And yet, I know that some of the top Navy and Air Force pilots took up their respective steeds in a verboten 2v2 in 1978 and the Eagles were both gunned in about 90 seconds with one at about 14,000 feet, the other nearly 34,000 feet. The A-model Tomcat at 54,000 pounds just about consumes the MiG-21bis and MiG-23’s envelopes in terms of both Ps and Max Rate at about 4 times the weight, and, on top of that, the envelope you’re showing (A-model) is based on a 565 sqft model, never taking into account lift generated by the pancake. That’s pretty impressive to me. Twin 2v1 setups by Eagles against a single A-model Tomcat yielded 4 gun kills in the F-14’s favor, because the Tomcat driver forced the fight slow, dropped flaps, and curled well inside the Eagles every time - when asked his opinion of how “difficult” the F-15 was for him to fight in the F-14A, he simply points to a picture of his pipper on an Eagle driver’s helmet, the shot taken from the 2v2 all those years ago (too easy!). The B, when introduced, proved itself a bear to deal with for F-15’s and even challenging for F-16’s. Early fights against the F-14B with F-16’s showed the Vipers trying to perform a one-circle rate turn against the Tomcat like they could do the A. Didn’t work out as well with the GE engines, one Viper driver quipping after a fight “Do have any idea how BIG your intakes look when you’re gunning us?” (He had tried to escape vertical when the Tomcat started gaining on him in the one-circle, only to have the Big Motored Turkey follow him and call guns as he bled speed). Try to take the fight slow, the Viper gets out alpha’d by the Tomcat, which has no limiters and can (and has) outpitch the F-16, especially in a slow speed scissors (got historic examples of this, too for both A and B, from both sides of the fight). Unsurprisingly, during 99, the eldest A-model F-14’s managed to better MiG-29G’s at visual range, to include valid gun kills.
I bring these things up not because I’m trying to hate on the Eagle or Viper or Hornet or whatever - I love all those jets and they continue to serve in our front line, receive new systems, etc. to keep them some of the deadliest fighters out there, and just as I know examples of them being soundly defeated by Tomcat crews, I know of as many opposite instances as well. I bring it up because based on the charts, these things can’t happen, and yet they did quite commonly. I’ve seen an A model F-14 enter and sustain an 18 deg/sec turn - it can’t do that, but it is doing it right now. Factors? About 330KIAS, clean pancake assisting lift, and maneuver flaps adjusting wing camber. The F-14 handled very differently depending on how it was configured, with Phoenix pylons or without (565 sqft lift vs 1008 sqft max possible lift), full flap augmentation at slow speed (never reflected in charts), split thrust and harsh rudder inputs to increase yaw rate/slice, etc. and above all else, the pilot and RIO were factors on how the F-14 handled. I am quite content in saying that every Tomcat driver and RIO I’ve ever spoken to would staunchly disagree with your assessment of even the under-powered A model as being a “poor dogfighter.” I hope that this historic example provides some different insight to math on a chart; what DID happen, versus the theoretical outcome (and, yes, I am quite familiar with the charts for the Turkey).