Interview with Phil Grandfield on the F-14 & F/A-18
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 1 ก.ย. 2018
- "Filthy" chats about his time test flying the F-14A and F/A-18 on VX-4, flying the F-14 with VF-154 and also about the future of the carrier.
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I will add a little comment about Filthy's callsign... I was coming down to SoCal to visit my Father in Fallbrook. I had scheduled a golf outing with some gys I used to fly with and had given them my Father's phone number. When I got to my Father's house he told me he had received calls from Filthy, Nasty and Skuzz about golfing and wondered if I was hanging out with the right kind of folks. Indeed I was.
Ha what a brilliant story!
Love the last little tidbit about how he got the call sign, 'filthy' -- given to him by someone that went by the call sign 'nasty'. Classic! Makes Maverick and Goose sound kind of lame. Phil is an awesome guy. Gr8 interview, btw!!
"The F-14 pilots lived for DACT" .... this is my quote of the day. Says a lot for the aviator mentality and doctrine back in the day.
Great interview. Being a huge F-14 fan, so happy to see him say F-14 is the best plane he ever flew. Also, great to hear from an F-18 and F-14 pilot to see why F-14 never had a replacement. It truly is irreplaceable to this day.
I love the F-14 as well, but he's referring to the original F/A-18 - it's fairly safe to say that the super hornet would is a better overall platform.
Super Hornet was never a replacement for the F-14 and never will be. They both are great at what they excel at. Mike Rabens, Grant Begley etc. all say the same thing. Depth of capability difference stil remains. Navy was very clear with congress on that. Every aviator who has flown in the Navy says that. I don't want to go into details of those. F-35 is not in operation yet and no one knows how it would fare in the role F-14 was in.
Alex: No it is not. Avionics were superior in the F-18 Super compared to even the fully digital (federated) F-14D, but F-14 airframe design was superior to that of the super hornet. F-14s especially D versions were used as escorts for the Super Hornet frequently in the Afghanistan missions. F-14s had the highest number of deployments in its final year of 2006 when it hit new peak in deployment. Super Hornet with the 11 hard points under the wings, was entirely developed to be a strike fighter and does very well at that. F-14 was developed to be an air-to-air fighter/interceptor that later matured into a strike fighter role. If that was the case, Navy would not have fought tooth and nail to keep the F-14D operational till 2025 and beyond when Congress/Dick Cheney asked them to make do with the Super Hornet. Every aviator who flew both Super Hornet and the F-14 especially the B/D version say, Super Hornet never was meant to replace the capabilities the F-14 had. It simply was too expensive to operate and Congress wanted to cut Navy's funding on Ops and Crew. F-14 required two people to fly.
Roger Mahajan don’t get me wrong, I love the F-14 but it was a massive and expensive aircraft nearing the end of its design life. 50 maintenance hours per flight hour?! The swing wing provides awesome capability but was a mx nightmare, especially in a carrier environment.
I like the F-18 E/F - it’s a good all-around cost effective aircraft, and much more of a 21st century design. It’ll never be as badass as a tomcat, but one can say the same thing about most of the Cold War designs (XB-70, SR-71, B-1A, etc) in many ways we could consider ourselves lucky that it was ever produced (thanks rooskies and failed TFX program!)
Yeah, can't argue with that. You are right. F-14 was very expensive to operate. The swing wings were very complex and required a lot of maintenance. 2 man crew etc. However, Navy wanted it because they knew how dominant it was in its primary role. They wanted Grumman to produce about 130 more F-14D and keep the 55 existing F-14Ds Super Tomcat newly built in the 90s (while retiring all F-14A/B) till 2025 and beyond. However, senate/Dick Cheney rejected it. Navy went to appeals court and lost.
another brilliant interview. great hearing Phil's stories
Had this in my watch later list for a while and oh boy it was worth the wait. Absolutely fantastic interview!! Makes me more hyped for Heatblur's Tomcat
Great to hear you enjoyed it!
Another brilliant interview. I'd like to suggest you try and interview Keith "Rosey" Rosenkrantz. He flew an F-16 in Desert Storm and wrote a book about it called Vipers In The Storm. It's a great read with a lot of detail. It would be an amazing interview I'm sure.
Great suggestion!
Looking good once again! Great stuff.
Great interview. Thanks. Getting the call sign Filthy from the legend Nasty - #Awesome!
Cheers Joe.
Excellent guys,thank you
Love this channel! Thank you
Cheers John.
