Originally Posted by navlav8r
One big reason that the Tomcat went away when it did was that the Tomcat community viewed itself totally in the air to air fighter mode vs the bomber mode.There was a lot of serious foot dragging in the development of the Bombcat along other political considerations mentioned by Jorgei. As we found out later, the Bombcat had great legs and a great bombing system but it was too little too late.


When I was in CVW-8 at Airwing Fallon VF-84 tried dropping some inert Mk-82s off their F-14A's with the base software into a target in Bravo 16. They bracketed highway 50 about 7 miles off range with a pair. eek Hmm, VF-41 tried it. Same result. Clearly the fighter software needed some updates to get the bombs on target.

Those were desperate times as we prepared for Desert Shield knowing that it was highly likely we were going to war. There were very few of us read into the actual plans and I only was as a LT because my collateral duty was to build the mission profiles in the software libraries to program the ALQ-99 Jamming system. My fellow JO's would have been a little more apprehensive had they known the assessment was that we would lose 50% of the Prowlers the first night but no one was going to a back out we were young and immortal.

Always felt good to see a Tomcat as an escort. Here's a picture from that cruise.

[Linked Image]

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