Top Gun and Iron Eagle: The Movies that Made the F-14 and F-16 Fighters Famous

Hollywood has a tendency of releasing similar movies almost as if by design, and in fact, it is often because word gets around town that one studio might have a blockbuster in the works, and another decides to cash in. That explains why we've been "treated" to such double features – known as "twin films" in industry jargon – as Armageddon and Deep Impact, as well as Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down.

Typically the first film released receives a significant amount of buzz while the follow-up often is compared unfavorably. Yet, that's not always the case – as two similarly-themed films from 1986 remind us. Both were action films about hotshot pilots, with even hotter soundtracks.

Yes, we're talking about Top Gun, which went on to be the highest-grossing domestic film of 1986, and Iron Eagle, which still did respectable business upon its release, while its home video sales even justified a sequel. It is worth remembering too that neither film exactly blew away critics.

Top Gun was criticized for promoting American jingoism, so much so that stars Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer even attempted to downplay it as a believable war film. Cruise went so far as to suggest a sequel would only give a misleading view of war – and we should remember both men returned for the sequel. By contrast, Iron Eagle was just called out as a bad film – and it quickly spawned numerous sequels, but largely without lead Jason Gedrick, who went on to appear in Cruise's Oscar-nominated Born on the Fourth of July.

The F-14 Tomcat Became an Action Star in Top Gun

It has been argued – including this by this reporter – that Top Gun made the F-14 Tomcat a star with viewers, and no doubt solidified its reputation as a combat aircraft. The irony is that when the film came out in 1986, the Tomcat's only "U.S. kills" to date occurred during the Gulf of Sidra incident in August 1981, when two F-14s from the U.S. Navy's Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (VF-41) "Black Aces" operating from the USS Nimitz (CVN-68) shot down a pair of Libyan Su-22 (NATO reporting name Fitter) fighters.

The U.S. Navy swept wing fighter didn't get to bear its claws again until early January 1989 when two fighters from VF-32 "Flying Swordsman" downed two Libyan MiG-23 (NATO reporting name Flogger) fighters also over the Gulf of Sidra.

It should be noted that an Iranian F-14 had the distinction of being the first Tomcat to draw blood in the Iran-Iraq War. In 1980, an Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) F-14 shot down an Iraqi Mil Mi-25 helicopter, making its first air-to-kill kill. More importantly, the F-14 may have scored at least 50 air-to-air victories in just the first six months of the war – shooting down Iraqi MiG-21s, MiG-23s, and even a few Su-20s/22s.

The American public likely knew very little about the Tomcat's role in the Middle East, and arguably it wasn't something that the Department of Defense (DoD) or the U.S. Navy likely wanted to remind anyone about. But U.S. officials were likely happy with the aircraft's 1981 performance against the Libyans. Top Gun served to highlight the capabilities of the Tomcat by offering a fictionalized account of the incident in the Gulf of Sidra.

Yet, the F-14 already had its big screen debut in the 1980 film The Final Countdown, where the USS Nimitz is taken back in time to December 1941, arriving the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A pair of F-14s do get their moment in the spotlight shooting down two Imperial Japanese Navy Mitsubishi A6M "Zero" fighters. Viewers were no doubt ready for an even bigger showdown between the Tomcats and Zeroes, but the plot called for the carrier to return to the present day just as the Japanese launched their attack.

Audiences thus had to wait for Top Gun to truly see the F-14 Tomcat in action against modern aircraft, but most aviation buffs will agree it delivered.

Iron Eagle Also Made the F-16 a Star

Released in January 1986, Iron Eagle was a film that could have come and gone – yet, as noted, it was a minor hit for the year at the domestic box office, and a bigger hit in the fall when it arrived on home video. The plot is nonsensical in every sense of the word.

Yet, while Top Gun put the F-14 Tomcat in the spotlight, Iron Eagle highlighted the capabilities of the F-16 Fighting Falcon.

It involves Doug Masters (Gedrick), the teenage son of an Air Force pilot held captive in a fictional Middle Eastern country and marked for death, pulling off a daring rescue. Set to a heavy metal soundtrack, Masters is aided by another veteran aviator (Lou Gossett Jr.) where they manage to "borrow" a pair of heavily armed F-16B jets, fly to the Middle East, evade enemy anti-aircraft, land the jets, rescue the father, engage in a dogfight and somehow make it back to Ramstein Air Base in West Germany. The good guys win, and more importantly, they lived and somehow no one goes to jail.

Saturday morning cartoons are more believable, yet the action sequences did highlight the capabilities of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Interestingly because the U.S. Air Force has a long-standing policy about not cooperating on any film involving the theft of an aircraft, the filmmakers turned to the Israeli Air Force – which provided both single-seat F-16As, two-seater F-16Bs, and F-21s fighters meant to represent the "Bilyan Air Force's" MiG-23s.

What is also noteworthy is that Iron Eagle saw the F-16 score an aerial kill more than six years before an actual U.S. Fighting Falcon would do the same. It was only on December 27, 1992, that a U.S. Air Force F-16D shot down an Iraqi MiG-26 over southern Iraq with an AIM-120 AMRAAM – the first kill since the Fighting Falcon was introduced, and the first AMRAAM kill.

Now, since all those 1980s action stars have teamed up in The Expendables film series, perhaps it is time for an Iron Eagle and Top Gun mash-up with the F-14 and F-16. Hollywood is calling for just such a film.

Author Experience and Expertise: Peter Suciu

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.

You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.