Probably best-known for its starring role in the Hollywood movie Top Gun, the variable geometry two-seat carrier-based Grumman F-14 Tomcat was the US Navy's primary maritime air superiority fighter and fleet defence interceptor between 1974 and 2006. Tony Holmes reviews the design, construction and use of the Tomcat, as well as its combat career in Operation Desert Storm (1991), Deliberate Force (Bosnia-Hertzegovina, 1995), and Allied Force (Bosnia and Kosovo, 1999). In 2001, F-14s led some of the first strikes into Afghanistan (Operation Enduring Freedom), and in Iraq in 2003 (Operation Iraqi Freedom)

Tony Holmes has worked as Osprey Publishing's aerospace editor since 1989, having previously served as an author/photographer for this publishing house in Australasia.  He is widely acknowledged as a leading expert on all periods of aviation history although his personal love is for the Battle of Britain, on which he has written a number of well received titles.  For this book, he has contributed on his favorite subject - the legendary duels between Spitfires and Messerschmitts over southern England in summer 1940.