Awesome interview. Thanks very much.
Cheers.
Great video series! I like hearing the little details about an aircraft or an experience that a pilot had.
BTW, at 22:24, when he mentions A-6's, the image is of an EA-6B. Visually similar, but a completely different jet.
Cheers Matthew. Yeah I noticed that after it was publish...school boy error!
No worries. :) As similar as they look, I was very surprised that there was very little parts commonality between the A-6 and EA-6B. Love the videos! Keep up the great work!
They were discussing the composition of a typical air wing of that time. Prowlers would have been there too.
incase you guys were wondering what happen to Maverick after the movie Top Gun ended, this guy is a legend! he lived the dream! cars too jeez lol
Just clarify something in the interview as Phil made an honest mistake re VF-154. VF-154 flew the F-14A - not the B. Phil didn't fly the F-14B until his Air Wing Commander tour - CVW-1. The F-14 squadron was VF-101.
Great interview!! Carry on sir !!
Cheers!
Great video, very interesting interview. A pity that the sound is not very good. For a non English spoken person there are bits quite difficult to understand, but super video. Thanks!
I understand that but sometimes the guests microphone isn’t always the best. Glad you enjoyed it tho.
Interesting... as usual. 👌
Excellent!
I live 5 miles from Oceana!! AWESOME!
Great interview. Could You please next time include the Rank of the person you interview in the title?
Good interview: Filthy seems like a cool guy!
Very cool
A slight off topic question but since you show some nice shots of F14 models I thought I just throw in the question . I noticed , in comparison, there's a wide choice of F14a model kits available but just a handfull of F14d models . Any ideas on why that is ? In my opinion the F14d was the best looking plane of the different F14 types built , except for lack of the wing gloves that only the F14a models had .
In practice, they found the wing gloves were not very practical. They added complexity to the plane for very little gain except at supersonic speed and in particular the Mach 2+ regime which the F-14 rarely accelerated to.
I think early in the F110 test program with the Seventh F-14 prototype they concluded that the F110 was enough for most purposes (the extra power made the F-14B and D generally much more maneuverable than the F-14A; they were definitely safer dogfighters than the A-model) and that the glove vane wasn't absolutely necessary, especially if the F-14 was rarely going to exceeded Mach 1.4, let alone exceed Mach 2. The glove vanes on the Seventh Tomcat (BuAer 157986) WERE functional when that F-14 prototype flew with the GE F101-DFE engines in 1981. I have an F-14 book with photos of that plane's glove vanes extended in flight. Those glove vanes I believe were removed prior to that F-14's test flight with the production GE F110 engines in September 1986. The test plane also received the modified F-14B issue gun vents as well. Whether they did gun tests with that plane, I don't know
The D-model (if what was reported in Aviation Week was accurate) had to be speed-limited to Mach 1.88 because of the IRST sensor. That sensor head could be damaged by the heat of greater than Mach 2+ speeds. They tested an aerodynamic mockup (non-functional model probably equipped with heat-measuring sensors and not the actual targeting equipment) of the IRST on the F-14B prototype in the late 1980s. (In fact, that IRST dummy is still installed on that F-14B as it sits on the USS Intrepid to this day!) That plane also did supercruise tests in that configuration (circa 1989; Aviation Week had an article about the F-14 supercruise tests) to simulate the F-14D and I imagine they calculated the heat loads on the IRST and concluded "overspeed" was an issue with the new IRST sensor.
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Don't get me wrong -- the F-14A's G-load at Mach 2 with the glove vane is excellent. It's 7.5g+; even the F-22 manages "only" 6-G at Mach 1.6 or something like that? Anyway, it's interesting a late 1960s design has a higher G-limit at supersonic speed than the latest Air Force air superiority plane. The lower G-limit probably has to do with the costs of stressing a larger aircraft for higher-G. (It's easier to build higher-G capability into a smaller airframe than a larger one.) 7G versus 6G could mean the difference of a few hundred million if not upwards of a billion dollars in design changes for a small maneuvering improvement.
