Chapter 114 – Master of the Skies
Only a fool would go down! Andre watched the altitude of the radar contact rising and knew he'd successfully baited the American pilot into higher airspace.
The Tomcat's operational ceiling was only around 18,000 meters. Even if it had climbed to 20,000, its performance would already be heavily degraded. Any sensible American pilot should've disengaged and turned back—but this one hadn't. He was coming up to fight.
Good. Two R-40 missiles were armed and ready.
Andre lowered the MiG-25's nose and leveled out at 20,000 meters. He couldn't afford to go higher. Breathing the chilled, filtered air from his helmet, his thoughts were sharp. He throttled back the afterburner to conserve fuel and held course toward the approaching Tomcat.
The American jet's climb rate wasn't impressive—typical of fighters from this era. As the sleek silver shape finally entered visual range, the distance between them closed to just three kilometers.
William, meanwhile, had finally entered his missile's engagement envelope. But it was too late. Andre was already slipping past his position. The F-14's afterburning TF30 engines had been pushed hard for over a minute. Fuel was vanishing rapidly, and William was running out of time.
Missiles of this generation weren't capable of reliable front-hemisphere targeting. If he wanted a kill, he'd have to pass Andre, turn hard, and fire from the rear.
It would be his only shot.
Confident in the Tomcat's tight-turning horizontal performance, William snapped the stick over. The wings reconfigured automatically to their minimum sweep. His turning radius shrank. He was sure he could beat the Soviet in a race for position.
In the back seat, the radar officer craned his neck over his shoulder, trying to spot the MiG visually. In close combat, his role was to be the pilot's second pair of eyes. But the high-backed ejection seat blocked most of his rearward view.
He never saw it.
Instead of turning flat, Andre had pulled into a vertical loop.
The MiG-25's horizontal agility was no match for the Tomcat—but Andre didn't need to win that way. His advantage was in altitude and thrust. He pulled into a steep vertical arc, afterburners lit, and climbed high over the American jet.
Moments later, he completed the loop and dove down.
From this altitude, Andre could clearly see the Tomcat floundering below, rocking side to side as it searched for its elusive target.
Yankees. Don't you know the master is above?
Andre eased forward on the stick. The MiG-25 dropped into a controlled dive, accelerating. From a distance, the American Tomcat was drawing a tight horizontal circle. The MiG-25 traced a broad, high-speed vertical arc. The Tomcat's turn radius might've been smaller—but from the results, Andre was the one now firmly behind.
"God, he came down from above!" the radar operator in the F-14's back seat shouted. He looked up and spotted the gleaming Soviet jet descending rapidly, its red star glinting in the sun.
William glanced up—and swore. The MiG was descending fast and closing in from above. He'd been outmaneuvered.
Now there was only one way to survive: drag the fight to low altitude.
He slammed the stick forward. The Tomcat nosed over and dove hard, engines roaring. Speed built rapidly as the aircraft converted altitude into kinetic energy. He was pushing the airframe past its design limits, diving at speeds over Mach 2.5.
The altimeter spun rapidly. Mach readings climbed. The G-forces pressed the pilots deep into their seats. Still, William twisted and rolled the Tomcat, trying to break Andre's lock, shedding infrared decoys in case of a missile launch.
But Andre held fire.
From the MiG-25's cockpit, Andre frowned. What was this guy doing? Pulling off maneuvers like this was madness. It felt more like a test flight than combat. Was the pilot trying to bait him into a low-altitude fight?
Still no clean missile lock. The Tomcat was jinking constantly, and its decoys clouded the air.
But Andre knew one thing: the Tomcat was running out of options.
If William kept this up, he wouldn't need a missile to finish him. The Tomcat would destroy itself—because Andre knew what powered it: the TF30 engine.
The TF30 was a twin-spool axial-flow turbofan from Pratt & Whitney, developed in the 1950s. It had been selected for the Navy's A-7 and, later, retrofitted for the F-14A.
But it was never meant for aggressive dogfighting.
With a military thrust of just 5,600 kg and an afterburner thrust of 9,480 kg, the TF30 gave the Tomcat a mediocre thrust-to-weight ratio of just 0.7. The F-14 could fly—and fight—but it wasn't nimble under stress.
Worse still, the TF30 had a fatal flaw: a razor-thin compressor stall margin.
To improve fuel efficiency and performance, engineers had made the compressor stages extremely sensitive. Too sensitive. High angle-of-attack maneuvers or uneven airflow could cause surges, compressor stalls—or complete flameouts.
And that was exactly what William was risking now.