Tomcat Fury

Tomcat Fury: A Combat History of the F-14, Mike Guardia, Magnum Books, 2019

The F-14 Tomcat fighter plane, made famous by the movie "Top Gun", was a workhorse of the US military for 30 years. Here is its story.

Made by Grumman Aerospace in New York, it rolled off the assembly line in the mid-1970's. It was intended as a carrier-based bomber replacement for the F-4 Phantom, which had reached the end of its lifespan. It was involved in the tail end of the Vietnam War, mostly in a recon and support capacity.

The F-14 got its first taste of combat in 1981's Gulf of Sidra incident. Muammar Qaddafi declared the entire Gulf to be Libyan territorial waters. The problem was that the entire Gulf was many times bigger than what can be declared territorial waters, according to international law.

The Shah of Iran was a good friend of America. He needed modern weapons to counter Iraq, so he bought many F-14's, along with spare parts. After US-Iranian relations collapsed, and America backed Iraq in the Iran/Iraq war, America cut off all access to F-14 spare parts, forcing Iran to cannibalize their planes to keep some of them in the air.

The F-14 was not used very much during Operation Desert Storm, but it made up for it in Afghanistan and Iraq, flying thousands of sorties. It, too, reached the end of its lifespan, and, in 2006, the F-14 was retired. All surviving planes and spare parts were intentionally destroyed to prevent rogue nations, like Iran, from getting their hands on them.

This is a very specialized book. For those with any sort of military connection, whether historian, veteran or enthusiast, this book is a Must Read. The military jargon is kept to a reasonable level.