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The squadrons provided F-14s for filming aerial sequences in the movie Top Gun. The Grumman F-14 Tomcat was central to the 1986 film Top Gun. [227] [228] [229] The aviation-themed film was such a success in creating interest in naval aviation that the US Navy, which assisted with the film, set up recruitment desks outside some theaters. [230]
Snodgrass was the "highest time Tomcat pilot," after having accumulated more than 4,800 hours in the F-14 and more than 1200 arrested carrier landings, both more than any other pilot. [ 3 ] He was called "The Real Top Gun" [ 3 ] or the real "Maverick" [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 4 ] in reference to Tom Cruise 's character in the movie, Top Gun .
The F-14 was piloted by Lieutenant Hermon C. Cook III and Lieutenant Commander Steven Patrick Collins. [3] January 4, 1989 – A Grumman F-14A Tomcat (Bureau Number : 159610) shot down a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23 using an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. The F-14 was piloted by Commander Joseph Bernard Connelly and Commander Leo F. Enwright. [4]
The F-14 primarily conducted air-to-air and reconnaissance missions with the U.S. Navy until the 1990s, when it was also employed as a long-range strike fighter. [2] It saw considerable action in the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf and was used as a strike platform in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq until its final deployment with the United States in 2006.
Combat Zones features other aircraft besides the F-14. In 2006, another game simply titled Top Gun was released for the Nintendo DS. A 2010 game, also titled Top Gun, retells the film's story. At E3 2011, a new game was announced, Top Gun: Hard Lock, which was released in March 2012 for Xbox 360, PC, and PlayStation 3.
In the first Gulf of Sidra incident, 19 August 1981, two Libyan Su-22 Fitters fired upon two U.S. F-14 Tomcats and were subsequently shot down off the Libyan coast. Libya had claimed that the entire Gulf was their territory, at 32° 30′ N, with an exclusive 62-nautical-mile (115 km; 71 mi) fishing zone, which Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi asserted as "The Line of Death" in 1973. [1]
The last deployment with the F-14 was in 2004 aboard USS George Washington in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which time the squadron participated in strikes over Fallujah between 28 April – 29 April. [7] In 2005 VF-143 transitioned to the F/A-18E Super Hornet, and was designated Strike Fighter Squadron 143 (VFA-143).
[9] [10] The player controls an American F-14 Tomcat fighter jet and must clear each of the game's eighteen unique stages by destroying incoming enemies. The plane is equipped with a machine gun and a limited supply of heat-seeking missiles. The game uses a third-person perspective, as in Sega's earlier Space Harrier (1985) and Out Run (1986).