Established on the 14th of October 1972 at NAS Miramar, at the same time as VF-2, the squadron received it's first F-14As on 1st July 1973. Squadron markings take the form of a stylised wolf's head, either red (for the CAG and boss bird) or low vis grey. The squadron made the first Tomcat cruise on USS Enterprise (CVN-65) from September 1974. The end of this cruise saw the Tomcat's conflict debut, as VF-1 and VF-2 flew air patrols over Saigon in April 1975 to cover the final evacuation of US personnel.
VF-1 then changed from CVW-14 to CVW-2, entailing a move of carrier to the USS Ranger (CV-61) in September 1980. The squadron flew several successful cruises then shifted to USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) for a single cruise in 1984. In 1984 VF-1 achieved the impressive total of 22,000 hours of flying without accident. By 1986 VF-1 had returned to Ranger and was still with the carrier when she participated in Desert Storm in 1991. A plane from the squadron scored the F-14's only air to air kill of the war when NE-103 (BuNo.162603) shot down an Iraqi Mil Mi-8 Hip using an AIM-9 Sidewinder.
With the decommissioning of Ranger in 1993 the squadron was left without a carrier assignment and so operated out of NAS Miramar. At one point the squadron was due to convert to the F-14D Super Tomcat, however, due to a lack of airframes and the Navy's decision to reduce the number of F-14 squadrons per carrier from two to one, VF-1 was disestablished on the 1st October 1993.
TOPGUN was made famous in popular culture by the 1986 release of the motion picture Top Gun.