Grumman F-14 Tomcat 1X prototype - first 3 flights (Aug-Sept, 1971) 

Great info, thank you!

Fascinating history - thanks!

@@microship You're welcome! By the way, the oldest surviving Tomcat is the #3 airframe. It's in the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island. It's beautifully preserved and looks pristine from the photographs I've seen. It's stored indoors like the F-14D(R) at the Smithsonian annex at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC. The next-oldest surviving Tomcat is #5. It was the first put on public display and is mounted on a pedestal outside of the main building of the National Museum of Naval Aviation (title probably wrong, I know!) at Pensacola, Florida. It's on the naval base there. I can confirm Tomcat's #1, 2, and 4 were destroyed in flight testing or burned on the ground. It's unfortunate but I think the F-14 lost upwards of at least a half-dozen airframes during testing prior to the first actual deployment of the F-14 on the USS Enterprise in fall 1974. At least one pilot was killed in one of these prototype airframes, too. He was practicing a routine over Chesapeake Bay(?) for an air show and lost control of the plane or it malfunctioned. He was killed when the plane dove into the bay. No chance to eject. His name was Bill Miller, Grumman chief test pilot at the time. The plane he had the accident in was the 10th Tomcat, the airframe that performed the carrier qualification tests for the type on the USS Forrestal (CV-59).

@@AvengerII Wow... it is hard to imagine the intensity and excitement of such a development project. I was never close to them myself (worked on F-111 long ago), but the client who owned the film was a test pilot. Thanks for the additional history!

@@microship I live a few hours away from the USAF National Museum in Dayton. They have at least 2 F-111s there, an A-model and an F-model. The F-111s were retired fairly quickly after Gulf War 1. They claimed it was maintenance which actually makes sense. Something like 25% of TAC's budget was spent on maintaining the F-111 fleet which wasn't that big! The RAAF actually ended up using their F-111s (mainly C-models later supplemented with G-models which were FB-111As) a decade longer than the USAF. By the end of Australian service (2010/2011), their C-models required 150 maintenance man hours per flight hour!!! That's ridiculously intense for a "tactical plane." Yeah, the F-111 had enough range and payload to qualify as at least a medium bomber! The US Navy retired the F-14 in 2006 and the D-models were the least maintenance-intense Tomcats. They required on average 50 MMH per flight hour but they probably could have gotten that down to 30MMH/flt hr or less with new-build airframes with stricter maintainability requirements. The F-15 was supposed to be the first Teen Fighter built to be lower maintenance (they were shooting for as little as 12-15 MMH/flt hr) but even that plane required at least 35MMH/Flt Hr because of issues with the avionics and engines. They improved the reliability of the engines AND avionics in both the F-14 and F-15 but both planes had unique frame issues. The F-15 developed a safety issue that needed to be checked (longerons) and the F-14 had parts that were difficult for maintainers to access and things that needed to be check constantly because of abrasion during wing sweep. The air bags on the F-14's swing wings were an item that needed to be changed at intervals as well as inspection of telescoping tubes and the moving wires which could get insulation abrasion. I think Grumman could have addressed more of the F-14s maintenance issues but that probably would have required engineering changes in the airframe, an F-14E model. More $$$ to fix the problems! That was the F-14's vice -- $$$. The Navy constantly cut the upgrade programs and they only resolved the big issues with the F-14D (engine upgrade AND making the avionics systems more digital)and even then the Hornet Mafia killed the F-14 program in the end.

@@AvengerII Ah, indeed. I did avionics maintenance on the F-111, and even as a young pup in 1972 I was deeply aware of the inefficiency. I wrote a proposal through the suggestion program, detailing a better way to prep the plane for a mission than... are you ready.... firing up the whole system with ground power equipment, booting the computer, dragging in a paper tape reader, and transferring data to the flight control electronics... all followed by 2-3 hours of tests and configuration settings. It was insane, and even the black-box swapping involved stunning overhead and a huge department. We all joked about the "feather merchants" who sold this to the USAF... even though the plane itself was astounding. I watched one do a fuel dump, and another punched out over the desert and I got to set up the recovered crew module as a simulator (just the basics... what, documentation?)

There was no better engine until early 1980's when General Electric F110 came. F110-GE-400 was used in the F-14B and F-14D. F-14A's with TF30's were used to 2004, so one would think it would have been good idea to re-engine all F-14A's with F110-GE-400, but I guess there would have not been funds for it. However, F-14 was highly capable even with not so good TF30.

The TF-30 in the F14 musta killed more men than Cecil B. DeMille.

It was a pain to maintain. Cost began to outweigh benefit. Dick Cheney is a crooked sunavabeach.

This is the TWELFTH F-14 (BuAer 157991) built! The manufacturing of this plane was accelerated so it could take the place of the original prototype that crashed on its second flight. That's why the twelfth F-14 was labeled "1X." This is NOT the original F-14 prototype (BuAer 157980). The uploader made that clear in the video description. This plane (157991) first flew in the late summer of 1971. The original prototype (157980) crashed at the end of December 1970!