Why I Liked Flying the F-14 – and Other Aircraft I Have Known

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This could be a long session, since I came to love flying many of the 33 types of aircraft I have strapped on over the years.  I cut my teeth on the A-4 Skyhawk, and it’s hard to beat that little plane for its snappy performance, awesome roll rate and versatility. It was an airplane with a forgiving heart – which I have learned to appreciate as I look back on my youthful  (translate:  occasionally bumbling) years as an aviator. 

My next love just has to be the F-8 Crusader.  It may be hard to understand how a 54-ft long fighter could “fit the pilot like a glove,” but that it did.  It was a sexy-looking machine, and it put you in the 1000-mph club!  It was fun just to walk out to the airplane, it was a pleasure to climb into and it was a hoot to fly.  It was the last of the Navy gunfighters. Just don’t take it around an aircraft carrier.

The F-4 Phantom II wasn’t a favorite of mine, but it sure had my respect!  After spending so much time in the tiny cockpit of the A-4, the F-4’s cockpit seemed like somebody’s living room.  That airplane was a blistering performer!  For years I heard the story: the F-4 could climb from the deck to 35,000-ft faster than it could descend from 35,000-ft to the deck.  Yeah, right.  Well, later I got a chance to check that out.  While going to test pilot school I performed a time-to-climb test with a clean F-4G, full fuel load.  Brake release to 35,000-ft in 1-min 50-seconds. 

But I think the F-14 Tomcat takes the cake – if for no other reason than the airplane simply does whatever you want it to do, and it does it with class.  It’s comfortable to handle, and quick for its size.  Of course, it has that swing wing and a couple of big afterburners.  You want to go Mach 2 – no problem.  You want to go to 55,000-ft – routine.  It was a good machine around the carrier — I thought it handled much like an A-4. Even the F-14A with the TF-30 engine was faster than an F-4, and was a tad better in acceleration.  Both would go from 250kts to 550kts in about 21 seconds. 

I’ve included a shot of my wife’s ’72 Corvette with my F-14A.  There’s also a pic of me flying an F-14 with my back-seater, Pete Angelina.  We had no idea at the time that we would soon go to Hell and back in an F-14 flat spin.  More on that next time. 

My F-14 and Jo’s ’72 Corvette
Pete and me in one of our workhorse test birds.
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Published by rocketsix

I'm one of those Americans who was born during the Great Depression, watched WWII as a young boy, and eventually used the U.S. Navy as my ticket to leave my little home town and to confront the jarring reality of flying combat Naval Aviation. I learned my trade well. I flew 33 types of aircraft, including virtually all of the high-performance fighters of my day. I accumulated more than 800 carrier arrested landings and flew 138 combat missions over North Vietnam. I became the Navy's Chief Test Pilot, testing the F-14 Tomcat, the Swedish Viggen and many other aircraft. I managed to get the Tomcat into the first flat spin EVER -- my back-seater and I barely escaped with our lives. But, I'm retired now -- one of those old, bold aviators. I set my thoughts and combat experiences to print back in 2010 (it was an unpublished family affair) -- then put them aside for eight years. In 2018 I cleaned up that old book, shorted it, re-worded it, re-shuffled it and brought it up to date. I nervously and with much hesitation published it on Amazon in May, 2018. Surprise! The book, Above Average -- Naval Aviation the Hard Way -- has sold thousands of copies and remains a solid 5-star book today! Stephen Coonts (author of Flight of the Intruder) wrote a very flattering review of Above Average. The preface to my book deals with a single-plane sortie against the fabled Than Hoa bridge in North Vietnam (flown by yours truly). Steve asked to use that very same vignette as the prologue to his new book, Dragon's Jaw, which is all about the American air effort to drop that bridge. Of course, I was happy to comply! If you're interested in reading about guts, determination and triumph from someone who had a front row seat, you might give my book a try. When you're finished, I would love to hear your thoughts.

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