This Triple F-14 Tomcat Launch Was One Of Its Final Off An Aircraft Carrier

I’m pretty sure that most of the Naval aviation fans including me miss the F-14 Tomcat so badly. In addition to its outstanding fighter capabilities, it was also one of the most visually appealing aircraft in aviation history. It is a shame that the United States Navy retired it, but it is still in service with Iran.

The F-14 was manufactured by the Grumman Corporation and it was the United States Naval fighter experimental program after the collapse of the F-111B project. The F-14 Tomcat is a carrier-capable supersonic, twin-engine, two-seat, twin-tail, variable-sweep wing fighter aircraft. This amazing aircraft was first introduced in 1974 and its unit cost is 38 million USD per aircraft. After serving the United States Navy for 32 years and after completing many successful missions F-14 was retired from the United States Navy in September of 2006. The Tomcat was replaced by the F/A-18 hornets.

Even if the Tomcat is retired now, it left us with some wonderful naval aviation memories. The following video is a prime example of it. This video was taken in the last days of F-14 in 2006 and was uploaded to YouTube by Jason Hartberger. The USS Theodore Roosevelt has just completed its cruise in the Gulf and was offloading its airwing just before returning home. This is the final fly-off by the Tomcats off the ship and it was also the last deployment of this amazing aircraft.

This triple F-14 Tomcat take-off is so glorious to watch and it also shows the ability of the ship to carry out 3 simultaneous aircraft take-offs. We are sure that our naval aviation fans will enjoy this video as much as we do.