No matter how much Tehran has maintained and improved its originally imported fleet of F-14 Tomcats, this platform simply does not hold up to more advanced next-generation counterparts.
At dawn on September 30, 1980 four American-made F-4E Phantom jets screamed low over central Iraq, each laden with air-to-air missiles and three thousand pounds of bombs.
The two countries made for strange bedfellows.
Here s What You Need to Know: Tel Aviv funneled vital arms to Tehran during the 1980s despite the Ayatollah’s increasingly anti-Israeli rhetoric.
At dawn on September 30, 1980 four American-made F-4E Phantom jets screamed low over central Iraq, each laden with air-to-air missiles and three thousand pounds of bombs.
Prior to entering Iraqi airspace they had rendezvoused for aerial refueling with a Boeing 707 tanker escorted by two more advanced F-14 Tomcat fighters the type immortalized six years later in the film Top Gun. And to complete the eighties action-movie vibe, they were embarked on a mission codenamed ‘Operation Scorched Sword.’