Declassified dogfight footage: F-14 Tomcat vs. Libyan MiG-23

So this is like a real Top Gun scene.



Seems the Mig-23 pilots were over confident in their jets ability verse the Tomcat

Circa 1989

You can hear the angst in the the pilots voices.

You can tell that they didn't want to be that close to the migs. Yikes.
My girlfriend didn't understand why I laughed and shook my head while we watched top gun in the theater.
Good stuff op!

Thanks for sharing people can yabber about combat all the time
but this is as close to being there as most people can get
and its good for people to learn what its actually like.

good work by the F14 crews and it was good to hear the Libyans managed to eject
so hopefully the point was made and everyone got safely back to base that day.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

Thanks for sharing, that was intense. It reminds me a lot of how my buddy and I sound when we play our video game(s) together, there's a lot of coordination but much less consequence on our end lol.

What footage? The nose camera in the F14 is a gyro stabilized telescope and that footage halfway through the video is completely blurred so as to make it unviewable.

I remember this and it was reviewed extensively back then in lots of shows.

Heres some that footage (edit) jussst about :30 seconds in…

a reply to: Blue_Jay33
I know that the Flogger was a one man aircraft. Did either pilot survive survive? I don't really care,(yes I do, I'm not a monster) but thats a lot of plane to fly by one man and the Ruskies where not exactly known for thier avionics.

a reply to: Spader

at about 8.40ish in the video you can hear the pilots commenting on the chutes above the splashes. im not former military but from what id guess splash=the shot down migs hitting water and chute obviously would be parachute ,so id say they at least ejected

originally posted by: RalagaNarHallas
a reply to: SpaderThank you. I knew a Navy A-4 jock once that used to tell stories and from what I gathered "Splash" meant the shooting down of the enemy aircraft over water. Not if the opponent pilot survived or not. But I could be (and most likely) am completely wrong.

at about 8.40ish in the video you can hear the pilots commenting on the chutes above the splashes. im not former military but from what id guess splash=the shot down migs hitting water and chute obviously would be parachute ,so id say they at least ejected

I remember a similar incident in 1981. Tomcats from the Nimitz splashed two Migs. I was on patrol somewhere in the Atlantic and we got a flash message about it. Gave away our location that day. I'm sure they heard us half way around the world.

a reply to: Blue_Jay33

I`m sure this will be moved over to the aviation section, I was about to post this very encounter there after going through the new threads. Beat me to it though but that's ok.

That Mig variant was only armed with the Russian version of the AIM-9 Sidewinder(NATO name Atoll) infra-red guided missile(and 23mm cannon), so that's why you really heard the voice tone change when the bogies approached the 10 mile mark, that is approx the range for those type of missiles. The Tomcats would have been armed with the 20mm cannon of course and also AIM-9s and the AIM-7 "Great White Hope" That one is "good" out to about 25-30 miles but has a horrible kill ratio. Sounds like the lead Cat fired a pair of AIM-7s (Fox-1s) and then had to break right to avoid an incoming shot. You can hear the growling of a good IR tone for the Fox-2 (AIM-9) just at the 8 min mark before the second Mig bought the farm.

Splash= confirmed kill
Angels= altitude in 1000ft increments.
Good Chutes= Lybian pilots ejected.