DATE: Thursday, April 10, 1997 TAG: 9704100370 SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: 42 lines
The Fighting Black Lions of Fighter Squadron 213 become the newest residents of Oceana Naval Air Station today after flying non-stop across the continent from their carrier in the Pacific.
Their journey, scheduled to end at 5:30 p.m., will bring a dozen F-14 Tomcats to their new home from the carrier Kitty Hawk, located 400 miles off the Southern California coast.
The planes were to refuel three times in the air and land nearly eight hours after catapulting off the carrier.
The fliers and the other Tomcat squadrons assigned to West Coast-based carriers will make the ``commute'' routinely.
They are the last of five new F-14 squadrons to move to Oceana from Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego, which has been ordered closed. Once known as Fighter Town USA, Miramar fell victim to base-closing decisions in 1993.
Now all of the Navy's Tomcat squadrons are based at Oceana.
The Black Lions were preceded during the past year by Fighter Squadrons 211, 2, 11, 31 and a detachment of Squadron 101.
With the Black Lions' arrival, Oceana hosts 12 F-14 squadrons. Plans call for relocating all of the Navy's East Coast-based F/A-18 Hornets - now at Cecil Field, Fla. - to Oceana. They should begin arriving by May 1998, and all are to be in place by May 1999.
Commanded by Cmdr. Mark Clemente, the Black Lions are returning from the Kitty Hawk's six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf and western Pacific. The ship will dock at San Diego.
During the cruise, squadron members participated in Operation Southern Watch, enforcing U.N. Security Council resolutions and the ``no-fly'' zone over Iraq. They also visited Hong Kong, Singapore, Bahrain, Jebel Ali, Perth and Hobart, Australia.
They also boast a near-perfect sortie rate, flying more than 2,000 hours in more than 1,100 sorties.
More than 250 maintenance personnel and aviators who make up the rest of the squadron are scheduled to arrive at Oceana Friday. They will take a Navy transport aircraft out of San Diego.
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