What happened with the glove vane was that some F-14 pilots were using them as canard surfaces in a regime they weren't intended to be used (subsonic dogfighting) in order to gain a maneuvering advantage and that may have stressed the airframes more. The glove vane was really supposed to be left in AUTO like the wing sweep. As I understand it, the glove vanes destabilized the F-14 at supersonic speed (aircraft tend to get more stable at supersonic speeds; that's partly why they're more agile/maneuverable at subsonic speeds and turn tighter subsonic) and relieved loads on the plane and in essence made the tail surfaces more effective at supersonic speed. It gave the plane an extra 1.5G+ to work with at supersonic speed otherwise the plane would be limited to 6G+ (without the extended vanes) at supersonic speed (up to Mach 2.2 I believe; the 7.5G+ load definitely was sustainable from Mach 2 to subsonic as the plane slowed down in the turn). In any case, they disabled the glove vanes in the A-models (removed the actuators and locked them) and new build B and D's never had them. The remanufactured planes (F-14B(R) and F-14D(R)) had their glove vanes removed and that area was rebuilt without the mechanisms at all.
Had they (Navy) gone ahead and authorized Grumman to develop the Advanced F-14/Tomcat 21, they had plans to redesign the glove vane area and basically create more wing area. There are technical drawings of this online and in older magazine articles and older books like Paul Gilcrist's F-14 book. I think think this was intended to provide the aerodynamic effect of the extended glove vane without the mechanical complexity. The increased area of the wing would also allow up to 2,000lb more fuel to be carried internally in the Advanced F-14 (they had several different proposals, at least 3 different designs from basic D-model strike upgrades with more F-15E technology to a completely re-engineered plane that probably would have had reduced maintenance requirements and possibly used avionics from the A-12 Dorito chip project).
Crazy. I was with vfa-102 and vfa-195 in Japan in Atsugi. 102 had just swapped their Tomcats for f model super Hornets.
Hello fellow Diamondback. I was an AO in VF-102 in the early "90's. Very glad I had the opportunity to be a part of the Tomcat community.
@@ksamos I caught VFA-102 in Japan right after they had transitioned to super hornets from tomcats. I went from Charlie's to supers and had to catch a COD out to the Kitty Hawk in spring of '04. I never worked on tomcats but I heard the stories. I was in the air frames shop as a second class.
F-14 B/D had the GE-F110 engines. Not the F-404. The Hornet had the F-404 engines. Much smaller engine and made a lot less thrust.
Skipper Grandfield, one great guy. BKR Baby
BKR Baby!
Hey, Aircrew Interview, you playing the DCS Tomcat by chance??
I’m not no. I heard it’s brilliant tho.
I'm confused. Every other source I've consulted says VF-154 never flew the F-14B. In fact, the F-14B was flown almost entirely by Atlantic Fleet squadrons, with the exception of VF-24 and VF-211, which operated it for a short time when it was known as the F-14A+.
Can anyone reconcile this?
You are correct. Phil mixed this up as he flew B’s with another squadron.
Thanks. What squadron was this that he flew F-14Bs with?
He flew the B’s with VF-101 during his Air Wing Commander tour.
VF-101? The Atlantic Fleet replacement squadron?
That’s what the email reads so that’s all the info I have.
Boy it really chaps my hide that they shredded the F-14 at its prime
THIS F 14A PERSIAN CAT WANTS HIS 80TH CAT FLOWN TO TEXAS A & M AIRORT TEXAS. SHOULD BE IN SAN DIEGO MIRAMAR STATION
By the way did you know that if you consider the number of kills by the Iranian F-14s during the Iran and Iraq war, you would find out that F-14 has a higher number of kills than F-15? The only thing I could think of why people out there are not aware of this fact is only because of the political issues and the animosity between USA and IRAN.
Interesting Alex!
check this link out bro: www.ebook777.com/iranian-f-14-tomcat-units-combat-osprey-combat-aircraft-49/
some of the stories in the book have been told by the iranian tomcat pilots and it has got English subtitles. I am sure you would enjoy watching this.
th-cam.com/video/sya-9XDpfiM/w-d-xo.html
There a series of these video clips. make sure you watch them all.
In all honesty, I find the Iranian F-14 claims unsubstantiated.
There's just no way of knowing if they're telling the truth.
Frankly, I think they're exaggerating their kill claims and the level of readiness of their fleet today. It's almost 100% certain they're lying about the readiness levels today.
They have more operational F-4s than any other Mach 2 plane in Iranian service now. The last number I heard of operation Iranian F-4s was maybe 50-some planes. Of course, they bought over 200 F-4s (during the Shah's reign) and there were over 7 times as many F-4s built as there were ever were F-14s in existence! The spare parts are much easier to come by for the F-4 and the F-4 is easier to maintain than the F-14 and even the F-15.
