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Sorry to ask again what must have already been asked many times before, but the search function doesn't return anything useful for me.

I just wanted to know what loadout were the two F-14s carrying? Was it the standard 2x2x2, or did they have 4 sparrows on board?

Thanks

Chris

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I'm not stating fact, but I'm willing to guess that the 'Cats were configured for max loiter, which would be 4 Sparrows in the tunnel plus 4 Sidewinders on the glove stations.

Ves :stupid:

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If your doing Fast Eagle 107, he only had one Sidewinder on that flight. At the Sunset Symposium, Music said his starboard 'winder rail was broke, consequently he only flew with one sidewinder. Fortunatly that was all he needed. I built mine with 1 Sidewinder, and 4 Sparrows, 2 underneath, and 2 on the wings.

It's not the best shot but here's mine.

IMG_1053.jpg

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Cool, thanks for the replies guys.

I'd like to do a 4 sparrow, 4 sidewinder loadout. I think it looks interesting and I haven't yet done a tomcat in that configuration. But I'd also like this model to have an accurate loadout.

jbryan911, I like your model! I think the launching sidewinder is really well done. One question, what pod have you used on the nose? It looks different to the other A models i've seen.

Thanks

Chris

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Jeez, heard to tell what is right! I built mine in the 2-2-2-2 configuration. I left the left rail empty and added the kill mark on the tail. I wated to do it as it may have appeared post-flight.

Chappie

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Just being curious, which type of Sukhoi aircraft did this Tomcat down?

A Fitter?

I thinks so! Two Libyan Su-22 were shot down over in the so-called " First Gulf of Sidra incident" over the Mediterranean Sea in 1981.

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The other question I'd have about the '81 engagement was whether the Tomcats were carrying external tanks or not. That's right about the timeframe where they became standard, all-the-time features, so it's almost impossible to estimate, one way or the other. Wonder if anyone has a definitive answer on that one... ?

Daniel

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Near as what I can remember from the Tomcat Sunset talk from Adm Dave Venlet (RIO in 102) and "Music," this is what they had as far as a loadout. The planes had a 2x Sparrow and 2x Winder load (at least 102 had it) on the glove pylons. As mentioned before, 107 had a wiring problem with one of its winder pylons, so they only loaded up one Winder on it as they weren't expecting to go shooting that day. They didn't carry any Phoenix missiles (but I think they had the pylons on to allow quick loading of them) as they wanted to keep the Cats light for intercept duty (faster acceleration) and the ROE meant no extreme range BVR engagements anyway. The lack of Phoenix was a new tidbit that none of us knew about before.

The one picture I have of 107 supposedly taken right after the engagement shows no drop tanks on it, but stub pylons for them. It also shows Phoenix pallets on the front with no missiles loaded, so I believe they at least had those on there without the missiles. My guess is that if they didn't take the Phoenix for acceleration purposes, they they wouldn't have mounted the tanks either due to a similar drag penalty. Enough planes were in the air that day after the maneuver engagements on the previous day that there was plenty of coverage up there and backup aircraft to sortie should they be needed.

When 107 did engage, the radar on Music's jet went "Tango Uniform" (it died). So he only had one Winder and a full gun to burn with as the Sparrows were dead weight at that point. One sidewinder was all he needed though as the boss took down the first jet with a Winder already.

Edited by Jay Chladek
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Tanks for the F-14 were not really quite "in" at that time. Just becomming fashionable. But.....I built mine with. And with the kill mark, so "technically" I could still be right. Mine just shows a day after the shootdown.

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Thanks, Colin. And thanks for that great info, Jay--I'm gonna write that down and tuck it in with my SB Decals sheet, for whenever I finally get around to building it... :wave:

Daniel

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it's a gamble either way on the tanks. I did ask both Larry and Dave at the sunset about that (don't remember if Jay was standing next to me at that point or not), Larry says he didn't think they had tanks that day, where Dave said he thought they did... neither could remember.

Others were right though, they said it was a 2x2 with no phoenix loadout (or 1x2 in the case of 107).

The funniest thing about the whole story (as "Music" told it at the symposium) is that he would've readily traded his RIO for a few hundred pounds of extra gas. About the time his radar fouled up and he was lining up his sidewinder, his RIO reported an "explosion" somewhere off one wing. Naturally Larry asked "well, who was it?" The RIO waited a moment and said "I dunno." Larry said he would've smacked his forehead if he hadn't been wearing a helmet, lol.

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Be neat to see this build as a little guy 1/144 Chris

Lol, how did you guess? But yeah, I just got hold of the Gulf of Sidra twin pack. I'm not game enough to tackle the Su-22 yet.

Thanks for some great info guys!

Chris

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