F-14 Tomcat vs F/A-18 Hornet—Which is Better?

we want to talk about Top Gun but first I mean we have to Tomcat Hornet you have if I read your bio correctly a thousand hours or more in each and so everybody loves the Tomcat I want to be the first guy but I wasn't yeah nobody ever there's always a guy that beats you you know but I mean come on um I assume you flew the A's because that was probably a while back as far as the yeah it's Tomcats the a model yeah my Tomcat time so let's just sandwich the curry five years Tomcats all have 14 A's yep okay then it was like which lot are you flying you know so there were differences in Tomcats never bomb dropping though purely fighter okay then the next 17 years were in the fa team then the end of my career I was a tomcat and Hornet guy okay back to it yeah I was day night qualified in the f-14d the super tomcat oh and the Hornet and you know what most of my combat time time and I'll honestly tell you you're gonna be in combat and they're shooting at you boy it's be good to be in a combat in an f4t to go fast and the other dude is head down running the laser and it's like so most of my bomb dropping I'd go ah put me in a tomcat please well when you're the heroin Commander you can usually get your choice yeah you can get your choice but just as far as going out flying around maybe bfm but maybe just goofing chasing clouds I don't know compare the two or maybe contrast the two yeah you know there's what do we say in the Top Gun business goods and others that's right that's right okay the hornet I always here's what I would tell guys about the difference between the two platforms when I was flying f14as I'd call it a coin toss were you gonna launch or were you going down we spared every single Mission if there were two planes two in a spare so you'd always go through a brief there's a good chance you're gonna go flying if you were the spare if you were the spare and Tomcat F-18 we didn't spare our first squadrons were like we were 98 they were brand new fully Mission capable brand new yeah they but they were reliable too the Tomcat had reliability problems quite frankly so I call one an analog Platform One a digital platformer you know which one's which now the D was more reliable but you know it was probably better than our a models uh strengths Tomcat particularly the D and I always people say how fast does it go and I said I did this one time I got level at 10 000 feet I slowed up to about a hundred and fifty no so flaps kind of come down so I'm level plugging the blowers I want you to make a guess 150 to 610 what amount of time would that take 30 seconds 9.7 so it was now it didn't have any tanks on it but it was an amazingly fast airplane and so uh you know I do have one little story as Jos but I'll tell you later is how fast did I ever go people always ask that question I go oh okay did you repeat the test though sorry to interrupt in the Hornet because you know what I never did because it's like you know it was just not that as fast so when an F-18 and you know we're I was the CEO at Top Gun when we had F-16 ends a really fast airplane with the f-110 engine 27 000 pounds of thrust when they met a hornet head on and the guy decided he was going to try to leave in an F-18 with single Center Line you're in trouble not happening because that F-16 would go up to 800 indicated and so they chase you down and all the instructors go it's like a little dog and you just turn around oh I gotta turn back into this guy because they just eat you up they'd have 240 overtake from behind you so you had to turn and fight that was all there was to it so so when you compare the two acceleration uh top end speeds The Hornet was good at taking uh and speed and using it with altitude and it was pretty efficient up high but we're always limited with you know we're carrying 15 000 double bubble in a in a standard uh f-18c model so it was you know but it was very reliable and it was way easier to land on the boat let's say that compare those two yeah as an Ensign or Lieutenant JG I'll tell you what that the tomcat's a handful of airplanes to land on the boat the D was just about as hard it had some different cues and a little better HUD and you know an auto throttle and the throttle throttles were always horrible in the Tomcats the idle throw on the Hornet was I called it the primary method of Landing I told my maintenance guys if the auto throttle's not up that airplane's down and they go Oh They'll be up if you know the skipper says that so yeah so we uh you know you know the primary land way Landings you know Auto throttles it was for me all right so both are on the line you're going to take one let's say to an air show yeah which one are you gonna jump in well what's your purpose [Laughter] uh Tomcat was always fun if it was if it was slicked down yeah they here's a little aside the tanks were never made for combat and all that those were called fairy tanks and then once they start putting them on they go