A Super Hornet Launches From the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Pacific
(media.greatawakening.win)
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I was never around Super Hornets, but the A/B/C/D versions were awesome. Jet fuel, active flightline or carrier deck, and massive power all around. The A-6 and F-14 were amazing as well. Wish I were on deck for the Super Hornets for a day.
F-14 all day, every day. Even over the Super Hornet. Could fly faster than anything else in the air, could fly a wider assortment of armaments, had a much longer range, higher altitude limits, and having a back seater helped the pilot focus on flying and shooting. The cameras under the nose and the FLIR pod it could carry was a yuuuge plus, too. Drawbacks were that it leaked like a sieve on the ground, you could see the vapor/exhaust trail, the "B" model was crap, the maintenance to flight man hours sucked toward the end, but she was a dream to work on. The afterburn at night when they launched was pretty cool to see, also. When the Tomcat launched or recovered, everyone on the boat knew because it would shake the ship.
I miss that jet. I wish the Navy would've ok'd the F-14X Super Tomcat over making a Super Hornet. That would've been a truly superior plane and would probably have even given the F-35 a run for it's money. Th Navy was stupid for getting rid of the Tomcat platform.
Yeah the Hornet was not a real replacement. It was a sacrifice to take on part of the A-6 job and part of the F-14 job, but excel at neither. A loaded down Intruder was an awesome display of firepower at 24K pounds of armament. F-18s early on, and maybe still, had to launch, refuel, do the mission, refuel, then fly to the ship to recover. And at one point they talked about F/A-18A/B/C/D/ tankers. What a joke!