F14 comeback

[///AMG]

Looks like “F-14B UPGRADE” above the BuNo.

I remember when I first got to the fleet, I had a number of more senior aviators in my squadron who had flown this "upgraded" jet previously. I think the most succinct response I got when asking about what it was like was, "we were just trying to survive that cruise". For all the Tomcat fans out there, their stories didn't really impress me much. Sounded like a jet that was completely unreliable and mostly tactically irrelevant by then. None of them missed it at all, and we were flying legacy Hornets at the time to boot, so I don't know what that says about it, but probably not good. I think the F-14D had a little more going for it, but probably not much other than the LANTIRN pod and some retrofitted digital displays stolen from the Hornet.

 

[atpduck]

Sorry.....BuNo is the Navy/USMC equivalent of the serial number that USAF aircraft carry on their tails. In the case of the Tomcat, it is that 6 digit number under the horizontal stabs. You can infer about when they were accepted into the inventory based on the leading 3 digits. Current aircraft are 168/169 ish, my vintage Hornets were like 163/164......162 is pretty old, like early 80's I believe. I think some of the F/A-18A/B's I flew were 161/162's (early 80's build), but I'd have to check my logbook to be sure.

The CH53E that was mine on MEU and a HOA deployment was 161262, and 1983 +/- a year seems to come to mind for its manufacture date.