'Standby' Plane Makes Ceremonial Last Takeoff

In one sense, it was a somewhat inglorious end to one of the United States' most recognizable symbols of the Cold War; from another perspective, however, Friday's retirement ceremony for the US Navy's venerable F-14 Tomcat was a fitting example of, well, why the aircraft is being retired.

USA Today reports the original Tomcat crowds of watchers saw taxi to the runway at Oceana Naval Air Station Friday -- tail number 102 -- was NOT the twin-tailed, variable-sweep-wing fighter that took off shortly thereafter. That plane was number 107 -- as 102 was sidelined with mechanical problems.

Such issues are "a common occurrence with the F-14," Navy spokesman Mike Maus told the Associated Press. For that very reason, the second plane had been on standby -- just in case.

The cost of maintaining its Tomcat fleet is the primary reason the Navy has replaced the aging fighter with the newer, less-troubleprone -- and increasingly ubiquitous -- F/A-18 Super Hornet. For many among the roughly-3,000 guests who watched the F-14's last takeoff, however (no matter which plane ultimately held that honor), there's something about the Tomcat that the Hornet will never be able to match. The noise, the speed, the firepower.

The... gravitas.

"There's something about the way an F-14 looks, something about the way it carries itself," said Adm. Michael Mullen, chief of naval operations. "It screams toughness. Look down on a carrier flight deck and see one of them sitting there, and you just know, there's a fighter plane. I really believe the Tomcat will be remembered in much the same way as other legendary aircraft, like the Corsair, the Mustang and the Spitfire."

Originally designed in the late 1960s to intimidate the Soviet Union's fleet of bombers and missile-attack aircraft, the Tomcat found itself without a clear enemy to fight upon that regime's collapse in 1991. The Navy scrambled to find a new role for the aircraft -- eventually arming it with precision bombs for ground attack missions.

Thus equipped, Tomcats continued to serve in every major US conflict -- Desert Storm, Yugoslavia... and until February, Iraq.

"The Tomcat has been a dogfighter, an interceptor, a reconnaissance platform, even a bomber — whatever the Navy needed it to do," Mullen says.

Somewhat ironically, the last country now flying the F-14 is one very much on the United States' radar: Iran. GlobalSecurity.org's John Pike says that government struggles to keep its aging Tomcats in the air... and spare parts will only become harder to come by with the plane's retirement from US service.

"Nobody will be sorrier to see them go than the ayatollahs," Pike says.

Perhaps... but for anyone who's ever seen an F-14 fly by at full afterburner... or who's watched 'Top Gun'... the skies will never be the same again.

FMI: www.navy.mil, www.globalsecurity.org