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f-14a and the uss midway


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I looked through the few Tomcat history books I have and found no mention of it there or online other than the ship was unable to support them. Ill ask some of my old Tomcat bubbas on facebook and get back to you.

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a 2 ship section from the Enterprise did indeed land on the midway in the early 80s. one jet was from VF-114, and the other was from VF-213. The flight was lead by Lieutenant Rick Berg. the section tried 3 times to recover on the big E under increasingly bad weather. short of options they finally diverted north to the midway. Both jets caught a perfect 3-wire on a runway that was some 50 feet closer to the water and several feet shorter than they were used to. a launch crew had to be helo-ed over the next morning with a pair of launch bars to get them off deck. As the blast shields were too short and too close to the catapults. the decision was made to launch them in full burner with no deflectors (im sure the captain had the ship running at flank speed to put as much wind over the deck as possible.). the 114 jet launched first and then the 213 one. Neither had any issues!

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but dose any body have pictures of the tomcats from the event?

seriously?

Jeremy gives you a good run down on the event and this is your response?

How about starting off your response with thanks...

Edited by kstater94
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im happy i could put truth to the myth for you! we all try to help each other out here.

@mike: yeah, Rick Berg mentioned that he did a LOT of thinking and praying while he was on the glideslope, lol

I'm sure he did! probably a little of what we used to call "*** puckering" too!

Edited by AT1Mike
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The Tailhook Organization did have pictures of the event and described it just as it was mentioned, due to bad weather over the battle group these two F-14's divereted to the USS Midway. They had a full article written up about it in thier either the fall or winter issue of thier magazine "The Hook" in 2008; if my fauly memory serves me right for the issue. I would give them an email from one of thier contacts on the website, http://www.tailhook.org/, for more information.

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The Classic Warships book entitled "USS Midway" by Pete Clayton has a photo of one of the F-14's about to leave the USS Midway, along with more details on the incident.

I have a friend who flew E-2B's with VAW-115 'Liberty Bells' was there at the time, and did relate the incident to me as well.

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