GLORY DAYS FADING FOR NAVY TOMCAT.

Byline: Michael E. Ruane Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

This time, the water is not as deep, though the jet's grave is farther at sea.

The last time, 14 months ago, Navy search crews were seeking the wreckage of the F-14 fighter that had killed pioneer female combat aviator Kara S. Hultgreen.

This time it is the F-14 that on Feb. 18 killed L. Scott Lamoreaux III, the son of the prominent officer who helped introduce the jet to the Navy a generation before.

Ten years ago, the Navy's supersonic, swing-wing F-14 Tomcat was the broad-shouldered star of the hit movie "Top Gun" - fresh from dustups with MiGs and shootdowns of Libyan fighters.

Today, as the salvage crews search the Pacific for Lamoreaux's jet and investigators probe three F-14 crashes that have claimed seven lives in the last month, the storied Tomcat is in eclipse.

The Navy has said it has so far found no common thread in this year's crashes, although on Feb. 22 it ordered that F-14s not be flown for 72 hours.

When the order was lifted, the Navy announced it was placing temporary speed and engine restrictions on its 336 Tomcats and ordered its crews to undergo refresher courses on the plane's operations.

It seemed a long way from "Top Gun."

Congress has scheduled a hearing on the plane's problems for next month.

Eleven F-14 squadrons have been decommissioned in the last 15 years, and two more are scheduled to go out of business by September. Next year, as part of cost-cutting moves, the Navy will hand over to the Marines the Tomcats' famed Miramar, Calif., air station - "Fightertown U.S.A."

And in June the legendary Top Gun fighter school, about which the 1986 Tom Cruise movie was made, is moving from Miramar, outside San Diego, to a more restrictive training area in southwest Nevada.

"The Navy," said retired Rear Adm. Paul T. Gillcrist, "has abandoned the F-14 community."

But the airplane, Gillcrist insists, is "still the best fighter plane in the world, as we speak. I'm convinced of that."

Said Cmdr. Steve Voetsch, veteran head of an F-14 squadron that returned recently from duty over Bosnia: "It's awesome. It still has a tremendous capability."

Added Bob Kress, one of the F-14's creators at the old Grumman aircraft company: "It's still the best fighter plane around . . . even though it's an old bird."

Despite such devotion from many who have flown it, the F-14 has had a checkered career, going from the Top Gun glory days to the more recent headlines about tragic accidents and the rise of newer jets like the Navy's more nimble F/A-18.

In the latest fatal crash, Lamoreaux, a 39-year-old commander who was riding in the back seat of an F-14D, was killed along with the jet's pilot, Lt. Terence Clark.

The plane was reportedly flying at low altitude, in a drill simulating an enemy missile, when it crashed into the sea about 90 miles off the California coast, near San Diego.

Both bodies were recovered, but the jet sank in about 1,200 feet of water.

The irony of the crash was that Lamoreaux was the son of retired Capt. L. Scott Lamoreaux II, who helped introduce the F-14 into the Navy in the early 1970s. The elder Lamoreaux had been an F-14 program coordinator at the Pentagon, was on the fleet introduction team for the A model, and was instrumental in selling the jet to the late shah of Iran.

His son had been on the fleet introduction team for the D model, the Navy said, and was a veteran F-14 aviator. The Navy says it could take a week to find and retrieve the jet from the bottom. It will then be probed for clues to its demise.

In the most recent accident, four days after Lamoreaux's crash, an F-14 flying off the carrier, USS Nimitz, crashed in the Persian Gulf. The pilot and the back seat radar intercept officer ejected and were rescued from the ocean.

The worst recent accident happened Jan. 29, when an F-14A crashed into a Nashville, Tenn., neighborhood shortly after takeoff, killing the two crewmen on board and three people on the ground.

But perhaps its worst publicity came when Hultgreen, one of the Navy's first female combat pilots, was killed in her F-14A on Oct. 25, 1994.

Built by Grumman, in Bethpage, N.Y., the F-14 was originally designed as an heir to the company's famed World War II Hellcat, a burly carrier plane that doubled as a fighter and a bomber, said Kress, who was the vice president for advanced programs at Grumman and the original chief engineer on the F-14 program.

But because of testing costs the bomber option was not fully explored and the F-14 gained a reputation principally as a fighter and defender of aircraft carriers.