US Navy F-14 crew customers demonstrate how you could land a Tomcat with a complete load of six Purpose-54 Phoenix missiles on the plane provider

‘Actually, you could trap aboard the boat with 6 Phoenix, but you wouldn’t have substantially gasoline at max entice gross body weight,’ points out Dave Andersen, former F-14 Tomcat RIO.

Created in 1968 to consider the location of the controversial F-111B, then less than growth for the US Navy’s carrier fighter stock, the F-14A Tomcat applied the P&W TF30 engines and AWG-9 weapons management program and carried the six Goal-54 Phoenix missiles that had been supposed for the F-111B.

Many thanks to the AWG-9, 6 Phoenix missiles could be guided versus 6 independent threat plane at very long vary by the F-14.

On the Tomcat, 4 missiles can be carried less than the fuselage tunnel connected to specific aerodynamic pallets, in addition two beneath glove stations. A whole load of 6 Hughes Intention-54 Phoenix missiles and the exceptional launch rails weigh in at about 8,000 lb (3,600 kg), about twice

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Surface-Launched Version Of The Tomcat’s AIM-54 Phoenix Missile Nearly Armed Cold War Carriers

The U.S. Navy’s Cold War-era AIM-54 Phoenix long-range air-to-air missile, the primary fleet air defense armament of its F-14 Tomcat interceptors for four decades, was also adapted for surface launch from warships. The little-known Sea Phoenix project also involved installing the F-14’s fire-control radar on a ship and progressed as far as missile test launches.

The Sea Phoenix concept had emerged by the mid-1970s and was proposed as an alternative or a replacement for the early versions of the Sea Sparrow, which was another adaptation of an air-to-air missile for fleet defense. At that time, the air-launched AIM-54 was already in frontline use on the Navy’s F-14 fighters, coupled with the powerful AN/AWG-9 pulse-Doppler fire-control radar system as part of a sophisticated defense, primarily intended to defeat Soviet naval cruise missiles, and the long-range aircraft that carried them.

U.S. Navy

The massive AIM-54A Phoenix on a ground handling trolley.




The

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