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Two of the US Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets have crashed off the coast of North Carolina on Thursday, the US Coast Guard confirmed. Their crews have been recovered and taken to a hospital.

Citing budget uncertainties and the threat of sequestration, Joint Base Langley announced Friday it is canceling the Langley air show, which was set for May 3-5. A spokeswoman for Oceana Naval Air Station said it may cancel its show as well. "The Air Force has to consider the fiscal challenges affecting the Department of Defense and the nation," Col. Korvin Auch, 633rd Air Base Wing commander, said in a statement announcing the cancellation. "We're taking prudent steps now in order to be good stewards of taxpayer resources while focusing on maintaining readiness."

FALLON, Nev. (AP) -- Two fighter jets from the U.S. Navy's elite training school collided Friday over northern Nevada's high desert, killing one pilot and injuring two others who parachuted to safety. The pilot who died was based at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va., said Jeffery Wells, a spokesman at Fallon Naval Air Station. He was at the controls of an F/A-18C Hornet at the time of the crash.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - The Navy said a small, inert training bomb fell Tuesday from an F/A-18C Hornet fighter jet that was heading to Oceana Naval Air Station. No one was hurt. The Navy said in a statement that the bomb hit a wall adjacent to a warehouse in the resort city of Virginia Beach. Minimal damage was reported. The aircraft was returning to Oceana following a training mission at the Navy's bombing range in Dare County, N.C., when it dropped the bomb. The jet landed safely at Oceana. -snip-

Navy officials provided few details Wednesday about a practice bomb that fell from a fighter jet into a commercial area near Oceana Naval Air Station. The dummy bomb crashed next to a building on busy London Bridge Road on Tuesday after falling from a single-seat F/A-18 Hornet. -snip- Maus said two Hornets - one piloted by an instructor and the other by an instructor-in-training - had flown to Dare on the training mission. Between 15 and 18 Navy planes use the bombing range on a typical day, he said, usually carrying six practice bombs each. The dummy bomb, called a...

Jane Melia and Charlie Coughlan look at the tail section of an F-14 Tomcat from Oceana Naval Air Station that washed ashore at Long Strand near Owenahincha, Ireland, on May 5. DENIS MINIHANE PHOTOS / THE IRISH EXAMINER By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot © May 10, 2006 NORFOLK — A tail section from an F-14 Tomcat discovered on a beach in Ireland came from an Oceana-based plane that crashed 3½ years ago off Key West, Fla., the Navy confirmed Tuesday. How it got at least 4,900 miles away, no one knows for certain.As if it had been a corked...

Squadron Homecoming Marks End of Era for Tomcats Story Number: NNS060310-05 Release Date: 3/10/2006 1:58:00 PM By Journalist 1st Class Stefanie Holzeisen-Mullen, Fleet Public Affairs Center Atlantic VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (NNS) -- The “Tomcatters” of Strike Fighter Squadron (VF) 31 and the “Black Lions” of VF-213 arrived at Naval Air Station Oceana March 10, ending their six-month deployment with Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 8 embarked on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71), and closing the book on the Tomcat as an asset in the Navy’s war fighting arsenal. VF-31 and 213’s “fly-off” marked the last operational flight of...

'Top Gun' Jets Retired By U.S. Navy F-14s To Be Replaced By Super Hornets POSTED: 5:52 pm EST March 10, 2006 UPDATED: 7:18 pm EST March 10, 2006 VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- The last two squadrons of the Tomcat -- the sleek, Cold War fighter jet -- returned home from their final deployment Friday, two decades after the warplanes were glamorized in the 1986 Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun." All 22 Tomcats of fighter squadrons VF-213 and VF-31 arrived in style, flying together in a wedge formation over Oceana Naval Air Station as hundreds of sailors and their family and...

ASSOCIATED PRESS VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- There will be no more dogfights for the Tomcat. The last two squadrons of the sleek, Cold War fighter jet returned home from their final deployment Friday, two decades after the warplanes were glamorized in the 1986 Tom Cruise movie "Top Gun." All 22 Tomcats of fighter squadrons VF-213 and VF-31 arrived in style, flying together in a wedge formation over Oceana Naval Air Station as hundreds of sailors and their family and friends cheered. Some wore T-shirts reading "Tomcats Forever" and a banner proclaimed, "Last Fly-In, Baby!" "We're putting the premier fighter to...

Jet lets fingers do the flying By JACK DORSEY, The Virginian-Pilot © January 22, 2006 Last updated: 10:10 PM VIRGINIA BEACH — Five dozen men, many of them former pilots who have helped shape naval aviation for the past 50 years, were spellbound as they looked into the simulated cockpit of the Navy’s next-generation fighter jet. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter's touch screens, voice activated commands and helmet-mounted displays are cutting edge. LOCKHEED MARTIN PHOTOS Two 8-by-20-inch touch screen displays dominated the dashboard. Tapping the screen changes radio channels. Touching it elsewhere selects a weapon to use: missile, bomb, cannon....

