"Homafars" (the NCO Corps of the Imperial Iranian Armed Services ["IIAS" -
this included the IIAF, IIAA, and the IINA]) were - in relation - the best
paid and most priviledged personnel of the army, air force, and navy at the
time.

It's interesting that the only part of the military that joined the riots
against the Shah were - nevertheless - some of the Homafars stationed in the
Tehran area and quite a few young cadets from the IIAF Academy, which were
in the middle of their pilot-training courses, and planned later to fly
F-16s.

There were lots of claims about the lack of trained personnel in the IIAS at
the time, and some of these might also be truth as much as understandable -
especially given the fact that only the IIAF grew from 30.000 personnel in
1970 to 100.000 in 1978. However, the people chosen for the Project "Persian
King" (as the sale of F-14s to Iran was named), were the best they had;
all - including the technical personnel - were trained in the USA, and most
had at least one additional tour with the USAF, USN, IDF/AF, Luftwaffe, RAF
etc., etc. or at least the PAF. Nobody there had any kind of problems
qualifying on Tomcats.

The only problems were caused by the fact that the Pentagon was requesting
all the maintenance on sensitive pieces of the avionics to be done in the
USA - so the Iranians were not trained to do specific works. Given that for
this reason a considerable part of the supplied avionics packages was
permanently underway somewhere between Khatami AB and Calverton, the result
was that quite a part of the Iranian Tomcats were grounded already before
the revolution. The other part was grounded for purpose: they intentionaly
have purchased more than their units could need, so to have a solid
attrition reserve for the years to come (the IIAF standard was 16 planes per
squadron, plust two attrition reserves: they bought 80 F-14As for four
units). But, they needed not much time to learn about these jobs either.
Besides, the USN, just for example, would completely stop their
"consultation-activities" for the Iranian F-14-project only in 1983...

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585