Cradle of Aviation seeks help to fix a flat on restored F-14 D Tomcat

For months, volunteers at the Cradle of Aviation Museum have diligently restored a U.S. Navy Grumman F-14 D Tomcat — one of more than 700 built on Long Island and the last one ever to fly.

The jet, which last served aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was painstakingly cleaned of bird's nests and droppings, sanded down, patched, restored and repainted as it prepares to go on display in August at the entrance to the museum in Uniondale.

But those plans hit a proverbial bump in the road this week as one of the tires on the main landing gear went flat and will no longer stay inflated, said museum curator Josh Stoff. The museum has a spare, he said, but lacks the expertise to properly change it, which must be done before towing it outside.

On Wednesday, William Barto, a former part-time staffer at the Cradle and the historian of the F-14 Tomcat Association, put out a call on Facebook for Navy veterans or former Grumman plane captains or mechanics capable of replacing the tire. 

"We don't have a manual that shows the correct procedure for changing it out," Stoff said Thursday, adding that the museum has already lined up some potential volunteers to help. "It's a little complicated … Hopefully, there's enough Grumman retirees now that somebody who worked on the plane knows how to do it."

The Cradle has never previously solicited the public's help to complete repairs it was unable to perform on its own.

"This is this is the first time we've ever done anything like that," Stoff said. "So it's a museum first."

The plane had spent years on display outside the former Grumman Corp. offices in Bethpage.

The Cradle acquired it after the Nassau County IDA brokered a deal with Prologis, a San Francisco-based warehouse company that was seeking tax breaks from the county after acquiring the old Grumman headquarters.

The F-14D had been on loan from the Navy to the Grumman retiree's group.

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.