The Tomcat, at least those with the big motors, were actually quite capable dog fighters. Get those wings out and the big flat airframe generated a lot of lift at slow speeds. I was fortunate to fly for a year and a half with a guy who was very good. This was the days prior to air-to-ground so all we did was air-to-air. In that year and half we fought hundreds of dogfights against every type of aircraft (F-15C, F-16C, F-16N, A-4F, F/A-18C/D, and others) and he lost only one engagement in that entire time. For reliability purposes we had a limitation on using the flaps during training dogfights, but if you did use them we could turn inside every other fighter once the speeds dropped after the first turn. It was impressive.
