The F-14 Tomcat may be a legendary fighter that got the Hollywood treatment in 1986’s “Top Gun,” but for a short time in the 1970s, the Navy considered tossing the Tomcat in favor of flying the F-15 from its aircraft carriers instead.

Today, the F-14 conjures images of a bygone era, when American airpower was predicated on fielding the fastest, most powerful, and highest-flying jets the nation’s technological capability and economic might could muster. This devotion to brute force and rapidly advancing aviation technology produced incredible platforms that aimed to beat enemy defenses not with stealth, but by straight-up outflying them. Jets like the B-1B Lancer combined the speed and variable-sweep wing design of a fighter with the ability to carry a massive 75,000-pound payload into the fight. Others, like the F-16 Fighting Falcon, emphasized low cost and high performance, becoming the most popular (and common) fighter platform on the globe.

This push for performance was mirrored by America’s Cold War opponent in the Soviet Union. As each nation fielded a more powerful, more capable, or more advanced platform or weapon system, the other would respond in kind, dumping funding into programs aimed at offsetting any potential advantages the other seemed to have. But even amid this era of large defense expenditures and the looming existential threat of nuclear war, budget–as much as capability–often dictated the makeup of America’s arsenal.

And it was just such a debate over dollars and cents that once threatened to put the F-14 on the chopping block, and led to a proposal to field a different kind of F-15 modified specifically for aircraft carrier duty. This new F-15N Sea Eagle aimed to be lighter, faster, more maneuverable, and cheaper than Tom Cruise’s Tomcat, but concerns about armament ultimately kept this jet from ever making it off the drawing board.

But what prompted the Pentagon to consider putting the F-15 on aircraft carriers in the first place? To understand that, you need to understand the failings of the otherwise venerable F-14. Most people are already aware of just how incredibly expensive it was to maintain, but issues with the Tomcat extended well beyond the Navy’s pocketbook.

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