Secrets of the F-14 Tomcat design - The formidable wing of the TOP GUN fighter 

Im a simple man i see a tomcat i click.

I worked on the f14 program at Grumman from 1981-1984. Awesome program and airplane. Anytime,Baby.

My high school mentor was a floor engineer for Grumman from 1942 to 1982. He worked on everything from the Hellcat, F111, E-2C, and F-14 from prototype to F-14 Super Tomcat. I still have the foot locker stickers he gave me along with the photo packs for the sales contracts

Marvelous explanation. I'm flying the F14b in DCS it's a wonderful beast and with flaps can out turn almost anything. Thx for the videos.

F-14 was the best Navy fighter indeed. Beautiful Aircraft.

This is the best technical description of the F-14's aerodynamics I've ever seen since the 1970s, when I first started paying attention to it. There are some great interviews with F-14 test pilots from the 1970s and later D model development. The 1970s-era test pilot said the wings are loaded up more when flying straight and level than when the F-14 is turning with higher AOA. The body and fuselage tunnel create a lot of lift at higher AOA, which reduces the wings' contribution to lift. He also talked about the airframe being designed from the outset to carry both A2A and A2G munitions. This was really exceptional M7!

Well I was eager to watch this video but even the breath of information so clearly explained surprised me. Learned far more than even I thought I would. Grumman managed to pull it off. Do all three requirements with the technology of the time with the sweep wing and create a superlative aircraft. Very eagerly awaiting the next video, all these advantages surely require additional context to explain its disappearance and I am sure you will do a splendid job explaining that.

Mist beautiful aircraft ever. As a kid I had a large scale model of it. Loved it!

The most beautiful fighter jet ever built 🐈❤️... The mighty Cat.

You're absolutely right about the F-14 having an amazing sustained turn rate which made it very capable in turn fights. Obviously with regards to the size and mass of the plane. :) But I think there were a lot of buffeting issues. Esp. early on. The shaking was a pain and did not help in prolonging the airframe service life.

There's a Peninsula Seniors video with one of the designer of the F14. He explains the development and all the design innovations that opened the door for the 4th gen fighter. The only downfall was it's bomber engine that stalled too much. It should of had the fighter engine alot sooner!

Fantastic video and fantastic channel. I can’t begin telling you how greatful I am that you’re actually including more technical information and not just dumbed down “top 10 most beast awesome fighters of the future”. Keep it up

Honored to have had the opportunity to have flown one of these amazing machines. I saw my first tommy at a military-themed airshow in 1986 near Atlanta Georgia when I was 16, there for a future service member youth group through my school. I was sold the moment it lifted off the ground and the impact of that horizontal wing span hit me as I stared into the hot glow of afterburners as it rolled left and up into the air. I was originally set however on being a helicopter pilot however I owe my instructors for setting me on another path. What I'll remember most was my first flight in one which was not as a pilot but my first flight off a carrier deck as I sat in the rear RIO seat - and the vibration and sound as we throttled up into clouds and I glanced at the wings as they began to sweep further and further back. The VG sweeping wings were always my guilty pleasure. Nothing looks as graceful or sleek as a tommy in full sweep at high speed carving the air... Then the impending presence she gave from her sheer size and form with her wings in a forward sweep which if you were friendly was likely an unwelcome sight. I'd be lying if the Star Wars loving kid in me didn't come out a few times as I'd imagine in my head "Lock s-foils in attack position". I did not get to make use of much of the firepower at my finger tips as generally my tour of duty was the gulf war and a few years afterwards. We were primarily reconnaissance and patrols above the water which saw very little activity. The most my brothers and I got to do was unloading our 20mm rounds into suspected IED hotspots and even those were few and far between. Regardless it is not an experience to be forgotten and I'm warmed by the eternal love these birds get from those even half my age. In 2008 I spoke with another former F14 pilot who flew these birds when they were still rolling off the factory floor in 1978 and he told me the technology was the hardest part to walk away from. At the time he discharged in 1985 he told me the tommy felt like it was from the future and there was nothing like it in the civilized world. He alluded in 2008 when I met him that he feels like he finally sees technology around him that reminds him of climbing into the cockpit for the first time in 1978. I began my service at the onset of the Gulf War and left the service in 1997 and I still left with a similar feeling despite the consumer computer age being in much fuller swing. God bless these old birds.

Your stuff is straight accurate to the pilot's manuals, my dude. I advise youtube aviation lovers to trust this man.

