The suggestion that the Navy establish an advanced fighter pilot school and create a cadre of experienced professionals to conduct the training. Decades later, the program would be relocated. There are nine fighter jets involved in each class from a combination of Marine Corps and U. Navy planes:. Like in the movie Top Gun , this course is for experienced fighter pilots, not those who are still learning the craft and science of basic flight operations.
TOPGUN classes cover every area of fighter jet deployment including air-to-air operations, air-to-ground, and instructor-versus-student air combat drills. The schoolwork includes 80 hours of lecture and 25 flying missions. This training can have as many as 50 jets in the air in any one scenario. The school also trains a special type of air traffic controller that guides fighter pilots in combat.
And as he expresses in the video they are all the same things as I remember him during our training, so many years ago. Ironically, only a few months after the below photograph was taken, I nearly shot down Bart over North Vietnam, in a potential friendly fire incident.
My section was given a "cleared to fire" by our "Red Crown" controllers on two MiGs we had been chasing. With that confirmation, I was eagerly set to fire an AIM-7 "Sparrow" missile head-on at the rapidly approaching, targeted Bandit. I only hesitated, so as to close the range and "sweeten the shot" to ensure a greater probability of a 'kill'.
A moment later Bart in his smoking F-4 - my previously "cleared-to fire-upon, 'enemy' target" - blasted by my port side at kts! While on a separate radio frequency and without our knowledge of his position, Bart also had been vectored onto the same MiG's that were initially between us - the ones we were given clearance to fire upon.
We learned later that the two MiGs had slipped away undetected, out low to the south, leaving Bart and I unknowingly flying fast toward each other with our missiles armed and ready, and with us given a clearance to fire on our locked-up target! In our flight debrief, Bart casually brushed the near catastrophe off. But to this day, I still shudder at how close I came to firing on my friend.
It is a deep loss for me, and especially for his family. May he rest in peace. Throw a nickel on the grass. Note: These are a couple my personal recommendations and are not paid promotions. Robert Wilcox' seminal, authoritative, and enjoyable account of the extraordinary and hard-charging junior officers who, against the odds and in short order, established the "Real TOPGUN school.
Available at Amazon. But even then it was known as Topgun, a name borrowed from an annual air weapons competition in the s. The first class of eight — four pilots and four backseaters, known as RIOs, radar intercept officers — convened on March 3, But that first group went back to their squadrons with a new knowledge about tactics and missile systems, and they taught the other pilots, and enthusiasm for the training spread.
Before too long, there was a waiting list to get in. Back at Miramar, the instructors worked their contacts to find out the name of the pilot. He was Jerry Beaulier. What began in that trailer at Miramar was changing the way flying was taught and it was influencing how airplanes and weapon systems were designed. Yet almost no one outside of the military had ever heard of Topgun.
Then, in , California magazine published an article by journalist Ehud Yonay about the program. Hollywood producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson read it and decided to make a movie. It starred Cruise as Lt. It won an Academy Award for best original song. San Diego starred in the movie, too.
Crews spent months filming in and around San Diego. They used the Coast Guard houses at the end of Point Loma for the scene where Maverick learns how his father, also a military pilot, died. They used a locker room at the Plunge in Mission Bay for a scene where Maverick and Iceman square off. All of it cast the region in the kind of golden glow that only the Big Screen can provide, which only intensified as the film became a pop-culture juggernaut — record-setting home video sales, a multi-platinum soundtrack, increased demand for bomber jackets and Ray-Bans.
The movie, the school that inspired it and San Diego became intertwined. Even now, 33 years after its release, the film resonates here. The Navy benefited, too, and not just because it had some control over what wound up in the script. A proposed carrier crash, for example, was scrubbed. The film was dedicated to him. Some remain irritated by the glory-seeking cockiness of the Cruise character, who in their minds crossed the line that separates ego from arrogance.
Cruise will reprise his role, this time as a flight instructor. One of his students will be the son of Goose, the RIO killed in the first movie.
One of them, Darrell Gary, still flies. Gary spent 11 years in the Navy, studying Soviet tactics so he could kill enemy pilots who had learned how to fly in Yaks. Now he owns one. In an exhilarating way, it reminds them of why they got into flying in the first place.
By Olivia B. You May Also Like. Already a print subscriber? Go here to link your subscription. Need help? Visit our Help Center. Go here to connect your wallet.
0コメント