The F-14 Tomcat is most famous for its 32-year front-line career as the U.S. Navy’s main carrier-borne fighter, not to mention its starring role in the 1986 movie Top Gun.
But the F-14 scored most of its aerial victories in Iranian, not American, service. Tehran bought 79 F-14As prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The type played a major role in Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Iranian F-14s shot down dozens of Iraqi planes. The Tomcat was, in the words of retired Iranian F-14 pilot Col. Mostafa Roustaie, “the last word in the fighter business.”
Hush Kit interviewed Roustaie about his five air-to-air kills as a Tomcat pilot. The lengthy interview is fascinating and worth your time. If you value Hush Kit’s work, be sure to donate a few dollars to support the site.
What follows is a brief excerpt from Hush Kit’s interview with Roustaie, where he recalls his most memorable — and most heartbreaking — aerial combat. The dogfight raged over western Iran on the morning of Oct. 26, 1982.
Guided by controllers on the ground controllers, Roustaie and his back-seat radar-intercept officer Lt. Reza Tahmasab were patrolling over the town of Ilam near the Iran-Iraq border when Tahmasab picked up, on radar, a high-speed target around 50 miles away.
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