Really great information. You explain it very well. Thanks

The Tornado F.3 in RAF service was due to receive an automatic wing sweep system similar to that of the F-14's. Although it performed very well in testing, it was rejected on cost grounds.

You mentioned briefly the F-4. I recommend you do a episode alone on the thing, because so many crazy concepts and complexity were employed on the Phantom, that is a miracle it actually flies as reliably as it does.

Wonderful episode after a long time, keep it up.

Excellent video! You have a way of explaining difficult and arcane subjects in an easy and accessible way. The plots are great tool for that purpose. Keep it up!

Always love your videos! Thank you for all the work!

Man I love your channel. So much insider information. Also your focus on developement and concepts is lovely. If you like the idea, going into the maths and physics in detail from time to time would be exciting for me. Best wishes from Germany

Such an amazing piece of engineering. Designed in the 1960s no less! Just a fantastic design.

Love the Tomcat . Thanks 7

Another awesome video! Keep them coming!

What an excellent, informed and well presented video. Thank you.

videos just keep getting better and better! keep up the good work.

What a great video to catch up with - thanks for the deep dive

Class up-load man. One helluva piece of military hardware for sure. An iconic fighter aircraft.

Love your content! Great channel!

F-14 was a great and beautiful plane,it was also too expensive for navy to maintain... Thank You for this very informative video.

F14 ! Now you have my attention !! You Gained a new subscriber !

Great video as usual!

Bravissimo !!! Grazie

Damn ....what a cliffhanger, can't wait for your next installment, interesting what you said about the F14 having 25% less thrust than the F15 and achieving the same max speed. Still remember being puzzled at their retirement all those years ago but never really looked into it.

Awesome the most technical explanation of why the F-14 came into being

Now imagine that bird with F135’s in it instead of TF-30’s? 86,000lbs of thrust, instead of 40,000 lbs, and it would even weigh almost 500lbs less!

ST21 would have been such an awesome plane. Sad that it never happend.

There was another advantage for the variable sweep wing on Tomcat specifically. Storage. Especially on carriers, space is a premium commodity, thus most of the aircraft employed on carriers include some form of folding wing mechanisms. This kind of mechanism irrevocably leads to wing with less structural strength (instead of one piece wing spars, you need to include some form of a hinge into their construction). Meanwhile the Tomcat worked around this issue by including the so called "oversweep" 75 degree wing poisiton for storage which reduces the width of the aircraft when parked, without compromising the strength of the wing. Add no armament hardpoints under the wing and all that results in the Tomcat being able to pull off high G maneuvers at very high speeds. Aerodynamics of the Tomcat are still extremely clever even today.

You are talking about the thrust to weight of the TF-030 powered F-14A with 42,000 lbsf of thrust with a thrust to weight of 0.85:1 in combat configuration (full internal fuel, 4 sidewinders, 4 sparrows, guns) while comparing to the F-15's better than 1:1 thrust to weight ratio. The F-14A pilots used superior lift of the F-14 especially at high altitudes in thin density air to counter the F-15's better TW. However, the F-14 B/D with the GE-F110 engines by all accounts was "overpowered" and pilots needed to be cautious while using afterburners especially at low altitudes, which is why afterburners were not used for carrier launches. It made a peak thrust of 60,000 lbsf of thrust at Mach 0.8 and had a thrust to weight of better than 1:1 in combat configuration (1: 1.16). By all accounts who flew the GE-F110 powered F-14s, the F-14 B/D well flown by an ACE pilot had no issues in ACM against the F-15.

F-14 is one of my favourite

Did know watched anyway 😉 Great like always

they look even better in person best looking jet ever made followed by the Flanker and the Sabre

Fun fact 1: the naval fixed wing Su-33 weights as much as the swing wing F-14. Fun fact 2: the landing speed of the Tomcat is slower than the Super Hornet, and this is already slower than the legacy Hornet.

Your videos are very good! Informative, and you explain many unknown things about aircraft. ☀️😎☀️🇺🇸

The picture at 13'06'' of a disymetric flight seems quite unrealistic. This picture appears on many books on the F14. There have been some flight tests of some asymetric configurations. But I very doubt this extreme configuration was flyable. Such a configuration would generate huge roll and yaw moments, which in turn would require at least some differential elevator and tails rudders just to fly straight. However, it is noteworthy that the rudders are flush with the tail fins, and the elevators do not seem to be differentially actuated. The Tornado has a safety feature that blocks the wings in position when a mere1,5 degrees sweep angle difference between the two wings is detected..

