Grumman F-14 Tomcat — History, Specs & Stories

Grumman F-14 Tomcat swing-wing fighter of the US Navy in flight
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Grumman F-14
“Tomcat”

The US Navy’s swing-wing fleet-defense interceptor — a two-seat carrier fighter whose AWG-9 radar and 100-mile AIM-54 Phoenix missile gave it the longest reach in the sky, and whose Top Gun fame made it the most famous fighter on Earth.

Mach 2.34Top speed at altitude
100+ miAIM-54 Phoenix reach
24 / 6Targets tracked / engaged at once
1974–2006US Navy service
Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
RoleCarrier fleet-defense interceptorEraCold War – 2006 (Iran ongoing)Engine2 × GE F110 (A: P&W TF30)OriginUSA · GrummanStatusRetired · US Navy 2006Can a civilian fly the F-14?
The Story

The Tomcat: the fighter born from a failure

The F-14 was born from a failure. In the 1960s the US Navy was tied into the joint TFX programme that produced the General Dynamics F-111; its naval variant, the F-111B, was meant to be the fleet’s long-range missile-carrying interceptor. Overweight and hopeless off a carrier deck, the F-111B was cancelled in 1968. The Navy launched its own VFX competition, which Grumman won with its Model 303.

Grumman built the airframe around the mission systems the Navy actually wanted: the Hughes AWG-9 radar and the AIM-54 Phoenix long-range missile, both inherited from the F-111B. The result was a large, twin-engine, two-seat carrier fighter with a variable-sweep “swing” wing — the feature that let it dogfight slow and cruise fast from the same airframe. Its Cold War job was fleet air defense: standing off from the carrier group and killing Soviet bombers and cruise missiles before they got in range.

First flown on 21 December 1970, the Tomcat entered US Navy service in 1974 (VF-1 and VF-2 aboard USS Enterprise). Around 712 were built — the troubled TF30-engined F-14A, the re-engined F-14B, and the fully modernised F-14D “Super Tomcat.” The Navy retired the type in 2006. Its only export customer was Imperial Iran under the Shah, and Iran remains the F-14’s only remaining operator — a dwindling, disputed fleet in 2026.

A single Tomcat could track 24 targets and fire six Phoenix missiles at six of them at once — a flying missile battery with a reach no other fighter matched for decades.The longest reach in the sky — the AWG-9 and the AIM-54 Phoenix
01The F-14 Tomcat’s AWG-9 and AIM-54 Phoenix: the fighter that killed what it could barely see

No fighter before or arguably since matched the Tomcat’s fleet-defense reach. The Hughes AN/AWG-9 was a giant pulse-Doppler radar that could track up to 24 targets in track-while-scan and cue six AIM-54 Phoenix missiles against six different targets at once. The Phoenix flew over 100 miles, zoom-climbing to the edge of space before diving on its target — a weapon built to swat down Soviet bombers and cruise missiles far beyond visual range, long before they threatened the carrier. The AWG-9 could pick up bomber-sized targets at 150-plus nautical miles.

In a celebrated 1970s test, a single F-14 salvoed six Phoenix missiles at six drones and hit most in one pass. The upgraded APG-71 radar of the F-14D pushed detection ranges further still. This sensor-and-shooter combination — not raw agility — was the Tomcat’s real superpower, and the AIM-54 remained unique to the F-14 for its entire career.

Design & Engineering

What makes the F-14 special

01

The swing wing

The Tomcat’s wings pivoted from about 20° spread for slow carrier approaches and dogfighting to about 68° fully swept for supersonic dash. A central air-data computer moved them automatically with speed and altitude, so the jet always flew at the optimum sweep without the pilot touching a lever. The wide “pancake” fuselage between the gloves itself generated lift.

02

AWG-9 & AIM-54 Phoenix

A fighter built as a flying missile battery: the AWG-9 radar tracked 24 targets and could guide six AIM-54 Phoenix missiles against six of them simultaneously, each flying 100-plus miles. Nothing else on a carrier deck came close to that reach for decades, and the Phoenix was never carried by any other aircraft.

03

Two crew & the RIO

The back-seater — the Radar Intercept Officer — ran the AWG-9, sorted the tactical picture and managed the Phoenix engagements, freeing the pilot to fly and fight. The Tomcat was fundamentally a two-person weapon system, which is why Top Gun’s Maverick always had Goose behind him.

