Cool F15 dogfight video

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by GloryDayz

This sucks to hear...

Like the end of the F-14, it's hard to watch bad-ass planes get retired when you know they won't be replaced by enough newer bad-ass planes..

The operational history of the F-14 is pretty funny if you ever feeling like going down that rabbithole.

It was essentially an interceptor built around a missile (the phoenix) in the same way that the A-10 was built around its main gun. The difference is that the phoenix was only fired something like 3 times in combat and it never actually hit what it was aiming at. There's a decent chance that the phoenix wasn't a very good weapon.

That said, it's radar was incredibly sophisticated at the time (it had to be to take advantage of the phoenix's range). It had multi-target capability, fire and forget; all kinds of neat shit. The radar signal was distinct enough that the Tomcat would pick guys up at 100 miles out and as soon as they got pinged they'd recognize the tomcat signature and bug out.

It's hard saying whether or not the F-14 was actually as great an interceptor as its reputation...nobody ever really ****ed with it. There are stories of 8-10 enemy fighters being engaged by 2 Tomcats and before the fighters were even in range to do anything they got the hell out of dodge because the F-14 had already put them in lock.

It was the ultimate in deterrence. The Iranians claim to have put up some pretty impressive air-to-air kill figures with them but as far as I can tell, the US didn't ever really have to put them through their paces - everyone ran away.