Easily my favourite jet growing up. Still one of the greatest ever built for the US Navy. It’s a shame they shredded all but the museum pieces to keep the spare parts out of Iranian hands. Would have loved to have seen the proposed Advanced Strike Fighter 14.

Thanks so much.

"Anytime, baby." Served with her aboard CV-61 84-88.

Great video.

6:40] I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, swept wings - everything else aside - you take your favorite airfoil section, you favorite lift-drag ratio, laminar flow is long, the drag-bucket is wide, but then you decide to rotate that airfoil 30º and suddenly it is a completely different air-foil section. Ok, the effective section thickness goes from 9% to 5% , but everything else about that airfoil changes completely, gets stretched out - just do the geometry. And, it still works. Sort of. You have to assume with a lot more drag. But maybe they are not that concerned about how much jet-5 they burn.

Add swing wing, thrust vectoring, stealth, lazer weapon and you have T65 X wing.

I've been part of transitions to the F-14 Turkey in both VF-51 and VF-302. What a great air-eo-plane! Almost as good as the F-8J Crusader! One guy, a goat around the ship, who was teamed with the senior NFO when we were flying the F-4J because we figured "Cannonball" would know when to eject them during a failed arrested landing, left the squadron and transitioned to the F-14 and became the top flyer bringing the Turkey aboard. At any rate, at CNO established min. AGL and min controllable airspeeds. that maneuver will point the nose to the ground and whomever you are flying with will eject your ass into the SAR helo.

You are funny. I enjoy your delivery.

Would have been interesting to have see how F14 would rank against other planes if it got better engines and got a stealth upgrade like F15 Silent Eagle. I have heard that F14 is more aerodynamic than the F15 so maybe then it would have been on the top list of 4.5 Generation planes.

Such a gorgeous plane. Some pretty involved pros & cons to it, but the F-14D deserved more success. At the time it was overlooked though, the plan was still to develop a swing wing version of the ATF for the Navy. And the F/A-18E did cover the carrier umbrella air defense role in the interim. The "Super Tomcat 21" was a neat idea too. Having the two engines unusually far apart like it does, gives more leverage to roll with thrust vectoring. Replacing the small forward glove vanes with small movable canards (a la B-1B) could have been interesting as well.

The glove vane system was compensation for lack of thrust from the TF-30 to maintain the same maneuverability as the prototype that had more powerful engines that never went into production. When the Tomcat was finally fitted with more powerful GE 110 engines the glove vane system was removed. I worked on Tomcats at NAWC Pt Mugu from 91-94.

fun fact - the f14 had the 1st ever CPU! (MP944). Grumman would also be fined for late delivery and too high a landing speed. They would also be paid a bonus if the landing speed was less and before the set date. Ah we miss those days of military contracts! Also last fact about the wing box: the experience of the f111, allowed them to make a much lighter version with titanium. If you want more technical : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-SsUCixAeZ0A.html

12:43 mindblown!👍

The F-14 was retired too soon and it was a big fat MISTAKE!

बहुत अच्छी प्रस्तुति ।

I worked with the F-14Ds ,,THE BIGEST STICK IN THE NAVY!!!!

A couple points to add: 1) The F-14 was capable of sustaining much higher g loads than any other fighter in service then or after. 2) The F-14 was unmatched in turn rate because its sustained turn velocity was nearly 100 kts slower than its contemporaries. It was a foolish pilot who decided to engage the Tomcat in a turning fight. So if it was so good (and it was), why don't we use it any more? Well, it was expensive and difficult to maintain. It was incompatible with AMRAAMs and the Phoenixes had been pulled from service. It was never very good at the ground attack role because it lacked a sophisticated RWR and jamming suite. But mostly because the Navy had decided to consolidate and couldn't justify a 'pure' air to air fighter.

thank you, a wonderful episode. so grumman got it right.?

Given that we have the somewhat absurd F35B these days, I wonder whether they could bring back variable swept wings with modern materials. By using modern metalurgy and CAD, we should be able to reduce the maintenance hours on a plane like the F14. They would also want stealth, so this would also be a concern (but honestly a var wing in its swept config would probably help that).

Rick "Twig" Labranche is now a professor at College of Maritime Operational Warfare in Newport, Rhode Island

Let's hear it for Mike Pelehach- 'Father of the F-14'

my fav under all war plains like ever !!!

my father, Alan Baker, came from England directly to this project - he designed the swing wing system while working for Grumman. Would anyone be interested in more information from him?

The Iranians still love it 😍.

Yes, F-14s & AV-8Bs look freaking mean & awesome.

