F-14 Tomcat: The Iconic Aircraft of Top Gun That Transformed Military Aviation

[Cet article a initialement été publié le 15 juillet 2024]

Aviation and cinema enthusiasts experienced a moment rich in emotions in 1986. This year will mark on the big screen the arrival of Top Guna film on cult military aviation highlighting the young Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer. In the work that has become cult, the real star was not made of blood, bone and sunglasses classes but of wheel and kerosene: F14-Tomcat.

Top Gun, the summit of aircraft films?

The success of a film and its posterity is one question: what work do you think if we are talking about…. ? If we talk about dinosaurs, Jurassic Park comes first. If the scientific subject relates to black holes and space, there is a lot to bet that Inteerstellar by Christopher Nolan will be offered instant. And when the theme rallies cinema and plane … The classic of Tony Scott, Top Gun, necessarily comes in mind. With a licked aesthetic, a saturation do you want it here, plans of breathtaking air fights …

Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer have marked an entire era, and almost 40 years later, the classic of the genre did not have a bit old. The rest, Top Gun Maverick in 2022 will also have a crazy success, always mixing new technologies of cinematographic realization with the technical prowess of experienced pilots in full flight. For the original, some freedoms with the vintage military regulations had been taken. The Northrop Grumman site reports the words of a (real) pilot of the time that had been able to participate in the shooting:

“For sailors acting as extras, the culmination of filming was the scene of the start of the film where Maverick and Goose fly over the control tower, flying very low compared to the ground. In real life, the maneuver is illegal and would probably lead to a martial trial for a pilot who would have tempted it without authorization. “

“It was pretty cool, to go down 30 meters and with the wings back,” said the F-14 driver.

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F-14 Tomcat, the real star of the masterpiece

But if the acting of the two stars of the time were already present, it was the flight devices that stole the show from Maverick and Iceman. The general public was able to marvel at the convertibles and technology jewelry shown from the aircraft carriers and other launch bases present in the film. The manufacturer assumes it itself: “The film was also a showcase for the Grumman F-14 Tomcat“.

In the middle of the Cold War, Tony Scott bet on the F-14 Tomcat to become the celestial mount of our actors. And, when we see the success of the film, it is not trivial. A real US Navy star, the F-14 Tomcat came from the 1970s and hangars from Northrop Grumman and served until the mid-2000s. Popularized thanks to the Tony Scott film, we counted PLU of 700 in total.

F-14, the technological point of the American army of the time

Born in a cold war period, the F-14 Tomcat will therefore have gained popularity with the film. But the wings with variable geometry wings was at the forefront of what could be done best in the 1970s when we mentioned the air-to-air fights, that is to say from an airplane against another plane.

Its production cost was estimated, at the time, at nearly $ 38 million. Characteristic level, the plane could reach 30 tonnes once loaded and transported several air-to-air missiles. The “Tom Cruise mount” was not a small machine. 19 meters long, it exceeded 4.80 meters in height. On the speed side, the device could reach Mach 2.34 or 2400 km/h with a ceiling at almost 15,000 meters. The specialized aircraft forum reports a feat achieved by one of the models during a test at the Naval Air Station Point Mugu:

“” “The F-14 can take up to 6 Phoenix missiles, but in fact this arsenal is too heavy for the approval and therefore rarely used (…) on November 22, 1973, 6 of them were fired in 38 seconds and reached 4 targets. “

Withdrawn in the 2000s, the F-14 Tomcat marked the history of military aviation (and can also say thank you to Tom Cruise).