Iran Is Flying the Same Fighter Plane Tom Cruise Made Famous in Top Gun

[rangerrebew]

July 3, 2020

Iran Is Flying the Same Fighter Plane Tom Cruise Made Famous in Top Gun

An old, but good plane.
by Caleb Larson

Key Point: Iran still has some of these planes left from before the revolution. Here's how they repair and maintain them.
 

The F-14 Tomcat first flew in 1970--and made famous by Tom Cruise in Top Gun--was intended to fly from American aircraft carriers to protect from massed Soviet bombing formations.

The not-so-secret recipe to the F-14 Tomcat’s success was its variable geometry wings, that could be optimized for low speed and high-speed maneuvers.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/iran-flying-same-fighter-plane-tom-cruise-made-famous-top-gun-164023

[rangerrebew]

It reminds me of 1976 when Israel had a plane hijacked and taken to Kenya.  The battle group I was in was sent that way to talk reason with Dr. Idi Amin Dada.  We had around 70 jets aboard and could easily have blown Kenya off the face of the earth.  The Kenyan "air force" was still flying props, I believe, and I remember watching the intelligence report when the officer giving the report started laughing and had trouble controlling himself and announced that Mr. Dada said he would blow the aircraft USS Ranger up if it got too close.  This seems like a parallel.

[PeteS in CA]

It's hardly news that Iran is stuck flying Shah-era F-4s, F-5s, and F-14s.