Tranzonic... zweep... cosa succede, amico? We understand friend. Outstanding content, I can deal with imperfect pronunciation. My Italian is slowly improving.

I think the biggest reason there's no more swing-wing aircraft in the pipeline for the United States is because you can't make it stealth .

could you make a video about the f104 starfighter?

Have you made a video about forward swept wing planes?

Loving the videos and Loving the accent but myself and my friends are left wondering where it originates from?! Our best guess is it's italian or german, can you let us know?!

Perhaps the best aircraft ever designed. Why did we give it up.

No aircraft in the US Navy inventory has come close to the capabilities of the F-14 since its retirement. Time to bring back a modernized version!

Oh the good ol' F-14 Tomcat.. I still have a huge soft spot for this awesome flying machine... One can only wonder wonder how would this jet develop and grow throughout the 21st century if the Cold War hasn't ended and that the US Navy still had a need for a heavy and fast fleet defense interceptor. Imagine what would Phoenix missile evolved to? Unfortunately the USSR dissolved and there was no more need for a dedicated fleet defense platform, a cheaper multirole aircraft like the F-18 were a more prudent choice. Imagine a Super Tomcat with new engines, fly by wire system, armed with 10 of the Phoenix missile successors - let's say a Mach 6 air to air missile with ranges of up to 250-300 miles? I bet the current Navy wouldn't have anything against this Tomcat.. That being said it's time for the Navy to start diverting more money towards the development of the new fleet defense aircraft for the 21st century.. We do need it, very soon.

Guess it was not until DCS Mig-21bis release that many people realized how crappy delta-wing MiG-21 was in continuous turning fight contrary to "MiG is always more maneuverable than anything else" believe while a giant like Tomcat excels at it thanks to variable swept wing design. Thank you for a very informative video.

Now if they add hyper-sonic envelop (third case/class requirement along with trans-sonic and supersonic) as well as stealth capabilities at a given flight speed will variable wing be viable solution?

Defender of the fleet

We need a new modern version of the F-14. USN needs a bigger plane with more RANGE!

My favourite the TOMCAT 🙃

TOMCATS! YES!

Pity that it was prone to compressor stall due to the compressor fan at the mouth of the engine. the TF30-P-414A jet engines that powered the early model F-14s was considered susceptible to compressor stall, due to some design flaws. The result of these faults is that the F-14A (in real life and in the movie) is easily susceptible to engine failure as a result of disturbed airflow. This is demonstrated by the unfortunate death of Lt. Kara Hultgreen, an F-14 pilot and the first female carrier-qualified pilot. She was on final approach for a carrier landing when she drifted off course. She attempted to correct the problem by yawing the aircraft, but the change in the angle between the aircraft and the air caused her left engine to suffer a compressor stall and flame out. She was unable to recover and her aircraft struck the water.

The OG beast

For nearly four generations every US Navy fighter came from the Bethpage boiler works! If you figured out how to break a Grumman fighter you Had achieved something! If the most ham-handed inexperienced Naval aviator could figure out how to get a Grumman fighter aboard this ship then anything the enemy could do to it was not going to be too big of a problem! The the Tomcat, commonly known as a turkey is known aboard ship because of the sagging speed brakes below and above the tail, who is designed around that big APG radar and carry 6000 lb of Phoenix missiles. Put it with an organic two-man crew, a data link to the F-14 which was really just finding its legs, along with new and improved tactics and that was a lethal combination. PS. I am the son and brother of retired US Naval aviators know neither was a fighter jock.

11:20 the guys have a mini boss ? one boss wan't enough?

Can someone explain that clip with the PlayStation 1 controller during refueling? :P

Navy is currently trying to get a modern aircraft that has the capabilities of the old F-14.

3:37 how F-14 greets other aircraft.

Can we meak a stelth aircraft with variable wing angle??

5:03 is this fixed sweep curve representative of say the F-15? If not why not? Using this chart can you show the -14 gets vastly superior performance to the -15 for at least a few use cases thanks to this wing?

Why most bomber ate narrow body aircraft? Plz. Consider the questions

Can you please make video on su 57

For Carrier defense I don't think that the Super Hornet can compete with the capabilities that the F-14 possed. Variable swing wing etc. Phoenix missle.

Pleas make a video on how India's Tejas Ki will be superior tha Rafal......... Also please discuss Indian 5.5gen AMCA

If you did variable geometry now, it'd work with far less compromise. 40 years of engineering advance

Still not done the next video in the series? I can't find it, so.......?

The only thing wrong with the F14 was the engines.