Most of what you hear on TH-cam about the Iranian Tomcat is bluster and baloney. We simply don't know the truth because there weren't many intelligence agents working in the field over there during the time of the Iran-Iraq War and satellites and other electronic eavesdropping can only tell you so much. Based on what we saw directly during the first Gulf War, I don't think either the Iranian or Iraqi pilots were terribly good. They just didn't have the level of training pilots in the West get and they didn't get to fly as often to maintain comparable competence levels. They were probably flying MAYBE a quarter as much in training.
And when the Grumman techs were evacuated during the Revolution, the IRIAF ability to support its Tomcat fleet just plummeted and they could probably barely field a quarter of those planes by the mid-1980s.
They like to brag about the readiness of the IRIAF fleet but the reality appears to be they have no more than a dozen planes ready at any time today and very few of those planes if any are 100% mission-capable. 79 airframes were delivered, the 80th was held up in the US/designated as a test plane for the rest of the IRIAF fleet prior to the Iranian Revolution. MAYBE 56 of the airframes still exist but most of the planes have been scavenged for parts to support a shrinking number of operational planes. With all due respect, the scavenged planes will NEVER fly again.They've lost upwards of probably 20 planes between combat and accidents. No more than 20 of those (F-14) planes left can actually fly and there's a question mark on how good and competent the technicians supporting those planes are because they've had no American support for 40 years and WE had problems keeping our own F-14 fleet above 70% ready with some of the best-trained techs in the West!
Consider this -- the Chinese are allegedly retiring their copies of the Su-27 Flanker because the bootleg Flankers don't match the quality of Russian-built airframes and engines! The Chinese-built Flankers were wearing out quicker and literally falling apart in service. They couldn't match the quality of the Russian engines and the Chinese-built Saturn engine clones were lasting no longer than a jet engine would have during World War II -- 40-45 hours tops! Now, the Chinese are starting to buy Russian-built engines and planes again because their aerospace industry simply isn't mature enough to build planes to that sophisticated a standard. The F-14 and Flanker are of comparable complexity. Do you honestly believe the Iranian techs are better than the Chinese factory workers?
BTW, the quality argument has NOTHING to do with ethnicity. It has everything to do with practical operational experience and manufacturing know-how and the fact is NEITHER the Chinese or Iranians have the knowledge and experience base of either the Americans or the Russians (or the French, the British, the Swedes, the Germans, the Canadians -- well, you get the idea)! The American and Russian aerospace industries are just more mature and know how to build modern, Mach 2 planes. Both industries have been building and operating planes like this for over 60 years now. The Iranians are still figuring out how to reverse-engineer and build clones of the F-5 which is a nearly 20-year-older design and far less sophisticated than the F-14.
Consider that the Iranian F-14s were built over 40 years ago, most of them have been in desert storage for almost as long, and the most sophisticated equipment on those planes is hardly 100% effective, either. Time takes a toll on things even in the dryest conditions. They don't have the best facilities to store sensitive electronic equipment and some of those avionics were allegedly sabotaged by Grumman personnel before they fled Iran. There were other items like batteries for the AIM-54 missiles (for the warhead fuses or on-board guidance electronics power supply) that went bad because they have a shelf life of maybe a few years. Those batteries cost at least $10,000 a piece and were specialized items not many corporations built so that was another complication in keeping the Iranian equipment operational.
No, the remaining Iranian F-14s are held together by baling wire and they're running on Pratt & Whitney TF30-412 engines, not even the later TF30-P-414 standard American F-14As used from the early 1980s onward. The earlier TF30 marks had worse stall and stagnation tendencies than the later TF30 models.
IRAN have kept their fleet of Tomcats (around 40 I guess) operational due to enhancements and also reverse engineering. I know that currently what they do is to give out false reports about their readiness to fend off any possible attack. But what the Tomcats, even though a handful of them, did to the iraqi Migs and Mirages cannot be denied. Somehow when it comes to the Tomcat scores during the IRAN and Iraqi war I get the sense that you are reflecting whatever the mainstream western media are telling us and feed our brains with whatever they want to. But you are entitled to your opinion and I respect that. My closest friend is an Iranian and his uncle is a retired Fighter pilot who used to fly the Tomcat. That man is a decent person and according to my friend he would never lie about the events during the air combats they had with the Iraqi fighter jets. According to his figures Tomcats managed to down around 150 Iraqi military airplanes and choppers during the 8 years long war.
ultrabaiter
Big difference between Israel and Iran.
must be a badass pilot to equate F14A to F15s....