02The F-14’s engines: the TF30 problem and the F110 that fixed it

The F-14A’s Pratt & Whitney TF30 turbofans were the aircraft’s Achilles’ heel — prone to compressor stalls under hard manoeuvring and blamed for numerous losses and fatal flat spins. The Navy itself called them unsuited to the airframe. The General Electric F110-GE-400 re-engine of the F-14B and F-14D finally gave the Tomcat reliable, powerful, carefree-throttle performance — roughly 27,000–28,000 lbf in afterburner per engine — and the aircraft the pilots always felt it deserved.

03The F-14’s Phoenix reach: 24 tracks, six shots, one hundred miles

The heart of the Tomcat was never the airframe — it was the weapon system. The AWG-9 could hold two dozen tracks in track-while-scan and hand six of them to six Phoenix missiles at once. Each AIM-54 climbed above 80,000 ft and dived on its target from more than 100 miles out. It was designed to break up massed Soviet bomber and cruise-missile raids far from the fleet, and its only combat use came in Iranian hands during the Iran–Iraq War. No other fighter of its era — and few since — could reach out and kill at that range.

Technical Data

Full F-14 specifications

Dimensions & weights

Crew
2 pilot and radar intercept officer (RIO)
Length
19.10 m (62 ft 8 in)
Wingspan (unswept)
19.55 m (64 ft 1 in) at 20° sweep
Wingspan (swept)
11.58 m (38 ft 0 in) at 68°; 10.15 m / 33 ft 3 in in deck oversweep
Height
4.88 m (16 ft 0 in)
Wing area
54.5 m² (585 sq ft) at full spread
Empty weight
18,190 kg (40,100 lb) F-14A; 19,840 kg / 43,700 lb for the F-14D
Normal takeoff weight
27,700 kg (61,000 lb) clean fighter fit
Max takeoff weight
33,720 kg (74,350 lb)
Internal fuel
7,350 kg (16,200 lb / ~9,080 L); two 1,010 L (267 US gal) external tanks optional

Performance

Max speed
2,485 km/h (1,544 mph / Mach 2.34) at 12,200 m (40,000 ft)
Max speed (sea level)
1,470 km/h (915 mph / Mach 1.2)
Cruise speed
740 km/h (460 mph / Mach 0.72) at optimum altitude
Rate of climb
>229 m/s (>45,000 ft/min) with F110 engines
Service ceiling
15,200 m (50,000 ft)
Combat radius
~930 km (~575 mi / 500 nmi) on a fleet air-defence profile
Ferry range
~2,960 km (~1,840 mi / 1,600 nmi) with external tanks
Takeoff run
427 m (1,400 ft) from a runway; normally catapult-launched at sea
Landing run
914 m (3,000 ft) ashore; arrested in ~100 m aboard ship
Load factor
+7.5 g design limit

Propulsion & systems

Engines
2 × Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-414A afterburning turbofans (F-14A); 2 × General Electric F110-GE-400 in the F-14B and F-14D
Thrust each
92.9 kN (20,900 lbf) TF30 with afterburner
Thrust each (F110)
122.8 kN (27,600 lbf) with afterburner
Cannon
1 × 20 mm M61A1 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon, 675 rounds, port side of the nose
Hardpoints & max ordnance
10 stations up to ~6,600 kg (~14,500 lb) of stores
Radar / avionics
AN/AWG-9 (F-14A/B) or AN/APG-71 (F-14D); AN/ALR-67 RWR, AN/AXX-1 TCS, IRST on the D
Ejection seat
Martin-Baker GRU-7A (F-14A/B); Martin-Baker NACES SJU-17 in the F-14D
First flight
21 December 1970 prototype lost on its second flight nine days later
Service entry
1974 VF-1 Wolfpack and VF-2 Bounty Hunters aboard USS Enterprise
Retired
22 September 2006 US Navy; still flown by Iran
Built
712 632 for the US Navy and 79 for Imperial Iran
Unit cost
~US$38 million (F-14D, 1998 dollars); roughly US$20 million for an early F-14A
Cost per flight hour
~US$30,000–38,000 widely cited for the type late in US Navy service; never officially published and inflated by the airframe's heavy maintenance burden
04The F-14’s cost: an expensive, maintenance-heavy cat

