F-14 TOMCAT Airframe Patch

The Tomcat on this patch is stitched with its wings swept all the way back, tucked in close to the fuselage, and the black triangle around it follows that same swept outline. The F-14's variable-sweep wing moved between 20 and 68 degrees in flight, and on deck it could be overswept to 75 degrees so the jet took up less room. Spread wide, the wing let a heavy fighter slow down for the approach and the trap. Swept back, it was built to run out and meet a threat far from the carrier. Anyone who worked a Tomcat deck knows that silhouette before he reads a word on the patch.

Grumman's F-14 first flew on 21 December 1970, and the Navy began replacing its F-4 Phantom IIs with it in September 1974, when VF-1 Wolfpack and VF-2 Bounty Hunters took it to sea aboard USS Enterprise. It was designed to carry six AIM-54 Phoenix long-range missiles, though that full load was never flown operationally. Over the Gulf of Sidra in 1981, two VF-41 Tomcats downed two Libyan Su-22s with AIM-9L Sidewinders, and in 1989 two VF-32 jets shot down two Libyan MiG-23s in the same waters. The TARPS pod, fielded in 1981, made the F-14 the Navy's main tactical reconnaissance platform, and later jets carrying Mk-80 series bombs picked up the name Bombcat. The F-14A flew on Pratt and Whitney TF30 engines, while the F-14B and F-14D got General Electric F110s, and the D added digital avionics and a glass cockpit.

The patch measures 4 inches wide by 5 inches tall, a black triangle finished with a black merrowed edge and an iron-on backing. The jet is stitched in gray thread with black detail lines in a top view, nose up toward the apex, with the twin vertical tails and the engine nacelles at the base. Gray lettering climbs both sides, WHEN YOU'RE OUT OF F-14S on the left and YOU'RE OUT OF FIGHTERS!! on the right, and TOMCAT runs across the bottom in heavy block letters. Those twin tails are on the airplane for a reason, since the dual stabilizers helped stability at high angles of attack and kept the jet low enough to fit a carrier hangar. It is a plain, two-color design, and the shape of the airplane carries it.

The saying stitched up its sides belongs to the Tomcat community, and nobody who flew or fixed the jet needs it explained. The F-14 was a two-seat fighter, a pilot up front and a Radar Intercept Officer in back, and that crew pairing shaped the way its squadrons trained and fought. Plane captains, troubleshooters and ordnance crews kept a swing-wing airframe ready on a moving deck, day and night. The Navy held its retirement ceremony at NAS Oceana on 22 September 2006 with VF-31 and VF-213 as the last two squadrons, and a VF-31 F-14D made the last U.S. flight on 4 October 2006. For a generation of naval aviators, this was the fighter.

It sits well in a shadow box beside VF squadron patches and a cruise book, or on a flight jacket or the vest worn to a squadron reunion. It also makes a good gift for a former RIO, a plane captain, or a sailor who spent a cruise listening to Tomcats launch overhead. One jet, one saying, and the name.