The jet was the final fighter created by the Grumman Aircraft Corporation and it had a reputation for being a tenacious interceptor that proved its durability in combat. With the thawing of the Cold War in the late 1980s, the Tomcat community was faced with a stark choice. Turn the aircraft into a multirole strike fighter platform, or retain the fighter mission only and face almost certain extinction. In a mere five years, the F-14 transitioned from guarding against improbable Cold War scenarios to becoming the LANTIRN-equipped, self-escorting strike fighter of choice. With its two-seat cockpit, substantial payload and superior speed, range and recovery capabilities compared to the F/A-18 Hornet, the F-14 transformed into the formidable ?Bombcat.? Its contribution in Operations Enduring Freedom (2001?02) and Iraqi Freedom I?IV (2003?06) proved its worth but ultimately were its swansong. In this in-depth analysis of the F-14 "Bombcat", author Tony Holmes presents a complete history of the aircraft in the strike fighter role, with contributions from Naval Aviators and Naval Flight Officers that flew the jet in combat, engineers who turned it into a bomber and maintenance personnel who kept the aircraft flying. This is the revised, significantly expanded and updated edition of The F-14 Bombcat bookazine, published in 2015 by AirForces Monthly. AUTHOR: A Western Australian by birth, Tony Holmes was a published aviation author by the age of 20. Moving to England in 1988, he has worked in aviation publishing ever since. Tony has written more than 50 books and edited a further 300 in the past 25 years. Passionate about naval aviation, he has conducted more than 30 carrier embarks on US Navy and Royal Navy vessels across the globe, including nine visits to supercarriers sailing in the waters of the Northern Arabian Gulf whilst they were conducting operations over Iraq and Afghanistan.
