Well I liked the F14, but that never changed the fact that when it came to an up close knife fight, the F15 would usually come out on top. My preferences couldn't change that.
On the other hand an element of F14s and an element of F15s out over the ocean searching for each other out of range from GCI or AWACS, and now it's a different ball game. In a real life combat situation the F15s would die of Phoenix venom before they got close enough to paint the Tomcats on their radar screens.
Different planes for different fights.
Let me dispel a myth or two from a bit more modern era. Contrary to what Tomcat guys claim, the AIM-54 was not the end all be all missile. It was designed to kill large, mostly unaware bomber aircraft from great distances. It was used in combat by the US only twice, both in 1999, all missiles fired missing. The Iranians had a bit more success, claiming 70+ AIM-54 kills against... Iraqi's. Use Operation Desert Storm Iraqi Air Force statistics as a measuring tape to their training proficiency.
What the F-14s radar, the AWG-9, was designed to do was launch AIM-54s out of a radar mode known as TWS (Track While Scan pronounced TWiS). TWS allowed targeting of multiple aircraft by one (aircraft) or Tomcat. In the early 90s, when I first started fighting them it was call Track While Lie. Other TWS equipped fighters radar would tell (indicate to) the pilot when it had low confidence something was actually being tracked. Not the Tomcat. TWS also fooled most Radar Warning Receivers (RWR) on fighters until the advent of the ALR-56C on the F-15C model. I spoke with my Kadena buddies about fighting it in large force exercises (LFEs). The consensus was not good. They routinely called kills and no one was near where they thought their opponent was (hence the Track While Lie reputation). Also of note is their radar was High Pulse Repetition Frequency (HPRF) only. HPRF only sees things closing towards it, and in the case of the AWG-9, did not do well over land either. Targets maneuvering near the beam or less aspect it REALLY had a tough time. The F-15 & F-18 have radars that are both HPRF and Medium PRF (MPRF) and use it in an interleaved manner. The F-16 is MPRF only. MPRF handles aircraft maneuvering VERY well, especially compared to HPRF only.
I have fought them in much smaller scale fights, and the results where decidedly lopsided. In one of my squadrons we were not allowed to do check rides with them as the adversary. I have fought them in BFM, with both the original and GE motors. The GE powered version could be work in a slow speed fight, but not insurmountable. The original engines were way too small for that airframe. Wings pop out at a certain speed, it's limited to 7Gs, it has two people in it, it's huge, and it's over hyped. Look at it's thrust to weight, and compare that to any radar equipped fighter that came out of the US or Russia starting in 1974 (F15, F16, F18, MiG-29, Su-27) and note that none of them, or anything made since, have wings that swing or HPRF only. It was technologically advanced for late 60's, early 70's. After about 1974, not so much.
And the classified summary of its short comings was long as well.
However, it did do some good work once they hung bombs on them.
As was written earlier, the stories are large and written at a time when no one countered them (because we didn't want anyone to really know how bad it was). Get a group of non Tomcat fighter pilots together, and ask them which fighter was the least threatening, and the answer will be the F-14.
Cheers,
Biff