The legendary Tomcat had quite a career with the U.S. Navy. Stories of the plane and its crews will live on for years to come, and one interesting tale is that time an F-14 intercepted a Concorde.
The story from CDR David “Hey Joe” Parsons, an F-14A RIO on the mission with VF-32 (Fighting Swordsmen), was outlined in Tom Cooper’s book “In the Claws of the Tomcat, US Navy F-14 Tomcats in Air Combat against Iran and Iraq, 1987-2000.”
A tense theatre
In the late 1980s the Iran-Iraq war was in full swing. The U.S. was in the middle trying to protect the flow of commerce in the Persian Gulf, where half the world’s trade in oil was shipped. Each side wanted to take out the other’s tankers, because oil was a primary revenue source.
Neither side was happy that America was getting in the way either, trying to protect the oil we too depended on.
On May 19, 1987, a crew from Iraq conducted an aerial attack on the frigate USS Stark (FFG-31). They killed 37 sailors, and injured another 21. The ship was operating in a war-free zone of the Persian Gulf. The Iraqis claimed they thought it was an Iranian oil tanker.
The Iraqis used a business jet for the attack
Initially it was believed that the Iraqis attacked with a Mirage F1 fighter jet. What they actually used was a Dassault Falcon 50, a business jet. Code-named “Suzanna”, the aircraft was modified and equipped with the weapons system of the Mirage F.1EQ-5.
From that point on, U.S. Navy ships in the gulf were closely watched over with air cover by F-14s. Any and all potential threats were aggressively intercepted.
While Washington was worried about fighter jets, the Office of Naval Intelligence was more worried about Suzanna. Or others like it. Not only was the Persian Gulf on high alert, but so was the Red Sea.
Concorde, meet the F-14
The Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988, but the Gulf War was beginning. It started with Operation Desert Shield on 2 August 1990, leading to the buildup of troops and defense of Saudi Arabia.
That same month, a pair of VF-32 Tomcats were returning from a training sortie in Saudi Arabia. They received a call from a cruiser in the north Red Sea about a potential threat approaching at high-speed from the north.
“We were well to the northeast of the ships and, from what I could tell, in the best position to execute an intercept,” recalled Parsons in the book. “I got an immediate lock on an extremely fast and high-flying aircraft. The TCS could not resolve the ID, but I had a 300mm camera lens in my bag and broke it out.”
Looking out of the starboard side, he locked onto the white contrail high above with his camera and zoomed in, like any good photographer. That’s when he confirmed what the aircraft was. It was a supersonic Concorde!
F-14 Intercepted a Concorde, But Why?
With the mystery solved, the Tomcats left the supersonic airliner to its flight. It will forever be a mystery why a Concorde thought it would be wise to fly over such a tense region of the world, where one war had just ended and another was brewing.
The Concorde crew were probably completely oblivious to what was occurring below them. They had no idea that F-14s from the U.S. Navy were watching them.