The federal government is all but forcing Virginia Beach to condemn private property in order to keep Oceana Naval Air Station, home to the Navy's fighter/attack squadron of F-14 Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets. But this isn't some ugly twist on the Kelo eminent-domain case. For years, Virginia Beach has mostly ignored legitimate Navy concerns that its pilots could crash in residential areas under development near the base. But the city has chosen to let development proceed apace and -- though it certainly did not intend to -- heightened the danger by allowing ever-larger structures and increasing population density. So the...

BRAC’s ultimatum comes with big price tag By KERRY DOUGHERTY, The Virginian-Pilot © August 25, 2005 You’ve got to hand it to members of the Virginia Beach City Council. Their timing is exquisite. On the night before we learned that their canoodling with developers had led to the almost inevitable realignment of Oceana, six members of that embarrassing body voted themselves big fat pay raises. We always knew they were shameless. Now it looks like they’ve gone mad. Frankly, no council in Virginia was ever less deserving of a pay hike. I don’t care what shade of lipstick Beach officials...

WASHINGTON – The base-closing commission voted Tuesday to add two military facilities, in California and Maine, to the list of hundreds of domestic bases that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has proposed closing and shrinking. The Navy Broadway Complex in San Diego and the Naval Air Station in Brunswick, Maine, were added to the list of facilities to be closed. The commission also was voting on whether to add bases in nine other states and Washington, D.C. In a reprieve for California, the commission voted against putting the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on the closure list even though several commissioners...

Farewell and welcome on Oceana's runways The Virginian-Pilot © April 8, 2005 Few sights compare to that of an F-14 Tomcat soaring through the blue sky above Virginia Beach. Residents and tourists alike delight in glimpsing the jets wheeling and plummeting over the ocean, or rocketing full tilt from the NAS Oceana runways, their distinctive delta-winged shape more reminiscent of a sci-fi fighter plane than a U.S. Navy workhorse. The F-14's grace and elegant design almost always elicit a pause, a sigh, a pointed finger or a sense of wonder at how a triangle can fly. The Tomcat is an...

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - A Navy helicopter based on an aircraft carrier crashed into the Atlantic Tuesday afternoon. All eight people aboard were rescued from a life raft. The helicopter from the USS Eisenhower crashed about 30 miles off Naval Air Station Oceana, according to Lt. Mark Jones, assistant public affairs officer for Commander Naval Air Force U.S. Atlantic Fleet. The MH-53E Sea Dragon, primarily used for minesweeping, was part of a helicopter squadron from the Norfolk Naval Station and was doing exercises with the Bataan, an amphibious assault ship. The eight crew members took refuge on a life...

The Virginian-Pilot © September 13, 2004 Last updated: 8:56 AM Cmdr. Dave “Mongo” Koss checks an F/A-18 at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. Photos by Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot. VIRGINIA BEACH — The Navy has long stressed training the way it fights. But at Oceana Naval Air Station, that is no longer the case. It has been years since the base’s Navy pilots have been able to practice like they fight, and the gulf between the two is growing. The reason: jet noise. The chief purpose of Oceana, the Navy’s East Coast master jet base, is to train...

Oceana-based jets bomb insurgent targets in Iraq, Navy says By MATTHEW DOLAN, The Virginian-Pilot © July 22, 2004 Last updated: 7:46 PM Virginia Beach-based fighter jets destroyed two enemy positions in Iraq this week, the Navy announced Wednesday. The bombing runs against insurgent strongholds on Tuesday marked the John F. Kennedy’s first active engagement of enemy targets since the Mayport, Fla.-based aircraft carrier arrived in the Persian Gulf. The two fighter jets are part of Carrier Air Wing 17 , based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach and deployed on the Kennedy. An F-14 Tomcat from the VF-103...

At 3:10 a F-18 crashed at the Raleigh Durham airport closing runways and severely delaying flights. The aircraft was trying to take off when it started swaying and then pilot ejected. He was taken to a hospital for observation. "The F-18 was part of Strike Fighter Squadron 15, based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. A Navy spokeswoman said it was on a routine training mission. She did not identify the pilot."

RALEIGH, N.C. — Opponents of a proposed Navy landing field in eastern North Carolina said Tuesday they are asking a federal judge to stop land acquisition so residents won’t lose family farms. Attorneys for Washington and Beaufort counties and three conservation groups Monday filed a joint motion for a preliminary injunction. If granted by a federal judge, the injunction would prevent the Navy from buying land, doing site preparation, design and construction for the $186.5 million outlying landing field. “We realize, as the citizens in Washington and Beaufort counties realize, that the Navy is not waiting to sort this out,...

MANAMA, Bahrain (NNS) -- Two F-14A Tomcats operating from USS Enterprise (CVN 65) in the Red Sea collided with each other while conducting basic daytime fighter maneuvers Feb. 2. No one was injured during the incident, and both aircraft landed safely aboard Enterprise. One F-14 sustained minor damage to its right wingtip, and the other’s right vertical stabilizer had nearly been sheared off. The Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 1 F-14s are “Checkmates” from Fighter Squadron (VF) 211, home-based at Naval Air Station Oceana, Va. The incident is under investigation, and Enterprise is still able to continue its present mission....