Hard to believe that it's been 20 years since I sat in a theatre in salivating anticipation to watch guys with names like Viper, Cougar, Wolfman, Slider, Jester, Merlin, Goose and of course Maverick sling testosterone across the silver screen.
Harder still to think that the star of the show I was most interested in, the Navy's F-14 Tomcat, will soon fly it's last flight.
VIRGINIA BEACH - They ended their final mission with wings swept back, 22 abreast, at 300 mph in about as perfect a formation as anyone had seen the Tomcats make in their 36 years of flying.
Screaming above a crowd of 1,000 people who turned out to cheer and cry, the returning F-14s ended an era Friday.
"If you could look behind the sunglasses of these pilots out here watching this, you'd see a lot of wet eyes," Cmdr. Mark Black said.
"I know that's why I wore sunglasses today."
Black is a former F-14 pilot, with 3,500 flight hours, and now skipper of the "Red Rippers" of Strike Fighter Squadron 11, an F/A-18 Super Hornet Squadron at Oceana Naval Air Station here.
He and scores of other Tomcat aviators and supporters, including 78 foreign photojournalists, were drawn to Friday's flyover, which signaled the return of Carrier Air Wing Eight from a six-month deployment aboard the carrier Theodore Roosevelt. It returns today to Norfolk Naval Station.
The spectators will never again see such a formation of F-14s.
Two years after the movie was was released, I flew solo in a Cessna 152 and came to appreciate all the more what it is that jet pilots do. I remember thinking I had my hands full landing a plane at 60 knots on a runway whose end I could barely see from the ground. Imagine coming in at three times that speed and landing on a carrier. Incredible.
Hat's off to the sexiest of America's war-birds and to the pilots who've flown them.
As a bonus, check out this F-14 fly-by captured on video. Simply awesome.
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