The Jolly Roger gets a tailor — the Tomcat’s tail flags fit the fin at last

2026-08-08FEATURE AIRCRAFT

The Jolly Roger gets a tailor — the Tomcat’s tail flags fit the fin at last 6d390b8

The F-14 Tomcat from both quarters — the Jolly Roger flags now sit inside the fin outline, yellow band at the tip, skull and crossbones centered

The mailbag came with a sharp eye this week: the Tomcat’s Jolly Rogers were flying oversize — a rectangular flag hung on a fin that sweeps hard aft, spilling past the leading edge like a sheet loose on the line. VF-84 would not have tolerated it, and neither do we. The flags are back inside the outline, on both tails.

The flag is cut to the fin. The decal is no longer a rectangle; it’s a fine grid bent to the fin’s true planform — root to tip, leading edge to trailing — with a small margin all round. Nothing overhangs, nothing floats.
The skull stays round. Bending a picture onto a tapering fin pinches whatever sits near the tip, so the artwork is pre-stretched row by row to cancel the squeeze. The skull reads round, the crossbones sit square, and AJ·200 stays level on both sides.
Port and starboard both. The left fin mirrors the art correctly — no backwards tailcodes, no mirrored bones.

The Jolly Roger now wears the fin like it was painted there — because this time, it was. — HB