"F-14 or F-15?" Topic

Tomcat for me.

I love the Tomcat, but the F-15 rules.

As I said in the other thread, I felt the F-14 was overrated. It was really only good as a fleet interceptor. It lacked the haulage capacity & ergonomics to hang bombs off of, not like it's predecessor the F-4. It was good at carrying lots of AIM-54s & had a very good & powerful radar. But beyond that, the F-15 was better, IMHO.
Damon.

"It lacked the haulage capacity & ergonomics to hang bombs off of"

So did the F-15 because both aircraft were aggressively designed for "not a pound for air to ground."

When the F-14s were modified into "Bombcats" their performance was excellent. The swing wing was in its element: all the lift you could want for takeoff and landing, then an excellent balance of lift and reduced form drag, and an incredible ability to sprint in and escape at very high speed. The attack pilots loved them.

To me, it is like comparing a ginger cat to a tabby cat, and they both outclassed the opposition (though the crew quality is probably a bigger factor).

Pilot workload in the F-15 is/was heavier meaining fatigue is a serious issue. This is balanced by the (usually) heavier navigation workloadfor the F-14's naval mission.

F-14..

Dad was on the F15 design team, so I am biased slightly…

Worked on F-15s in the 27th Fighter Squadron, my opinion won't count.

Yea, fleet interceptor and bomber destroyer goes to the F-14.

F-15 should win pretty much everything else, since it doesn't have that large, heavy, swing-wing box to carry around.

That said, I suspect in a very low speed, coffin corner fight, the F-14 might have the edge if flown well by the pilot, due to that swing wing.

Yep, bomb-cats certainly proved they could do the job of carrying lots of destructive ordnance.

They had to, since the enemy frequently/usually chose not to engage the USAF/USN in air-to-air combat.

The only head to head competition I know of was won by the F-14.

link

I served on the JFK in the early 80's so I'm going to have to vote for the F-14 for nostalgia reasons if nothing else.

While I will admit that the F 14 tomcat is a better-looking aircraft than the F-15, based on their track records I would have to go with the F-14 as my choice for the best aircraft of the two. It is not only a better dogfight but it is more versatile as well.

To be fair F-14 was designed as a fleet defense interceptor built to use the long-range Phieox missile system, versus the F-15 which was designed as an air superiority fighter, as a result, the F-15 has been sold to many countries and seen more combat around the world than the Tomcat.

The last numbers I read were the F 15 and 104 kills (By both the US Air Force and Israeli Air Force) with no losses. The numbers for F-14 however are harder to pin down, I believe the U.S. Navy has 5 confirmed kills with the Tomcat and no losses, however, the Iranians claim to have shot down almost 160 Iraqi aircraft during their war back in the 80s. Although I would treat the Iranian's claim as a "soft" estimate.

I was in the Navy during the transition from the F-4 to the F-14. It's an amazing machine. Capable of long range fleet defense and a great dogfighter. The main issues I remember was that it was a hard aircraft to maintain. It was really big and took up a lot of space. The Midway class carriers weren't big enough for them and hasten that carrier class demise.

I will take a Tomcat every day of the week and twice on Sunday over the F-15.

The F-15, if only because I had a 1:144 one when I was a kid.

Seeing the comments regarding the F14 prompted me to ask you guys about AirWar C21 LITE--the rules have been cut down to just the F14D vs the Su-27 Flanker-B. Air combat is not at all my area of knowledge, but looking at the stats, I'm wondering if that matchup is fair fight. The Flanker's stats are better (sometimes markedly better) in nearly every category.

Are the stats off a bit, or would this really not be an equal contest? The F14 is superior in a couple of stats--does that level the field? As I said, I'm pretty new to this whole subject, but I figure you folks can advise. Thanks.