June 2022:
THE CALL BACK TO TOP GUN…
That was our introduction to Top Gun, the classic Tom Cruise film of 1986, which would go on to gross over $356 MILLION, making it the 11th highest grossing movie of Tom Cruise’s career. Top Gun: Maverick is already his highest grossing film ever domestically, but is close to becoming his biggest blockbuster worldwide as well. Making $791 million globally in 2018, Mission: Impossible – Fallout currently stands as his highest film blockbuster of all time. Top Gun focused on the elite Navy pilot, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, with a father who preceded him at “Top Gun School“ but died mysteriously during Vietnam. And his Commander at Top Gun (Tom Skerritt) flew with his father. Maverick would battle that demon legacy along with his own shortcomings while training at the elite school for Navy Pilots. Maverick, who was the pilot, often called the “stick” in a flight crew, along with his co-pilot, also called the “Backseater”, Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw would embark on the journey together. Bradshaw was played by Anthony Edwards in the film, Maverick and Goose are chosen for the Navy Fighter Weapons School after a dogfight stunt on Maverick’s part while engaging with the enemy is made legendary for its gall and flight maneuvers. Maverick goes up against his popular reputation prior to even attending, he arrives with high expectations of him and as a result the pressure follows, he also goes up against his fellow recruits for the right to call himself “Top Gun” at the school’s end. His competition includes Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky, played by Val Kilmer. Iceman believes Maverick’s ego to be his downfall and that it will one day get him, or someone else killed. But he also believes himself to be a better pilot than Maverick, and therefore the real winner of “Top Gun” rights come the training completion. Iceman will prove to be half right about Maverick in a way, resulting in what is considered one of the worst film deaths in history from a viewer point of view. He will prove to be right about being “Top Gun” but not because he’s better than Maverick, it will instead be at the expense of Maverick’s grief. The relationship between Maverick and Iceman in the first film will be a heavy contributing factor in the finally here sequel. It will show you where they evolved too after that last scene, we saw them in in 1986 as well as where they are 36 years later.
IT TOOK LONG ENOUGH…
Of course, it would be more than 3 decades before Tom Cruise returned to play Maverick. It almost seems unreal that a sequel was actually and finally made. After that long waiting for a sequel, viewers assumed it was never going to happen. They assumed Top Gun would be one of those films that was so good it should have had a sequel. But before that day finally came, and in the decades that followed before Top Gun: Maverick hit theaters, the original film would inspire a generation of men to want to join the Navy as a fighter pilot and it would inspire them to take a shot at getting into the elite internationally known Navy Fighter Weapons School. Where just getting in would be the biggest break in their flight career. The film would bring fame and glamour to an established school that had been around long before the film, but had a rough coming up before ever reaching celebrity elite status among movie goers. A school that began in the failings of Vietnam, but it would be learning from those failings that the school thrived on. It would be the premiere school for pilots to learn top tier dogfighting and air battle tactics. And it would require you to be the best of your squadron before even considering an interview. And with the new sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, there is a renewed interest in the school and career. There is a whole new generation of men AND, now women, who are now allowed entry into the program, who are being inspired from the sequel and Maverick’s return to Top Gun!
INSPIRED SCHOOLING…
While the film was partly inspired by an article written by Ehud Yonay titled “Top Guns“ and was published in California Magazine in May 1983. But the actual school, its pilots and the history of its founding are the real inspiration for the film. The article brought the school to everyone’s attention by describing what it is like to be a pilot in the elite school. The article focused on two F-14 crew pilots in the program. A crew team includes a stick man or what we know as a pilot, and a backseater co-pilot. The article focused on Alex Hnarakis, call sign Yogi, and backseater, named Dave Cully, call sign, Possum. They are called an F-14 crew for the style of fighter jet they pilot. And an F-14 Tomcat was in 1983, the U.S. Navy’s Supreme air war machine, which kind of looked like something George Lucas had designed. The Top Gun Pilots of today are flying in F-18 Super Hornets. The school would be brought to our attention as film viewers through Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, who decided in 1983 that they wanted to expand on that story and approached Paramount Pictures, for who they had produced the films Flashdance and Beverly Hills Cop for that same year, they arrived with the idea for a film about a group of Navy Pilots who attend an elite program of air flight training. And they would center the story around two young pilots accepted into that program. They wouldn’t be called Yogi and Possum, however. They would be called Maverick and Goose, of course. I am going to look at the history of the Vietnam War era founded school and that program, and its rise in popularity after the original Top Gun was released. The beginning was never as glamorous as the film in 1986 or its sequel in 2022. Let’s ‘yank and bank’ into this dogfight!
