Check Out This Nostalgic 1981 U.S. Navy Commercial Featuring the F-14 Tomcat

It’s short but worth watching.

The video below is a U.S. Navy commercial dating back to the 1981. In the early eighties the F-14 Tomcat was the Navy’s premier fighter: inducted into active service beginning in 1974, the legendary aircraft had already replaced the F-4 Phantom II in most Carrier Air Wings aboard US aircraft carriers. Actually, in 1981, the F-14 had its first air-to-air kills during what became known as the First Gulf of Sidra incident. In that aerial engagement, on Aug. 19, 1981, two F-14s from the VF-41 Black Aces downed two Libyan Su-22 Fitters.

Anyway, few years before it starred in Top Gun movie, the F-14 served as “U.S. Navy’s best recruiting tool” in a short clip that will bring you back to the “1980s”!

By the way, the aircraft you can see in the commercial is the F-14A Tomcat modex “212” belonging to VF-2 “Bounty Hunters”, a squadron assigned to CVW-2 deployed to sea (WestPac and Indian Ocean) aboard USS Ranger (CV-61) between Sep.10, 1980 and May 5, 1981. The aircraft sports the striking high-visibility camouflage/color scheme and markings that were used on Navy’s combat aircraft in that period before they were replaced by the overall grey low-viz patterns.

The airbase appears to be NAS Miramar (now MCAS Miramar).

Noteworthy, the commercial focused on the pilot alone, forgetting the other Tomcat’s crewmember: the RIO (Radar Intercept Officer).

About David Cenciotti
David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.