Though now getting very long in the tooth, the F-14 Tomcat is still the Navy fighter that draws the crowds. Go to an airshow that has lots of F-18s and one F-14 and the F-14 will have the crowd. Unfortunately, the nautical environment is not a kind one for carrier aircraft. Let alone the stresses of cat shots and arrested landings; if you have trouble, there is no nearby airfield to land on and await maintenance. Often a major aircraft problem means a lost aircraft. The world's oceans have lots USN tactical aircraft because of that!

The end result is less aircraft, which means fewer units, which means the need to replace them before a similar USAF type is out of service. One only needs to look to the F-4 to see similarities. In just a few years, the Tomcat will be no more. Once the F-18E/F gets to fleet squadrons, the F-14 will be headed for the boneyard. We will all be poorer for it.

This superscale sheet is for three F-14A/B Tomcats, though the drawings show F-14Bs, VF-84 never flew the type. The two VF-84 F-14As are in the three grey Tactical Paint Scheme (TPS), while the VF-102 F-14B is in overall FS 36320. There are enough common markings to do all three schemes.

There are two schemes for VF-84. The first aircraft is in the Commemorative scheme. This has a black tail and lists all the different squadrons before it that carried the Jolly Roger emblem. Unlike USAF units, when a Navy squadron goes away, all of the history may be transferred to another unit. In VF-84s case, the Jolly Roger went to VF-103.

The third aircraft on the sheet is the squadron commander's bird with the black tail.

The second aircraft is from VF-102 and is an F-14B. While not a CAG bird, it does have a lot more color than the usual fleet Tomcat in that it has red markings and a color insignia on the tail.

For kits you will undoubtedly want to choose the Hasegawa F-14A as many say it is the most accurate. Italeri makes an F-14B in this scale, but there has been a lot of fussing about accuracy. The nose of the Italeri F-14A I built many years ago was definitely the wrong shape, looking like a mini-F-111!

Anyway, this sheet provides several interesting schemes for those who can't get enough F-14s.

Review copy courtesy of me and my wallet! 

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