The Battle Of The Twin Tails
Every aviation nutcase, myself included, has his or her favorite aircraft. In my case it’s a matter of categories and phases. I’m a typical jet fighter guy. First, as a barely 5-year old, I was exposed to F-104 Starfighters and NF-5 Freedom Fighters that were the mainstays in our Air Force. Trailing behind them, or on a par with them, came Harriers, Buccaneers, Jaguars, Phantoms, classic Mirages, Drakens and Viggens. Especially the sleek, howling “104” and the unorthodox Viggen were appealing to me.
Typical Cold War jets. And everything Russian was the “enemy”. As the aviation virus ate into me further after I was bitten by that bug, the so-called “Teen Fighters” started emerging on stage. Types such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle and those LWF prototypes, the YF-16 and YF-17. And almost immediately there was my new Top Three of favorite jets, in random order: F-14, F-15 and (Y)F-16. Somehow the YF-17, and later F/A-18 Hornet, didn’t cut it for me. Despite being a nice “twin tail”.
Twin tails, yes! OK, the F-16 has just one vertical fin but hey, that one is a fave on her own merits due to the Star Wars-like shape when she appeared and she became the RNLAF’s frontline iron mainstay even to today. However the other two, the F-14 and F-15, both wiggled two of those fins around. Big, twin-engined fast movers that both looked both breathtakingly beautiful, fast and lethal. In my head a sort of battle emerged. Which one of the two did I prefer over the other, taste-wise? A tough call.
The simple aviation geek as well as the artist might settle for “if it looks right, it flies right”. Possibly not too much hindered by in-depth knowledge. As years progressed, and I was increasingly diving deeper into the subject by reading, studying and collecting, my knowledge grew hard. It broadened my interest as well as the various categories of interest in the military planes department. Next to those “Teen Fighters”, I could admire another twin tail as well. An “ugly” one, the A-10 Warthog.
You see, in me lives a combination of creative “autism and masochism”. in order for me to accurately illustrate these planes in minute detail (especially in squadron print profiles), I really have to know whatever there is to know. About the aircraft, its design, how it’s built, all the internal and external avionics, weapons systems, engines, it’s flying and fighting characteristics, the tactics and strategies of war, even up to a point of underlying politics. All this dictates how an aircraft is to be portrayed.
In the meantime, that battle for first place is still raging between the F-14 and F-15. In terms of appealing looks, both are not far apart. Somehow the F-14, more complicated in terms of moving parts and because she was much less around over here, was the more beautiful machine to me. With the F-15, also breathtaking, immediately trailing behind. However, looks don’t kill. I started to study on what those planes could actually do as well. And now it was really comparing apples with onions.
Next to the fact that nine out of ten times it’s the Aviator in the cockpit who may determine the outcome of a fight, it’s also a matter of design specifications. The F-14 and the F-15 were designed for two entirely different roles. So, partly they may look sort of alike but they are vastly different in design approach. The Tomcat was meant to be a Naval, carrier-based, “Fleet Defence Fighter” (the apple) and the Eagle is your typical Air Force, land-based, “Air Superiority Fighter” (that onion).
One became more of an export success than the other. One (the F-15) stayed around (at least in our neck of the woods up until today) longer than the other and was built in greater numbers and versions. The other (the F-14) was retired too soon in US-service, due to some logical and some less logical or dubious (Dick Cheney-type) reasons, but remains airborne in a Middle-Eastern country, Iran. The only export customer for the Tomcat. Courtesy of the then-ruling Shah, himself a pilot.
Now why is that? The F-15 beating the F-14 on the world sales and export market? Both are sort of “super fighters”. The answer to this is not simple at all. Hence that ongoing battle in my head. The complicated answer revolves around many factors. Technology, operational capability, effectiveness, versatility, economics, marketing, purpose, timeframe, you name it. What it boils down to: how much capability for years to come can you buy for your Dollar/Euro-value? That’s a tough cooky.
The Tomcat was the first in the air, in 1970. Two years later the Eagle was up as well. The F-14 was born out of a failed project. Grumman’s effort to “Navalize” the General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark into the F-111B, forced by SecDef Robert McNamara’s quest for “commonality”. After the F-111B failed, Grumman was free to start from scratch and come up with its own design, which inherited the TF-30 engines, AWG-9 radar system and AIM-54 Phoenix missiles. Thus the F-14 Tomcat was born.
