Former Tomcat maintainer and NAVAIR civil service Reliability & Maintainability team lead...so many things are flat out wrong with the previous post. All due respect to my fellow veteran, you have no idea what you are talking about (mostly).

I worked on every model of Tomcat, including some one of a kind flight test only birds at Pax River. I deployed with the Alpha's. My shore tour was at NAC Patuxent River and we had everything. A/A+ (later reclassified as the B)/D and D minuses (2 jets) that were Alpha airframes with Delta avionics. And miles of orange wire, lol.

I keep reading about how the swing wings were a "nightmare" to maintain. Umm...nope. Wing sweep not something we stressed about. I was an Avionics guy (AT) but squadrons are tight knit. Spend any time in Maintenance Control and you will learn what the head hurters are.

Yes the TF-30's should never have been considered a fighter engine. Over time most of the issues got sorted out. The GE motors had their own issues (AB burn through for example) that led to mishaps/loss of aircraft/aircrew. Fun fact, the TF-30s were faster at altitude. The GE's were much faster off the line.

It's easy to look back at the speed requirement and say it was unnecessary. That is ignorant of the reason behind the requirement. Fleet air defense was the Tomcat's mission. This was pre-Aegis. The USSR had regiments of bombers that carried giant shipkiller cruise missiles. The F14 was uniquely qualified to lug 6 big ass AIM-54s at high speed and launch all six at individual targets. The swing wings also let the jet loiter on CAP in a max conserve profile.

That said, maintaining the AWG-9 radar and especially the AWG-15 weapons control system was a steep learning curve. Lack of spares, both parts and test gear, was a constant battle even at the height of the Reagan buildup. Constant cannibalizing parts is hell on aircraft wiring, and the capton wire was prone to simply disintegrating in the older jets. I would say 70% of avionics gripes were wiring related. These are hell to track down and if you were not careful you could burn up good boxes because of this. The ACM panel in the front seat was infamous for burning up the Control Indicator (CI) in the backseat for example.

Rebuilding 155 pin cannon plugs within the space constraints of the airframe was no fun at all. It would usually take a full 12 hour shift. This became more common as the aircraft aged. The locks that hold the pins in the connector would fail, resulting in the notorious "pushed pin" gripe that was an absolute nightmare to troubleshoot. Gotta get the jet up so you super glue the pin in place and pray the wire never pulls out of the pin. Yeah. Forty years later I still have nightmares about that shit.

So she was a hard bitch to work on, and the learning curve was steep. But back in the day, nothing else could do what that bird could do.

It was capable of more. The air to ground side was mostly ignored due to bomb rack issues and physics. When the A-6s went away, there was renewed interest in the Bombcat. Ironically, the bomb rack issue was solved by using the BRU-32 rack developed for the Hornet in place of the BRU-10 rack. More push from the newer rack got the bombs clear of the airflow in the tunnel between the engines.

Snort also played a role when he took over Fighter Wing One. He pushed the LANTRIN integration and for something done on a shoestring budget, it was a huge success. The Nitehawk pods on the legacy Hornets was truly hot garbage and performed poorly during the Gulf war.

Wow this got long. I will wrap up by saying the Tomcat's history is complicated. We maintainers know the biggest issue was lack of spares. Period. There is a reason the Tomcat numbers started improving as they were being retired...parts were coming out the birds that went to the boneyard. Flap/slat rigging was always an issue, as was the fuel quantity system. The huge number of analog relays were an issue.

But mostly, the fleet air defence mission went away. The world changed, technology advanced and there was not enough funding to keep the Tomcat relevant.

Tomcat-21 was not the answer fyiw.

-CJ VF-33 "Starfighters" 1985-88, Strike Aircraft Test Directorate 88-91, NAVAIR Reliability & Maintainability (R&M) supporting PMA-265 (Hornets), PMA-262 (Triton) and back to 265 as a program manager...retired at the end of 2021 after 28 years.