Hard cost figures for the Tomcat vary widely and are rarely inflation-normalised. A flyaway unit cost of roughly $38 million is commonly cited, but sources give figures from around $38 million to $60 million-plus depending on variant and year — treat any single number with caution. There is no reliably published cost-per-flight-hour: the F-14 was notoriously maintenance-intensive, and figures well above US$30,000 per hour are often repeated but not solidly sourced. That expense — and the fact that the multirole F/A-18E/F Super Hornet could do the same jobs more cheaply — is exactly why the Navy retired the Tomcat in 2006.

Armament

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat's armament and payload

The F-14 was built around one weapon: the AIM-54 Phoenix, a 450 kg missile that let a Tomcat kill bombers more than 100 km away and, in theory, engage six targets at once. Everything else — Sparrow, Sidewinder, the gun — filled in as the fight closed. Air-to-ground came late and almost by accident: the Tomcat carried no guided ground ordnance in fleet service until the LANTIRN pod arrived in 1995–96, turning the interceptor into the "Bombcat" for the last decade of its career.

Gun

  • 1 × 20 mm M61A1 Vulcan six-barrel rotary cannon, internally mounted in the port forward fuselage
  • 675 rounds, firing at up to 6,000 rounds per minute
  • No US Navy Tomcat ever scored a gun kill — all five American air-to-air victories were missile kills. The gun served as an air-combat-manoeuvring and strafing weapon; Iranian crews reportedly did use it in the Iran–Iraq War

Air-to-air

  • AIM-54A/C Phoenix — long-range active-radar missile, up to 6 carried, ~190 km maximum range; the F-14 was the only aircraft ever to carry it
  • AIM-7E/F/M Sparrow — semi-active medium-range missile, typically 2–4
  • AIM-9G/H/L/M Sidewinder — short-range infrared missile on the glove pylons
  • Iranian F-14A(GR)s retain AIM-54A and AIM-7E stocks, reportedly supplemented by locally adapted rounds including the Fakour-90

Air-to-surface

  • None in fleet service for the first two decades — the F-14 entered service as a pure interceptor and fighter
  • AN/AAQ-14 LANTIRN targeting pod (Navy-modified, from 1995–96) gave the type autonomous laser designation and created the "Bombcat"
  • No dedicated anti-ship or anti-radiation missile was ever cleared for US Navy Tomcats
  • Iran has reportedly cleared a small number of unguided and locally modified stores; details are not independently verified

Bombs

  • Mk 82 (227 kg), Mk 83 (454 kg) and Mk 84 (907 kg) general-purpose bombs
  • GBU-10, GBU-12, GBU-16 and GBU-24 Paveway II/III laser-guided bombs
  • GBU-31 and GBU-38 JDAM GPS-guided bombs, cleared on the F-14D from 2003
  • Mk 20 Rockeye cluster munitions, carried early in the Bombcat programme

Rockets & pods

  • Unguided rocket pods were never a standard Tomcat store — the type had no operational rocket fit
  • AN/AAQ-25 LANTIRN targeting pod — the single most important addition of the Tomcat's late career
  • TARPS (Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System) — a 780 kg centreline pod with framing, panoramic and infrared cameras
  • AN/ALQ-167 ECM pod for electronic warfare training and support

Other stores

  • 2 × 1,010 L (267 US gal) external fuel tanks under the engine nacelles
  • AN/ALE-39 / ALE-29 chaff and flare dispensers
  • AN/AXX-1 Television Camera Set (TCS) — a nose-mounted long-range optical identification system, effectively standard equipment
  • Buddy refuelling store, carried by early F-14As before the mission passed to the S-3 and later the F/A-18E/F