It took a while for the F-14 to mature in earnest. It was until the mid to late 1990’s when the bird really came into its own, both as a fighter/interceptor and finally as a tactical bomber too. Due to extensive modifications such as replacing the troublesome P&W TF-30 engines by GE F-110’s and various other changes. Re-engined F-14A’s were first called F-14A+ and later F-14B, the “Bombcat”. New “digitalized” F-14D’s were built and some old ones modified into F-14D(R)’s. “Super Tomcats”.
Very effective planes that were put to pasture way too soon in 2006, in order to make way for more F/A-18 C/D Legacy Hornets and new F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets in the US Navy fleet. It was a matter of both economics and some fishy politics. However, the retirement of the F-14 left quite a gap in the Carrier Air Groups. Yes, the (Super) Hornets are quite capable but, compared to the thoroughbred, specialistic Top Gun super star F-14 Tomcat, they are sort of a “Jack Of All Trades, Master Of None”.
The story of the F-15 Eagle is indeed a very different one. Designed around the fighter energy maneuverability philosophies formulated by Colonel John Boyd (google him), this bird was designed from the outset to be a dogfighter superior to anything in the sky at that moment. The Eagle was the West’s answer to the threat, supposedly imposed by the MiG-25 Foxbat. The F-15 was meant to be an ever-dominant factor in the sky, under the motto “not a pound for air-to-ground”. A “gunfighter”.
With basically a relatively simple planform, no swing-wings, not even having moving parts such as ailerons, the F-15 was overall cheaper than the F-14 to produce and operate. Air-to-air loaded “4X4X940” (4 AIM-7 Sparrow radar-guided medium-range missiles, 4 AIM-9 Sidewinder infrared-guided short-range missiles and 940 rounds of 20mm ammunition for the internal M61A1 Vulcan six-barrel gatling gun) the Eagle, when flown well, was, and still is, about to be unbeatable in the sky.
Nicknamed “The Flying Tennis Court”, the F-15 also found her niche as a “mud-mover”. Both F-14 and F-15 had innate air-to-ground capabilities designed into them from the outset, and both have exploited this in the second phase of their careers, but the Eagle, when developed into the F-15E Strike Eagle or “Mudhen”, is way more of a versatile flying bomb truck than the Tomcat. One that is still being developed into an even more capable multirole warplane. To still be around for Decades.
So far I’ve been reading and studying airpower and its history for about half a century. In fact, since childhood. For example, I’ve learned to closely watch what the Israel Air Force tends to do. What choices they make and how they operate in conflicts. Israel is a country that sort of permanently has been at war since its conception back in 1948. So, the choices and actions of its armed forces are born out of an extensive operational experience. I regard the Heyl Ha’avir as top of the bill airpower.
So, if an air force like that chooses warplanes such as the F-15 and F-16, those birds must have some more than adequate merits. Even stronger, they are the ones who “blooded” these aircraft “in combat” They extracted the most out of their designs and, even stronger, managed to have them improved even more, either by themselves or by proposing awesome modifications to the plane manufacturers. The IAF’s F-15I Ra’am and F-16I Sufa rank among the best warplanes around today.
They did not choose either F-14 or the LWF loser YF-17 or F/A-18. Of course this also depends on Israel’s geographics, politics, specific strategies and tactics. They do not need an F-14-like long range interceptor with sea legs. They need an “all up in no time”, quick responsive skybound dominator like the F-15 and the F-16 in a high-low mix, that are also both truly multirole, able to switch between air-to-air and air-to-ground and back in no time. Operating mainly close by, defending Israel’s borders.
There have been, and are now for sure, more F-15 Eagles around than F-14 Tomcats. The F-15 was exported way more. Still is. No more F-14’s. Due to countries such as the United States and especially Israel, the F-15’s kill ration far supersedes that of the F-14. No rocket science. More F-15’s around and deployed longer in more conflicts. Hence the F-15’s 108/0 kill ratio, compared the F-14’s 32 to 45/12 kill ratio. Mostly Iranian with, according to those Persians, F-14A’s down due to engine failures.
So you see, it really is comparing apples with onions. There is no straight answer. I love both twin tails. Today I love the F-14 more, tomorrow the F-15 and vice versa. And in between that small F-16 Viper is turning circles around them. Fact is that, apart from Iran, the Tomcat is sadly no more and the (Strike, Ra’am and Slam) Eagle still is. Still fighting. In greater numbers. And now, again, an Eagle II is about to be produced. So, the cold hard statistics determine that the F-15 design is the winner…
