formation shots that were flown here it is on rest mints but that was a good landing remember was qualified in land at almost 26 feet per
• 48:30 - 49:00 second imagine 20s dropping in 20 when you touch down in the transport airplane it's less than it's about 2 to 3 feet per second so it's remarkable these are the various squadrons and then you're going to see some low altitude shots here and there at strapping gpus and it was
• 49:00 - 49:30 retired in 2006 after 37 years of service I think that's about it are there any questions yes you asked
• 49:30 - 50:00 the question about the pivot point the pivot point on the f-14 was 8 feet 11 inches almost 9 feet from the centerline the f-111b was it was six feet from the centerline were there any accidents for the wings failing to deploy I don't believe there were any operational accidents due to the wings failing to sweep there were I think over 30 years of service the driving actuators that actually moved
• 50:00 - 50:30 them failed twice which is remarkable and also the airplane as I mentioned if one of the if one of the actuators failed and one wing let's say was left back at 60 degrees and one came to 20 degrees the airplane was fully controllable in fact they had to demonstrate to the Navy in 1985 a symmetric landing I didn't show you the chart on it I haven't hidden but basically they could land the airplane I think at that at about a hundred and
• 50:30 - 51:00 seventy-five knots now if it failed at more forward positions that speed got less and less but it was controllable and Chuck Sewell the chief test pilot demonstrated that in six flights the question is how long did the design team stay together for all the change that's a very excellent question because as you know when you design an airplane it takes five to seven years to make it happen herve knows this very well very well he's smiling but let me just step back
• 51:00 - 51:30 we actually had about 1,800 engineers at the time of award working on the design of the airplane so after the go-ahead we held them together for about I would say about six years then they began to change write change slowly because the airplane was out of development then it's absolutely critical during the development phase which can last maybe two to three years that you keep that design team together it takes time to build them up and it takes time to get
• 51:30 - 52:00 them to work together as a team nothing has changed in the industry yes they you cut to5 and they can design in three dimensions they don't build wooden mock-ups anymore but you still have to have that team together to talk and to discuss things so I don't know whether I answered your question but I would say about six years was it ever employed in combat I don't I don't believe it was it was deployed operationally they used
• 52:00 - 52:30 Sidewinders and sparrows in combat against the Libyan airplanes the f-14 shot down four of their su-22 fitters and but it was employed totally over its lifespan in other words when they were in the air superiority fleet our defense mode Phoenix was always on board and they kept developing it remember the aim-54 a became the aim-54 sea which was a very unique system and
• 52:30 - 53:00 but it was not it was not employed but I will tell you that the adversaries knew what it could do I mean that sincerely any other questions who did the flight control system well the remember the the f-14 was not a fly-by-wire system it was the last of the old-fashioned cranks hydraulic servos and what have you you had you had honeywell involved you had trying to
• 53:00 - 53:30 remember all the names but all the classical names that work by move was involved various companies like like that yeah and the interesting thing about the f-14 and all their systems even the landing gear we had people that was that knew as much about the landing gear as the landing gear makers we knew had people that knew as much about the design of flight controls and flight control philosophy especially from the
• 53:30 - 54:00 f11 Tiger which as you know was a was a blue angel airplane had tremendous controllability all of that expertise was ground in so when we lay down the specifications and the requirements and work with the subcontractors they were designing to our philosophy not philosophy there was an interchange but we had that we had that capability not to take anything away from them what you asked about was in the design phase how did you account for all the ordinates
• 54:00 - 54:30 this was a very tough issue because on the f-111b the phoenix missiles were inside the airplane two of them were and they put Phoenix missiles on swivel pylons as I told you which was very heavy very unreliable very complex and had high drag what we decided to do not me we we left the wing completely clean nothing touches on the wing because of the controllability aspects and the way
• 54:30 - 55:00 we designed it for maneuvering what we did is we selected a configuration that widely spaced in the cells and we put them in this channel and instead of designing the structure to carry these internally they were carried externally but they were carried on streamlined weapons rails so when you actually calculated the loads and the structure load factor we didn't include that in the design in other words it had to
• 55:00 - 55:30 carry it but the flight fighter design gross weight was based on carrying four spirals plus the gun when we went to the Phoenix missile design that was really a heavier configuration so we didn't penalize the fighter the reason why we could carry them so effectively is that they were in low drag installations and before that most of the stores were carried on the wing and very high drag installations remember the f-14 could go
• 55:30 - 56:00 supersonic with four air-to-ground stores in the channel imagine going supersonic with four air-to-ground stores in the channel not necessarily with anything mounted on the glove pylons but it had that capability no airplane could do that at the time now obviously today they today they can so that's that's how we that's how we did it it was a wonderful ingenuity by so many people really it was just just a tremendous achievement and remember we
• 56:00 - 56:30 learned from the f-111b without the f-111b we wouldn't have been this smart in the chart that I gave you the f-111 a ended up being one of the finest aerodynamic airplanes in the world remember the f-111 a through the F could go at Mach 1.2 on the deck no airplane in the world can do that right and but they had problems with base drag they had problems with
• 56:30 - 57:00 external stores and cutting up the fuselage but if Grumman had not worked with General Dynamics and learned we wouldn't have not been able to apply those lessons to the to the f-14 a we maybe would have gotten there but it would have taken a long time so you have to give people credit you have to give GD credit you have to give everybody credit you never do anything alone any other questions yes ma'am the f-14s were they that's a
• 57:00 - 57:30 good question they provided air superiority coverage to our to our carriers in the Vietnam War in the 75 time for in fact they provided all the mig-21s could not come up as we began to withdraw because of this they they created a screen and did they play a major role I don't think so but they were deployed in the Vietnam War they just got in at the end yeah yeah okay
• 57:30 - 58:00 well listen it's been a great honor and a privilege talking to you all to all the young warriors in the audience thanks very much [Applause] [Music] thank you for watching Peninsula seniors out and about here at the Western Museum of Flight and Torrance I'm Betty Wheaton I'll see you next time [Music]
• 58:00 - 58:30 you