The first of the teen series fighter demo's I ever saw was the Tomcat at the Kalamazoo Air Zoo, back in the '80's. From the World Famous Pukin' Dogs. They used to perform the Grumman Cat fly by back then, with the Wildcat, Hellcat, Tigercat, Bearcat, and Tomcat. During the second pass when they flew over the crowd the Tomcat would pull into the vertical for the missing man fly-by. That was always an awesome sight.
Hi Sundog, your post brought to mind watching the airshows at Selfridge Air National Guard base, way back when they first brought out the f14's. They flew an airshow performance by an F-4 and then the same routines by an F-14 and it was amazing how much tighter the Tomcat was able to turn. The F-4 would end up way outside of the confines of the airfield and the the F-14 would do the same routine and never left the confines of the airfield. Thanks for reminding me.
I realized they were getting old around the second to last year they were at Gary, IN. and the Tomcat that went for the night show had to call a mayday due to a hydraulics failure and he had to land using the chain on the runway since he lost his brakes. It was dark, you couldn't really see anything until the tail hook hit the concrete and you could see the sparks. We didn't have night vision at the time, because we were all forced back into the hangers or the parking lot for safety reasons. I always loved it when it would fly a missed approach then pull vertical in full burner. All you could hear was the noise of the engines until he came out of burner. Then mostly what you heard were all of the car alarms from the parking lot going off as a result of them converting fuel into noise at a prodigious rate!!!