oh we can get longer Cycles so it was kind of controversial at the beginning as to Tomcats normally flew with no tanks in in when vf1 and 2 14 and 32 all those new Squad new Tomcat squatters they didn't fly with tanks for a long time and then it was like oh now we go out for an hour and 45 cycle the tanks run and the airplane didn't maneuver all that well with those tanks a lot of drag plus the Phoenix rails were draggy so yeah yeah if I was to fight though one on one if a guy was really good like Dale Snodgrass you know he would give anybody a hard time in particular if it was a b model you know with the bigger engines or a d I think a tomcat can give any Hornet a run but you know the Hornet's way better in the phone booth as you and I know the slow fight oh yeah gunned a guy going a high angle attack yep and the other part of the F-14 is this I want I want you I wanted to discuss the two aspects number one if it was a b or a d later in the the time frame the airplane was blowing up okay I don't know if you ever knew that blown up the engine would come apart really so you know hold on the a was always notorious for seeing stalling yeah so it stalled but it didn't blow up on you okay never heard this oh yeah we've lost several Tomcats an Antilla crew from I think it was uh the Discovery Channel was on one of the ships oh yeah yeah the f-31 they had a high power camera they zoomed in and they could see exactly because no one knew why was it coming apart and you know I will say this that the guy that was lost was one of my fellow commanding officers when we were cos together scooter lamoreaux Scotty his dad was an f8 pilot you know rest in peace he was the nicest guy he was in the back seat when that thing blew up and his wife still lives here in San Diego and there was film of that from Discovery because I'm thinking of one I think I've seen it where it's pretty certain it was that one because they came by and it was and it was on a flyby High Dynam High Q as we call it 1B 1.2 or something came apart oh wow and just instantly both of them gone but I believe there were two that that happened to I don't know if the other one was a b or not but it was a 110 engine and it was some sort of a liner that was in it they go oh this is why it's not a containment of the compressor blades and all that but you know I think I've got most that accurate yeah well this is dangerous business so yeah it is you know and so there's some big differences see it you had that and then you always had the aspect of if you pushed it too far that thing would get in a spin and if it got in a spin there's somebody that you know alluded to the fact they don't know if it was really postal gyration or they actually got it out of a spin but I it was one of my students that was in the FRS and he later was a Top Gun instructor but I think he got into a spin and he actually got it out of a spin so uh well pretty certain that he got it out but as far as all the other guys there were a lot of ejections in flat spins yeah and the movie The First movie when Goose hits the canopy that was accurate that's right because part of the procedure of ejecting was to blow the canopy look up is it still there in the dead air above you then you eject that assumes a lot of wherewithal in the moment it does and so here's the point how good do you feel about taking that thing we used to take it to zero AirSpeed all the time then it became a prohibited maneuver because somebody went into a spin because if you did it right you came straight back down and then all that air would go up and the engine would stall so they go oh don't do we all love doing it you'd watch the austring go the opposite way you know it was y'allstring on the nose which is funny see that in Final Countdown whenever they're showing the ostrich yeah it'd be a piece of parachute cord see that's how you took the yaw out yeah because if it was off to the side yeah you had some side yeah side slit so we'd come back down but then they go uh somebody just went in a spin and had to eject from that no more zeroes tail slides he says you didn't know if the airplane was coming over here or going over there isn't that part of the fun it was fun yeah you don't know if you did just write you went about ten thousand feet backwards downhill so it's like oh the F22 can do that now but I know I know but it comes out good yeah it does a 250 foot Loop too yeah that's true whole different story all right so yeah again everyone loves the Tomcat we had a whole podcast about it a whole series and the role was sloppy because it was rolling with differential tail and spoilers and spoilers yeah spoilers are bad like that yeah we talked about that yeah episodes too

Channel: Fighter Pilot Podcast

Views: 620,952

Keywords: Military Aviation, Air Combat, Fighter Pilot, Air Force, Naval Aviation, TOPGUN, F-14 Tomcat, F-18 Hornet, Top Gun, US Navy, Fly Navy, Fighter Jet

Id: mJY68JLl9FU

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2023