You can read Top Guns By Ehud Yonay by clicking on the picture of the article below:
THE FRAMEWORK FOR AN ELITE PILOT…
The United States Navy Fighter Weapons School was in preparation to be established at Naval Air Station Miramar in 1968 to try to reconcile the US losses in the war that was Vietnam. The base was chosen for its large space and location measuring at 24,000 acres and wedged inside a fork of I-95 and I-805, which cross diagonally when your north of San Diego and fifteen miles down from the base. It was also chosen because it was the home base of all fighter squadrons assigned to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Where the US maintains a battle ready group in the Indian Ocean and Pacific. It is the job of every fighter squadron in the US pacific Fleet to be sling shot off a flight deck in a fighter jet and turn and burn through the skies against an often outnumbered enemy and keep them at bay from the floating fleet. The school garnered its “Top Gun” nickname from the pilots who attended it, and the recognition awarded to the best pilot at trainings end, the focus of the school in the time of Vietnam was to teach dog fighting skills in a war that included missiles and technology and a generation of recruits that relied on it. The hope was that their efforts would turn the war in favor of the United States.
WINGS OF THE BEST…
Only the best of young pilots in a squadron ever gets accepted into the program, and if you pass the school and look sharp doing it, you may even be asked to return as an instructor for the school. Which is considered the highest honor a fighter pilot can get outside of wartime recognition. You have five weeks to prove your worth at the school and earn the top honors by the training end, and the honor is the right to call yourself, “Top Gun”. Since the school was founded Top Gun School pilots have revolutionized the art of air battle and have become the elite masters to the fate of the skies. They are elite pilots in the game of deadly air-to-air combat. They have mastered 6.5 G’s while dogfighting, even though it is six and a half times the force of gravity. They can tell you why light as a feather, is not how you feel going at that G-Force. You feel thousands of pounds heavier than your registered weight at that gravity force amount. They also know when to pull back before blacking out due to the force at flying that fast and that high before they are rotating around flying while being blacked out.
AN IDEA BORN FROM FAILURE…
Vietnam began as the campaign Operation Rolling Thunder on March 2, 1965, and the campaign ended on November 2, 1968, and was part of the US effort in the war to fight the Communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). The US was fighting in support of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam) in their effort to stop a North Vietnamese invasion as part of the bigger issue, the ongoing Cold War. The campaign began with the United States Air Force bombing the area to stop the North military capabilities, but the underestimated North Vietnamese air defense and outnumbered ground troops proved a force to be reckoned with. They were also aided in their fight with support from the Soviet Union and China allowing them to build an impressive ground-to-air missile and anti-aircraft gun defense system. It also, provided small numbers of jet fighters who could cover the skies. It worked out better than the US anticipated and as a result the Navy and US Air Force mounted air-to-air combat losses.
The problem with the US was not in the fighting per say, but in how the US believed they were properly trained to fight this war. Their enemy was ahead of the curve with training and technology. The US had always focused on the interception of possible Soviet pilots who were nuclear bombers, who would drop and go and not pilots who were trained to use the technology of their planes to fight the actual war and guard the skies the entire time. In the US, dogfighting tactics, which is pilot talk for a fight engaged between pilots in the air, had not been taught as a way of combat training. The technology of missiles was also changing with a new generation of air-to-air missiles being developed. So, they were often ill equipped to handle the missiles they were working with. It rendered the fitted machine guns and cannons on frontline aircrafts obsolete. This brand of weaponry would prove highly effective when tested by the US.
The US had another problem, and it was with the climate in Vietnam. They had not anticipated the humidity of North Vietnam under combat conditions, and it would mortally wound the US effort in Vietnam. It would become a contributing factor in failures associated the US effort in the war. Even dependable heat seeking missiles suffered under the strain of the humidity of North Vietnam. Half the missiles failed at launch and out of the ones that succeeded in launching, a quarter of them missed their targets. Fighter pilots were unable to bring down the enemy frustratingly without the option of guns to rely on. It it poured rain, frequently and often, making it difficult to move large weapons and vehicles through the jungle. It meant they would often get left behind or stuck in transit. This added to the death rate on the side of the United States, without being properly prepared to fight and less protected to defend themselves.
THE GENESIS OF TOP GUN…
The United States Air Force settled on thinking better missiles were the solution to their problem, while the United States Navy took another path to solving the problem. A more educated long term solution to the problem of modern war, and not just the failings of Vietnam. A classified study was ordered and conducted looking at the air-to-air combat capabilities and failures of Vietnam, while looking for a solution to the problematic failures that lead to great loss of life. The study was led by US Naval officer Captain Frank Ault in 1968, and would ultimately lead to the creation of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, or Top Gun School in 1969. Ault’s completed study was submitted on January 1, 1969. It would go on to be referred to as “The Ault Report” and would give combat pilots a voice. Along with recommending that the prepared establishment of the elite school for Navy pilots at Naval Air Station Miramar open and accept its first recruits into the program. Ault’s team also suggested technological and organizational recommendations that would be more suitable for the pilots and make them the most elite there is in the sky. In the recommendation for the flight school, Ault and his team felt the program should be more than just a training school, it would be an academy, like that of West Point in Maryland. It also included the recommendation that instructors of the school taught new flight doctrine and aerial tactics. Having a Flight Academy would also allow the pilots to have a unique shared experience among their squadrons.
