What if America’s greatest fighter, the U.S. Navy’s greatest icon, had been scrapped, not for its slowness and clumsiness, but due to a single, persistent engineering flaw? During the 1970s, the F-14 ...

With the launch of "The Other First Man," we introduced a new series titled Flight Test Files, focused on the fascinating legacy of aeronautical advancements pioneered by NACA and later by NASA. This ...

The F-14 Tomcat is one of the most iconic fighter jets in aviation history, but the F-14’s transcendent status comes not from the jet’s performance (although the jet performed admirably). Rather, the ...

The final member of the Grumman cat family, the F-14 Tomcat, with its signature variable-geometry wings and twin-engine design, became an iconic symbol of the Cold War. A product of the “Grumman Iron ...

In the 1960s, the U.S. military tried to solve two problems with one aircraft. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara pushed the Tactical Fighter Experimental (TFX) program, hoping to create a ...

The Grumman F-14 Tomcat is probably the most recognizable fighter jet from the 20th century thanks to 1986's "Top Gun," starring Tom Cruise. The general public got to see the jet's variable sweep wing ...

The Question—Was the F-14 Tomcat Retired Too Early? The F-22 Raptor, known for its speed and advanced capabilities, wasn’t the first U.S. fighter to achieve Mach 2.0; the F-14 Tomcat, introduced ...