Grumman F-14A/B

Grumman Aerospace Corporation's F-1 4 Tomcat is the end product of a major disagreement that erupted in 1964 between the US Navy, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, General Dynamics, Grumman, and the US Congress. This intense bickering was the result of a well-inten­tioned decision in 1 962 by McNamara to create a multi-service tactical combat aircraft that would use a basic airframe common to both the Navy and the Air Force. At the time of the disagreement, the Department of Defense, then under McNamara's iron-fisted grip, had forced the Air Force and Navy to accept an innovative new program under the auspices of the Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) title. The extraordinarily versatile, but unquestionably over­burdened General Dynamics/Grumman F-1 1 1 A/B resulted from this marriage, with McNamara argu­ing that an AF/Navy fighter with high airframe commonality would save taxpayers many millions of dollars. The F-1 11, because it was a technologically precedent-setting program of unparalleled propor­tions (it was, among many other things, the first operational aircraft to incorporate a variable-sweep wing, the world's first operational fighter to incorporate an afterburning turbofan engine, the world's first operational aircraft to incorporate an encapsulated ejection system, the world's first air­craft to incorporate a dedicated terrain following radar system, and the world's first .operational air­craft to be designed intentionally to fly at super­sonic speeds at sea level altitudes), entered its preliminary flight test program with a number of serious failings.