T
HE F 14 TOMCAT and its
association with TOPGUN
became an international
phenomena thanks to Tom
Cruise’s character, LT Pete
‘Maverick’ Mitchell, in the
1986 lm that portrayed a class going
through the US Navy Fighter Weapons
School (NFWS). For almost 20 years,
TOPGUN instructors saw the Tomcat
exclusively as the ‘enemy’ as they strived
to train eet F-14 pilots and radar
intercept o cers (RIOs) in the best ways
to defeat potential opponents across
the globe. Fleet crews came to TOPGUN
to learn from the school’s instructors
in pale blue T-shirts and crisp ying
suits who were undeniably ‘the best of
the best’.
However, from the early 1990s, with
the reduction in the size of the F-14
community post-Operation ‘Desert Storm’,
there was a surplus of Tomcat airframes
available. In turn that meant a handful
of jets — never more than six — were
assigned to the NFWS.
TOPGUN was initially forced to acquire
F-14s following fatigue problems with
the bespoke adversary aircraft in its
eet, as RADM Jim Robb, who was the
commanding o cer of the NFWS at
the time, explains. ‘The navy purchased26 F-16Cs [designated F-16Ns in naval
service] in the mid-1980s to be used as
adversary aircraft. They were distributed
across the adversary squadrons and used
to represent high-end ghter capabilities.
‘These aircraft were own for the most
part without external stores. The ight
envelope for the adversary mission put
great stress on the airframes, with routine
9g applications. Within two years of the
navy F-16s entering service [in 1987],
they led the entire F-16 eet, including
those used by the US Air Force, in terms
of fatigue life used up. The navy jets’
airworthy certi cation was controlled by
the Naval Air Systems Command, not the
air force.
‘Complicating this arrangement was
the fact that air force and navy fatigue
life methodology was di erent, as was
the degree of airframe stress that they
considered to be acceptable — the navy
was more conservative. The results
of these di erences was
two-fold. Firstly, the navy
cut the number of usable
ight hours for each airframe in
half. Secondly, navy fatigue analysis
predicted that cracks would occur in the
wing attachment bolt holes at around
1,000 hours. Inspections of TOPGUN
F-16s did indeed con rm the presence ofInextricably linked to the Navy Fighter Weapons School thanks
to the hit movie Top Gun released in the spring of 1986, the F-14
Tomcat came to symbolize the very best of US naval fi ghter
aviation throughout the jet’s three decades of fl eet service.REPORT Tony Holmes
Going head-to-head — a
TOPGUN F-14A (BuNo
162591) and a visiting
VF-32 F-14B (BuNo 161608)
and crew merge during
high-aspect basic fi ghter
maneuvers (BFM) in 2002.
Ted Carlson/FotodynamicsThe NFWS entrance sign
at NAS Miramar, before
the school moved north
to Fallon. via author50 September 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
// F-14 TOMCATS
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