With its D-Version, the already legendary Tomcat finally came into its own

Hollywood blockbusters like "The Final Countdown" (1980) and "Top Gun" (1986) had provided the Grumman F-14 "Tomcat" with a reputation, quite undeserved at the time, of being among the world`s most formidable fighter jets. As the Tomcat`s early versions, due to being equipped with the notoriously stall-prone TF30 engines, were both underpowered and unreliable, the F-14, during the first half of its service life, remained a potentiality that didn`t really actualize. This only changed when, in 1990, the Tomcat`s final version, the F-14 D or "Super Tomcat", entered service and older versions were retrofitted with the considerably more powerful F100 engines. For the remaining years of his service life, the F-14 finally lived up to its reputation; or, to be more precisely, the upgraded F-14Bs and the "Super Tomcats" did. In these incarnations, the Tomcat could finally hold his own to the US Air Force`s F-15 Eagle.