The Navy was dissatisfied with the all purpose fighter F-111. The Navy said its performance was low and since the crew of 2 was side by side the pilot had limited visibility and had to have the radar operator to see enemy planes on his side of the aircraft. Grumman set hard a-foot to the project and came-up with a far superior aircraft. The swing-wing F-14 Tomcat is the Navy's first-line fighter aircraft. Similar to the Air Force's F-15 Eagle, the F-14 is designed for the carrier landings. It has a top speed over 2,400 km/h (or Mach 2.34) and a combat radius of 1,600 km. The first F-14 entered service in October 1972, and was soon well known and loved by its pilots. One of the best capabilities of this craft is the swing-wing design. At high speed the wings are swept back so that it can obtain higher speeds at lower cost of parasitic drag that a wide wing can produce. When the Tomcat requires lower speeds such as landing/taking off, and dogfighting, the wings are at full foreward-sweep. This allows for greater lift and slower turning speeds. A major drawback to the fist Tomcats was its F-111 built engines. Not designed for the sole-purpose of fighter aircraft, the Pratt & Whitney TF30-P-412A turbofans proved to be a drag for the flexability that was nessisary to the F-14's design. So in just a matter of months Grumman issued the new General Electric F110-GE-400 engine which out-preformed the TF30 by over 1,000 kg of raw thrust.
