AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
F14 cockpit view11/6/2023 ![]() “During the testing in Iran, we tracked an AIM-54A at Mach 4.4 and 24,000 meters before it scored a direct hit on the target drone. “The AIM-54 was truly a deadly system,” says Farhad, a former pilot. ![]() By late 1978, 284 Phoenix missiles were also delivered, including 10 ATM-54A training missiles, and the IIAF launched a series of live-fire tests. Khatami Air Base, named after legendary IIAF commander-in-chief General Mohammad Khatami-killed in a paragliding accident in 1975-was to become the main hub for F-14 operations in Iran. “They trained us well.”īefore the arrival of the F-14s in Iran, a giant air base was built in the central Iranian desert. Air Force and Israeli F-15s and F-16s almost at will in all exercises,” recalls Colonel (then-Captain) Javad. Simultaneously, maintenance technicians were trained at Pratt & Whitney and Hughes on the engines, avionics, and weapons systems. What is known is that in the 1970s Iran needed an air superiority fighter that could end incursions into its airspace by Soviets flying MiG-25Rs, and the F-14 was up to the job.īy 1979, 120 pilots and radar intercept officers in the Iranian Imperial Air Force (IIAF) had been trained in the United States and Iran, with 100 additional personnel still in training. Several pilots quoted here insisted on pseudonyms for their protection. Even today, most Iranian pilots will speak about their experiences only on the condition of anonymity. It is impossible to tabulate, for example, how many air-to-air victories were scored by Iranian F-14s because air force records were repeatedly tampered with during and after the war for political, religious, or even personal reasons. ![]() Information about the Iran-Iraq air war is difficult to come by. military analysts have dismissed the significance of airpower in the conflict, but the testimony of the Iranian Tomcat pilots paints a different picture. How useful the F-14 was in the eight-year war that Iran fought against Iraq following the revolution has been a matter of controversy. (The Iranian deal is credited with saving the F-14 program, which Congress had stopped funding, and by some with saving the Grumman Corporation from bankruptcy.) Iran became the only country besides the United States to fly the big fighter. FIVE YEARS BEFORE THE 1979 Islamic Revolution transformed Iran, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a pilot who had earned his wings in 1946 flying a British Tiger Moth, arranged for Iran to purchase 80 Grumman F-14A Tomcats and 633 Hughes AIM-54 Phoenix missiles for $2 billion.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |