Grumman's F-14 flies into history
Grumman's F-14 flies into history
The F-14, fastest and fiercest of its time, is finally retiring; Tomcat powered LI's growth for years
BY JAMES BERNSTEIN
Newsday Staff Writer
March 28, 2006
Tom Gwynne, a test pilot for the old Grumman Corp., still remembers the exact day he first flew the company's F-14 Tomcat fighter jet: Feb. 10, 1973.
"I felt 10 feet tall," Gwynne said of the moment he donned an orange flight suit at Grumman's Calverton airfield and crammed himself behind the controls of the Tomcat. Gwynne took the plane -- the 23rd Grumman had built -- on a 70-minute test flight over Peconic Bay.
Gwynne was accustomed to high-performance jets, having flown 135 combat missions for the Air Force during the Vietnam War, but he said he had never experienced anything like the F-14.
"I felt I was floating," Gwynne said in a recent interview. Now retired from Grumman, he is a vice president for programs at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City.
When he landed the F-14, he said, "I was jumping up and down."
But time flies, too.
The Tomcat, the Navy's premier air-to-air fighter since the early 1970s, is retiring, having reached the end of its service life.
The last of the approximately 712 F-14s Grumman built from the '70s to the early '90s will be off the decks of aircraft carriers by September. They are being replaced by newer F/A-18 Super Hornets, made by the former McDonnell Douglas Corp., now a part of Boeing Co.
Much has changed since those early F-14 days.
Grumman, once Long Island's largest and best-known private employer, is now also a part of aviation history, having been acquired in 1994 by Northrop Corp. of Los Angeles.
The F-14's heyday will be recalled and celebrated in June, when Northrop Grumman plans to hold an F-14 Day at its Beth.page facility. People who worked on the Tomcat will be invited to hear speeches and to watch films of the plane in flight.
The Navy is planning F-14 events, too, for mid-September.
"We are going to have a series of activities going on to commemorate the life of the F-14 and send it out in style," said Mike Maus, a spokesman for the Naval Air Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk, Va.
Only about 20 F-14s remain in active service, aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. Some of the F-14s will be sent to aviation museums, others shipped to a military "boneyard" in the Arizona desert for storage, and still others destroyed.
Why all the fuss?
The prime reason, according to experts, is that the F-14 revolutionized naval aviation. It was faster than anything flying at the time, capable of reaching Mach 2.38, or 1,544 mph. Its wings were unique, built to automatically move forward and backward as needed during flight to increase maneuverability and speed. Its firepower also was unmatched. The Tomcat carried the deadly Phoenix missile, which could hit a target at a distance of 100 miles. And, at the time, its radar system was the most advanced in the world, able to track 24 targets simultaneously and strike six of them.
"It was the best-performing airplane of its time," said George "Woody" Woodward, a retired Navy commander who spent years as an F-14 weapons system operator, sitting in the rear seat.
"In the fighter business, we talk about dog-fighting. We've come a long way since World War I and the Red Baron," said Woodward, who now works as a director at the National Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola, Fla. "But the basics haven't changed. It's who can turn better, who can climb better, and who can see better that determines who wins the fight. The F-14 could do all that."
On Long Island, the F-14 put Grumman back into the business of building fighter planes, something it had not done since the end of the 1950s, when it manufactured single-seat Navy Cougars and Tigers.
In terms of revenue, the F-14 was a $2-billion program, making it the largest military airplane deal in Grumman's 60-year history. At peak production in the late 1970s and early '80s, the F-14 program employed about 8,000 people at Grumman facilities in Bethpage and Calverton, or about 25 percent of the company's total workforce. Parts for the F-14 were made by about 300 subcontractors on Long Island and across the country.
During that period, the F-14 and Grumman were "the linchpin of the local economy," said Lee E. Koppelman, the Island's veteran planner. "The economy is not the same now."
The plane even got into the movies. It starred, along with Tom Cruise, in the 1986 hit "Top Gun." Cruise plays Maverick, an impetuous pilot training at the Navy's elite flight school in Miramar, Calif. The movie bought the airplane and the Navy an untold amount of good publicity.
Long Islanders who worked on the F-14 program still vividly recall the experience, both the good and the bad.
Bert Moller of Commack worked in production on the first F-14. "Most of us were putting in 14 hours a day, seven days a week," said Moller, now 73 and retired. "It was a tough ordeal." The first F-14 was completed and made its initial flight on Dec. 21, 1970.
On its second flight, nine days later, disaster struck.
Soon after taking off from Calverton, the jet lost both of its hydraulic systems and finally its "third chance" backup system. The Tomcat crashed while approaching an emergency landing, but test pilots Bob Smyth and Bill Miller ejected safely.
"To see it fly for the first time, was like, wow," Moller said. "All of the effort that was put into it was worth it." When it crashed, he said, "You talk about hitting the bottom. It took everything out of us. We couldn't believe it."
The program was halted until the hydraulic systems were redesigned. Grumman went on to build a total of 712 Tomcats, including 80 purchased during the mid-1970s by the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, before the Islamic Revolution that swept him from power.
The plane won the hearts of U.S. naval aviators.
Ed Galvin, a Navy commander who grew up in Miller Place and logged about 2,000 hours as an F-14 weapons system operator, said he's sorry to see the Tomcat go. "I've been married for 13 years," said Galvin. "My wife would argue that I love that plane as much as I love her. It always got me back safe. Yes, I've had some landings on fire. But it was a good and well-built airplane."
The F-14 was a Cold War plane, designed to protect U.S. aircraft carriers from Soviet bombers. On two occasions during the 1980s, F-14s shot down Libyan jets; in the Persian Gulf War, 1990-91, F-14s provided combat escorts for U.S. bombers; in late 1995, F-14s took on a new role -- as bombers, hitting targets in Bosnia and earning the nickname Bomb.Cat. But the Tomcat never did have to take on Soviet fighters.
"Technologically, it was the most advanced fighter ever built" up to that point, said Joshua Stoff, curator at the Cradle of Aviation Museum. "But its potential was never fulfilled. When the Cold War ended, the peace dividend did it in."
Nothing ever took the F-14's place at Grumman after the last was delivered to the Navy in July 1992. Grumman was acquired two years later. Now Northrop Grumman's Long Island workforce is about 2,600 -- down from the 20,000 and more in earlier decades.
Airplanes are no longer built on high-cost Long Island, their construction here having been replaced by high-tech electronics and software work.
Gwynne notes that the F-14 was the last fighter the old Grumman company built. And it may have been the best.
"It's been a top-of-the-line aircraft for 30 years," Gwynne said. "To hold that spot for so long shows you just what a revolutionary airplane it was."
