Reddit Reddit reviews Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat (Combat Aircraft Book 49)

We found 4 Reddit comments about Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat (Combat Aircraft Book 49). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat (Combat Aircraft Book 49)
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4 Reddit comments about Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat (Combat Aircraft Book 49):

u/x_TC_x · 10 pointsr/hoggit

Since you seem to be into air warfare, there's little else but older stuff like:

u/RexInMundum · 9 pointsr/Warthunder

>... F-14s they never got to fly as well

Where did you get that info from? It's pretty well documented that the F-14 was Iran's frontline fighter for over 40 years and saw a lot of action. As a matter of fact, Iranian Tomcats have shot down more aircraft than the US Navy.

Iran has done some crazy shit to keep the fleet in the air. At first, they bought spare parts on the black market. Then when that route was shut down, they bought them from the CIA (Google the Iran-Contra scandal for details). After that was shut down they kept reverse engineering the equipment. For example, the Iranians stock of AIM-54A missiles started running low in the late 1980's, but they did have lots and lots of MIM-23 HAWK SAMs. So they modified the HAWKs so that they could be carried and fired from the F-14. The same program that integrated the HAWKs also allowed the Tomcat to carry the AGM-65 Maverick air-ground missiles.

Some sources:

u/f14tomcat85 · 7 pointsr/aviation

If you want to read up on the history of combat aviation in Iran's Air force, I recommend you talk to /u/x_tc_x. Who is he?

He is an Austrian military aviation author and co-author of these books:

1

2

3

4

He is pretty active on reddit and comments on the Syrian Civil war conflict almost everyday.

Edit: I read the 3rd book and while it mostly focuses on the Arab-Israeli wars, it taught me some things that surprised me and fell in place quite nicely given other things that I knew of these wars. So, I definitely recommend all 4 books. I only skimmed through the 2nd and 4th books.

u/Eremenkism · 3 pointsr/hoggit

"Iranian F-14 Tomcat Units in Combat" by Tom Cooper and Farzad Bishop is really out of this world.

Unlike the US Navy literature that will tell you about naval fighter aviator culture, the inception of the Tomcat and a few short brushes with combat, this book covers what in my opinion was the Tomcat's finest hour in service. Here we have an aircraft that was considered a maintenance nightmare spend 8 years of intensive combat flying with almost daily air-to-air engagements, operated by an air force under an arms and parts embargo, and yet it excelled to a degree almost unrivalled by any other fighter that engaged in a near-peer war (i.e. not a NATO vs. small country turkey shoot) combining whatever whatever was stockpiled with domestic improvisation and black market parts. It also reveals a lot of cool aspects about joint operations with Phantoms, Tigers and the tankers, and provides a good mix of documents and first-person accounts from pilots, mechanics and so on.