A-10 Thunderbolt II, the beloved Hog, seen from the ground as it ascends through fire and smoke. Ungainly in form, absolute in function — salvation remembered in orbit.
Ungainly in the heavens, perfect in the mire. The angel of the grunts, the saviour of the mudbound, descending where supersonic seraphs cannot follow.
The Avenger, spitting its hymnal — a litany of blessings, a litany of curses, each round a deliverance, each burst a verdict, each BRRRT a divine fart of metal and fury.
Not beautiful in form, function absolute. Circling — until the circle breaks, until the skies bristle with javelins it cannot parry, unequipped for denial, its hymn falters at the edge of fires it cannot answer.
Yet in the memory of mud and smoke, its orbit remains a halo, its voice a liturgy of salvation and wrath. Ungainly, inappropriate, unbeautiful — beloved. The angel, the saviour, the Avenger.
A farewell to the titanium creatures that once ruled the skies — and still haunt the horizon of memory.
Introduction
Somewhere in the haze of satellite footage and silence, five Tomcats fell. Israeli strikes, confirmed by released footage and military sources, destroyed several of Iran’s last F-14s — perhaps grounded, perhaps ghosts still dreaming of flight. Either way, among the last of their kind still tethered to this plane.
It’s a strange feeling, watching an era slip quietly out of the sky.
The Tomcat was more than a fighter jet. She was a creature of myth — forged bones, swing wings, and a roar that once defined the edge of human ambition and engineering audacity.
Eulogy
They were never meant to last this long.
Forged on Long Island’s wind-swept tarmac, birthed with the arrogance of a superpower, the F-14 Tomcat was built to stalk Backfires and turn lumbering Bears back toward the pole.
Her swing wings inscribed prayers in the clouds, a fleeting aria of flight, a hymn of speed. Her titanium wing box, fused by an invisible fire, was a bastion of strength — a spine that bore every catapult launch and supersonic dive.
She carried the sky’s first silicon soul — dreaming, flying, in code.
For decades the Aegis of the fleets. Some crossed the ocean into Persian skies — patched, coaxed, and kept alive by keepers who refused to let a legend die.
They scavenged miracles from scrap machining the impossible, breathing life into machines whose time had passed.
Even titanium bends to fatigue and time.
In recent weeks, some of those proud creatures were destroyed before they could ever take to the air again.
The news was brief, the footage grainy.
But those who know the shape of that wing — that unmistakable silhouette — felt that toll between the ribs.
It was the end of an age — the last gasp of an era that once ruled Cold War skies.
Her fate was one of conflict — born from tension and kept alive through stubborn will — caught between eras, between the analog and the digital.
So let us remember her not for the politics of her end, but for what she was — a machine that was more than its reality.
A set of forged bones and composite feathers that gave human will the power to challenge the horizon.
A predator with grace enough to make poets out of pilots.
Now the last Tomcats grow few. No more will those wings sweep wide over desert dawns. No more will that metallic heart thrum beneath mortal skies.
The sky is quieter tonight.
She may be gone from the earthbound flight lines, but somewhere in the thin air above memory, she still rolls into the sun — wings sweeping back, engines singing their feral hymn.
Her judgement still reaches beyond the horizon, she still growls — fading, out of this world… the Huntress, eternal.
Cultural Afterburn
Long before the last Cats left the carrier deck, their echoes found new skies to fly in.
The F‑14 wasn’t just an aircraft; it became an icon — a symbol of analog audacity in a digital age.
Its silhouette, all claws and grace, swept into cinema, anime, and games alike.
On screen, the Tomcat roared into immortality with Top Gun (1986), the movie that turned naval aviation into myth and pilots into rockstars. When it reappeared in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), battered but unbowed, it wasn’t just nostalgia — it was resurrection, and farewell.
In Japan, the Cat transformed again: Macross and its Western cousin Robotech reimagined the swing‑wing fighter as the VF‑1 Valkyrie — a love letter to engineering and imagination.
From After Burner’s neon horizons to Ace Combat’s operatic dogfights, from Tom Clancy’s thrillers to model‑builder showcases, the Tomcat became more than a jet. It became a totem.
Few machines cross that line between tool and totem. The F‑14 did.
It didn’t just fly; it inspired.
And in every digital sky, every retro arcade, every mecha hangar, the last Cats still prowl — titanium hearts beating somewhere between memory and myth.