Typical mission loadouts

Fleet air defence (CAP)
4 × AIM-54C Phoenix on the fuselage pallets, 2 × AIM-9M Sidewinder on the glove pylons, 2 × 1,010 L drop tanks. The famous six-Phoenix fit was flown in tests but almost never operationally — it put the aircraft over its carrier landing weight, so any unfired missile meant dumping fuel or dumping a million-dollar round in the sea.
Fighter escort / TARCAP
2 × AIM-54, 2 × AIM-7M Sparrow, 2 × AIM-9M, full 675-round gun load and 2 drop tanks — the mixed fit actually flown over Iraq and Bosnia, trading Phoenix count for close-in flexibility.
Bombcat strike (post-1995)
2 × GBU-12 or GBU-16 Paveway II, AN/AAQ-25 LANTIRN targeting pod on station 8B, 2 × AIM-9M for self-defence, 1–2 AIM-54 or AIM-7, plus tanks. From 2003 the F-14D added GBU-31/38 JDAM, and Tomcats flew precision strike and forward air control missions over Afghanistan and Iraq until retirement.
Variants

Grumman F-14 Tomcat variants: from the F-14A to the Super Tomcat

The Tomcat's thirty-two years in service divide neatly into two halves: two decades flying behind the troublesome TF30, and a last decade transformed by General Electric F110 engines that finally gave the airframe the thrust it had been designed around.

F-14A
The initial production version, powered by two Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-412/414A turbofans. 545 were delivered to the US Navy from 1972. The TF30 was never intended as a fighter engine and its compressor stalls at high angle of attack killed aircrew — the type's single greatest flaw.
F-14A+ / F-14B
The TF30 problem solved: the same airframe and AWG-9 radar re-engined with the General Electric F110-GE-400, giving roughly a third more thrust and, for the first time, the ability to launch from a carrier without afterburner. 38 built new and 48 F-14As converted; redesignated F-14B in 1991.
F-14D Super Tomcat
The definitive Tomcat: F110 engines plus the AN/APG-71 digital radar, dual mission computers, NACES ejection seats and an infrared search-and-track set under the nose. Only 37 were built new and 18 rebuilt from F-14As before Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, ended production in 1991.
F-14A(GR)
The Iranian export variant. 79 aircraft were delivered to the Imperial Iranian Air Force in 1976–78, the only F-14s ever exported. They saw heavy combat in the Iran–Iraq War and, remarkably, a reduced number remain in Iranian service today — kept flying by cannibalisation and reverse engineering under sanctions.
TARPS fit
Not a variant but a role: roughly 50 F-14As, and later Bs and Ds, were wired to carry the Tactical Airborne Reconnaissance Pod System on the rear starboard fuselage station. When the RA-5C Vigilante and RF-8 Crusader retired, TARPS Tomcats became the US Navy's only carrier-based tactical reconnaissance asset.
Super Tomcat 21 / ASF-14 (proposal only)
Never built. Grumman's 1980s–90s proposals for a deeply upgraded Tomcat — enlarged wing gloves, thrust-vectoring, greater fuel and a new radar — and a clean-sheet ASF-14 successor. Both were cancelled in favour of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. They are frequently presented online as if they flew; they did not.

A note on operators, and why there is no fleet-strength chart on this page: the US Navy retired the F-14 on 22 September 2006, and surviving American airframes were deliberately shredded to keep spare parts away from Tehran. That leaves Iran as the sole remaining operator of the type. Published figures for how many Iranian Tomcats are actually airworthy at any given moment range widely and none of them are independently verifiable, so we do not print a number here. What can be said honestly is that the fleet is small, that a large share of the 79 delivered aircraft has been lost, written off or reduced to spares over five decades, and that Iran keeps a handful flying through domestic overhaul work.

Timeline

From VFX to the last cat

1968

The F-111B is cancelled

The Navy’s overweight F-111B fleet-interceptor is killed off; the VFX competition for a purpose-built Navy fighter is launched.

1969

Grumman wins VFX

Grumman’s Model 303 wins; F-14 development begins around the AWG-9 radar and AIM-54 Phoenix.

21 Dec 1970

First flight

The F-14 prototype flies. Days later the first aircraft is lost to a hydraulic failure, but the programme presses on.

1974

Fleet service

The Tomcat enters US Navy service with VF-1 and VF-2 aboard USS Enterprise; the AIM-54 Phoenix is operational.

19 Aug 1981

First kills

Two VF-41 Tomcats down two Libyan Su-22 Fitters over the Gulf of Sidra — the F-14’s first air-to-air victories.

1980–1988

Iran–Iraq War

Iran’s Shah-era F-14As become the war’s dominant fighters — the Tomcat’s most intense combat, and the only combat use of the Phoenix.

