For thirty-five years of active naval service, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the foremost air superiority fighter of the Cold War, with continuing service as a fighter-bomber in the Gulf Wars. Two hundred thousand sailors, both pilots and "ground" crew, served in F-14 squadrons with the Tomcat over its decades of flight. This book is a grand remembrance of this great aircraft by those who flew it. Hundreds of pilots have included their favorite stories of the missions and planes that brought them home. Two hundred exceptional color photographs show the F-14 on the deck, in the air, and over the sea.
Dave Parsons logged over twenty thousand photos as a Tomcat RIO during a career in the U.S. Marines and Navy and now serves as a warfighter liaison between NAVAIR and the Special Ops community. He and his wife live under the traffic pattern at NAS Oceana.
George Hall photographed military aircraft for over thirty years and founded George Hall Photography, a stock photo agency. He passed away in April 2006.
As the very first editorproducers of The Hook magazine, Bob Lawson and his wife, Sallie, dedicated themselves to telling the story of carrier aviation. They now live near St. George, UT.