Ault and his team also felt that in order to train these pilots to be the elite class of the Navy, it would require the instructors of the school to be personnel with high quality experience. But, before the recruits were accepted into the program and received a class lecture, they would first have to pass the questions asked without any mercy, by a board of instructors. Recruits were to be vetted from a board with the experience in operational Squadron units within the Navy already. The pilots would be chosen for their experience because that knowledge and exposure would also be used as training in the courses they would be attending. They would create a critical schooling of each other throughout the program. Not to ridicule, and not to make them better pilots, to make them the best pilots. They would have to face their worst and best day critically every day to fly their best always.
FRESHMAN BLUES…
The programs first ever Commander at Naval Air Station (N.A.S.) in Miramar, California was Lieutenant Commander Dan Pedersen, and being he was the first to command the Fighter Weapons School, he was given nothing more than a small staff of Navy Personnel to get off the ground with. Pun intended. With little to no support as a result, Pedersen and his small staff were responsible for creating the Naval Fighter Weapons School school and syllabus, that would be the school plan followed by every recruit to the elite school for decades to come. The small team searched for everything from a trailer for classes and offices, to an abandoned hangar that would be used as a practical flight learning. Unlike the film Top Gun in 1986, there was no glitz or pizzazz for the incoming freshman class in 1969 when the doors officially opened to its first recruits. And they didn’t get that classy graduation treatment we saw at the end of the original film in 1986.
A GROWING VICTORY…
The classes that the recruits would be subjected to combined classroom learning and practical lessons based on the analysis of their own experiences in combat and training prior to being accepted to the school. The technology and jets would advance over the years, moving from the pilots being trained on The Holloman AFB F-4 Phantom II flown during Vietnam, and then expanding quickly into training the pilot crews for the Vought F-8 Crusader in the 1970’s to eventually the newest of jets, the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and the Boeing F/A-18E and F/A-18F Super Hornet, to name a few from the early 1980’s into today. When training with the pilots, instructors simulate MiG-17’s and bogeys, by flying smaller, lighter more aggressive aircrafts to mimic the flying of the North Vietnamese or Soviets. the American Douglas A-4E Skyhawk“Mongoose” served as the “aggressor” aircraft, standing in for North Vietnamese Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 when training began at the school. Some instructors even favored the Grumman A-6 Intruders, as well as the LTV A-7 Corsair II and USAF Convair F-106 Delta Dart to simulate the skills of the enemy in dogfighting and really prove that being an instructor is more about how you teach them from experience to fly and not what they learn from lecturing them sitting for a classroom experience.
The recruits studied everything from enemy doctrine and fighting equipment methods, while practicing interceptions with other fighters in a range of possible dogfighting scenarios. Gunnery skills were included in the training along with fighter-to-fighter combat training. The crew of potential pilots would end up expanding to a pool of US Marine Corps units to be included with the Navy units in the selection process. There was a “pass it on” theory to the learning with the hope that when the recruits returned to their stationed units, students would share their new knowledge and skills with their fellow pilots, using lectures and instruction to spread the word among the squadron.
SKY HIGH PAYOFF…
It would be a long while before the US saw any kind of improvement in the effort of Vietnam. It did payoff when it came. From 1972 to 1973, the US saw its best results of the progress the school brought. Even after the US occupation in Vietnam ended, the school succeeded. But the big payoff would come decades after Vietnam when the school came to attention of the public and it found fame and glamour with the theatrical release of the 1986 Blockbuster Hit starring Tom Cruise. It came on the tail end of the Cold War ending and the uncertainty that followed. Recruitment was down with no major war occurring and the future of the school was in question.
TOPGUN OF NOW…
Battling the unknown, the school went through a name change and was retitled the Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor Program. They thought it would possibly bring more recruits into the program and modernize it for the new generation. They also added a course on air-to-ground tactics training to bring the school current in its effort to be elite. The school is now in 2022, part of the Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Centre, and stays on the edge of elite pilots by operating on Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II’s in training. TOP GUN training has been located at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada since moving in 1996.
WHEN REALITY MEETS REEL LIFE…
The school never thought when it was founded in 1969, when they were focusing on training crews to fight in air combat tactics, that it would trickle down the ranks in knowledge and application through squadron training. They didn’t think that while trying to change the dismal outcome in Vietnam, the recruits turned graduates of their pilot program would go on to become world renowned in aerial excellence and the school and its training program would become an elite incubator home of some of the world’s best fighter pilots and administrators.
WHEN YOUR THE BEST THERE IS…
Top Gun: Maverick is in theaters now and has blown past all expectations for the sequel, soaring past all others to $422.2 million at the box office domestically. It is now the highest-grossing movie of the year in the US as well as Cruise’s highest-grossing movie ever. It is also only the second movie in pandemic times to cross over the $400 million mark in the states, Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first. It is likely to cross the billion mark later this month, having taken in globally so far $806.4 million. Ticket sales have remained strong since its release on May 27, 2022, and some viewers have even reported going back to see it more than once. Industry analysts believe the film could even surpass the coveted billon mark past the $900 million its anticipated to take in by the end of its theatrical run.
Don’t miss out and get to the theaters before Maverick flies out of it!