4 Jan 1989

“Tomcats 4, Gaddafi 0”

Two VF-32 Tomcats down two Libyan MiG-23s near Tobruk in a second Gulf of Sidra engagement.

1990s–2000s

The Bombcat

With LANTIRN pods the Tomcat becomes a precision striker, dropping LGBs and JDAMs over the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan.

22 Sep 2006

US Navy retirement

The Navy retires the F-14 after 32 years. Iran remains the sole operator — a fleet dwindling and disputed through 2026.

Stories & Eyewitnesses

Twelve things to know about the Tomcat

Pop Culture

Top Gun (1986)

The movie that made the Tomcat a legend.

Read the full story
When Maverick and Goose roared off the deck in 1986, the F-14 became the most famous fighter on Earth. Tony Scott’s film, made with heavy US Navy cooperation, turned the big grey interceptor into a pop-culture icon and reportedly sent naval-aviation recruitment soaring. For a generation, “fighter jet” simply meant Tomcat.
Pop Culture

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

The retired jet flies again — on screen.

Read the full story
Thirty-six years later, the sequel resurrected the Tomcat for a show-stopping third act, Maverick stealing an “enemy” F-14 to escape. Real airframes and clever effects put the retired cat back in the sky, introducing the swing-wing legend to a whole new audience worldwide.
Tech

The Phoenix’s reach

A 100-mile air-to-air kill.

Read the full story
The AIM-54 Phoenix let a Tomcat kill what it could barely see. Guided by the AWG-9, it flew over 100 miles, zoom-climbing above 80,000 ft before diving on bombers and cruise missiles. Six could be launched at six targets at once — a reach no other fighter’s missiles matched for decades.
Combat

Gulf of Sidra

“Tomcats 4, Gaddafi 0.”

Read the full story
Twice — in 1981 and 1989 — US Navy Tomcats tangled with Libyan jets over the Gulf of Sidra and won cleanly, downing two Su-22s and two MiG-23s. The 1989 engagement, captured on cockpit audio, became one of naval aviation’s most replayed real-world dogfights.
History

Iranian Tomcats

American aces flying under Iran’s flag.

Read the full story
The Shah bought 79 Tomcats; the 1979 revolution left Iran with America’s hottest fighter and no support. Tehran kept them flying through cannibalisation, black-market smuggling and reverse-engineering — a decades-long spare-parts saga that made the F-14 the improbable backbone of Iran’s air force.
Tech

The swing wing

A wing that reshapes itself in flight.

Read the full story
The Tomcat’s wings swept from 20° to 68° automatically, scheduled by an air-data computer. Spread for slow carrier landings and dogfights, swept back for Mach 2 — the jet always flew at the perfect shape without the pilot lifting a finger. Pure 1970s mechanical genius.
Combat

Bombcat

The interceptor that became a bomber.

Read the full story
Denied dogfights after the Cold War, the Tomcat reinvented itself. With LANTIRN targeting pods it dropped laser-guided bombs and JDAMs over Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. The “Bombcat” ended its career as one of the US Navy’s most capable precision-strike platforms.
Culture

“Anytime baby”

The Tomcat community’s swagger.

Read the full story
Painted on patches and hangar walls, “Anytime, baby!” — often over a Tomcat silhouette facing a MiG — became the F-14 fraternity’s unofficial motto: an open challenge from the crews who flew the Navy’s biggest, fastest fighter and knew it.
Tech

The TF30 problem

A great jet’s bad heart.

Read the full story
The F-14A’s Pratt & Whitney TF30 engines were the Tomcat’s weak spot — prone to compressor stalls in hard manoeuvres and blamed for fatal flat spins. The Navy itself called them unsuited to the airframe. Only the GE F110 re-engine (B/D) finally gave the cat the powerplant it deserved.
People

Dale “Snort” Snodgrass

The world’s most famous Tomcat pilot.

Read the full story
No one flew the F-14 like Dale Snodgrass — high-time Tomcat aviator and demo legend, immortalised in a photo of him screaming past a carrier at knife-edge, wingtip feet from the deck. “Snort” personified Tomcat swagger until his death in a light-plane crash in 2021.
History

The final USN flight

The last cat comes home.

Read the full story
On 22 September 2006 the US Navy officially retired the F-14 after 32 years, VF-31 and VF-213 flying the last cruise. The final flights ended an era; most survivors were later shredded — deliberately — to keep spare parts out of Iran’s hands.
People

The RIO

Half the crew, all the picture.

Read the full story
The Tomcat needed two: up front the pilot, behind him the Radar Intercept Officer running the AWG-9, sorting 24 tracks and calling the shots. The RIO — “Goose” — made the F-14 a true two-person weapon system, a partnership at the heart of the legend.
Gallery

The Tomcat in pictures

An F-14D Tomcat launches from the flight deck of USS Theodore Roosevelt.
An F-14D Tomcat launches from the flight deck of USS Theodore Roosevelt.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
An F-14A of VF-1 launching an AIM-54 Phoenix the Tomcats signature 100-mile missile.
An F-14A of VF-1 launching an AIM-54 Phoenix — the Tomcat’s signature 100-mile missile.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
A Grumman F-14A of VF-84 Jolly Rogers in flight, 1978.
A Grumman F-14A of VF-84 “Jolly Rogers” in flight, 1978.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
An F-14A of VF-84 taking off from NAS Oceana, wings spread.
An F-14A of VF-84 taking off from NAS Oceana, wings spread.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
An F-14 Tomcat in full afterburner two turbofans lit.
An F-14 Tomcat in full afterburner — two turbofans lit.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
A specially painted F-14D Bombcat of VF-213 over the Persian Gulf.
A specially painted F-14D “Bombcat” of VF-213 over the Persian Gulf.Photo: U.S. Navy · Public domain
Watch

The Tomcat in motion

A documentary look at the Grumman F-14 Tomcat — the swing-wing legend that defended the fleet for 32 years.

Operations

Where the Tomcat flew

Combat Record

The longest reach in naval aviation

US Navy Tomcats fought cleanly over the Gulf of Sidra — two Libyan Su-22s in 1981, two MiG-23s in 1989 — and flew CAP and strike missions from Desert Storm to Afghanistan. But the F-14’s most intense combat came in Iranian hands during the 1980–88 Iran–Iraq War, where Shah-era F-14As dominated and fired the only AIM-54 Phoenix shots ever used in anger. Iranian crews claimed dozens of victories — some accounts well over 100 — but these totals are heavily contested and rarely independently verified. In 2026 Iran’s surviving fleet is dwindling and disputed after Israeli airstrikes on its Tomcat base.

4–0US Navy kills over the Gulf of Sidra
100+Iranian kill claims (contested)
~712Built — retired by the US Navy in 2006

Compare the combat record of every military aircraft. Figures as of July 2026; Iranian totals are disputed.

Questions & Answers

Everything people ask about the F-14

Can I fly in an F-14 Tomcat?
No. The F-14 is retired and was never a civilian-flyable aircraft. The US Navy retired it in 2006, and today the only operator is Iran, whose fleet is small, dwindling and disputed — not open to anyone. There are no airworthy civilian Tomcats and no rides. But you can strap into other legendary fighter jets with MiGFlug — see migflug.com/flights-prices/.
How fast was the F-14?
About Mach 2.34 (~2,485 km/h) at altitude — comfortably supersonic thanks to its swing wings and, in later jets, GE F110 engines.
Why was the F-14 retired?
It was expensive and maintenance-intensive to keep flying, and the multirole F/A-18E/F Super Hornet could do the fleet-defense and strike jobs more cheaply. The Navy retired the last Tomcats in 2006.
What was the AIM-54 Phoenix?
A long-range (100+ mile) air-to-air missile unique to the F-14, guided by the AWG-9 radar. Up to six could be fired at six targets at once — the Tomcat’s signature weapon and the only such capability of its era.
What were the swing wings for?
To fly well at every speed: spread for slow carrier landings and dogfighting, swept for a Mach 2 dash. A computer moved them automatically with speed — the pilot rarely touched them.
Was it really the Top Gun jet?
Yes — the F-14 starred in Top Gun (1986) and returned in Top Gun: Maverick (2022), making it one of the most recognisable aircraft in the world.
Who still flies the F-14?
Only Iran, and only a handful. As of 2026 the fleet is dwindling and its exact status is disputed after Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s Tomcat base. Civilians cannot fly it anywhere.
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Sources & Further Reading

Every fact, checked