Top Gun

50 Years of Naval Air Superiority

Dwight Jon Zimmerman

• Publisher: Motorbooks
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780760363546
• eBook ISBN: 9780760363553
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Fly with the best in Top Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority—the definitive, highly illustrated, in-depth look at the Navy's famous fighter unit, including its history, technology, and culture.

Top Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority begins with a fascinating behind-the-scenes account of the blockbuster film that helped America shake off the trauma of the Vietnam War and once again take pride in its military. The book then launches into the even more incredible story of why and how such men consistently capture the imagination of children, adults, pilots, and audiences around the world.

Chapters spotlight pivotal military movies and television shows that presaged the movie Top Gun, including edge-of-the-seat vignettes and anecdotes of pilots and their lifestyles, the origin of the Navy’s fighter pilot program and its rigorous training, and how it inspired the Air Force’s counterpart, Red Flag.

Other chapters highlight what it takes to be a pilot in other branches of the armed forces, and takes a look back in time at the most notorious (and feared) pilots of World War I and World War II from all around the globe. Fast forward to the jet age, when the first aces flew hair-raising missions over Korea and Vietnam, and learn how past and contemporary aerial dogfighting really works.

The book also reveals the many technological advances that transformed aerial combat from the dangerous, unsynchronized machine guns that bounced bullets off propellers in World War I to today, where air-to-air missiles are launched by pilots who have no visual contact with an adversary, and finally illustrates how drones are adding a new dimension to the meaning of Top Gun.

Finish with an in-depth look at Naval Station Fallon, one of the most modern and renowned American naval stations, located outside Fallon, Nevada. Top Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority concludes with a look at Top Gun 2, the highly anticipated sequel to one of the biggest action movies of all time and the one that made Tom Cruise a worldwide superstar. 

Featuring over 200 photos, new interviews and stories from aces, engineers, commanders, and more, and written by best-selling author and president of the Military Writers Society of America, Dwight Zimmerman, Top Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority is the must-have guide to the fastest, deadliest, most storied aerial combat squadron the world has ever known. 

1 “I FEEL THE NEED … THE NEED FOR SPEED,”

On May 16, 1986, in more than a thousand theaters across the country, American audiences flocked to see one of the year’s most hyped movies. Produced by Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Tony Scott, and distributed by Paramount Pictures, Top Gun was a movie full of supersonic sound and speed, starring one of Hollywood’s rising stars, the handsome and charismatic Tom Cruise, as well as the beautiful (but relatively unknown) Kelly McGillis. Would its preview’s claims of thrilling, action-packed aerial dogfights and push-it-to-the-limit-and-beyond relationships on the ground play out as promised? Or would Top Gun turn out to be a big-budget bomb like the previous year’s Cutthroat Island and Revolution? Advanced screenings had called for a major change in the original plot. And one nervous Paramount executive complained that there was “too much flying.” Earlier screenings in New York and Los Angeles had garnered mixed reviews from critics. Now it was up to the people who mattered most—the paying customers.

Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) gives a thumbs-up while in the cockpit of his F-18 Tomcat. Competition for the leading role in Top Gun included Sean Penn, Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Nicolas Cage, John Cusack, Matthew Broderick, Michael J. Fox, and Tom Hanks.

Before that first weekend was over, everyone involved with the film knew they had a major hit on their hands. Opening weekend sales totaled $8.2 million, more than half the movie’s $15 million budget. And that was just the start of Top Gun’s success. By the time the movie closed in theaters on December 11, 1986, it had grossed more than $179.8 million domestically, with another $177 million internationally, making it the highest grossing film of 1986. Top Gun was a blockbuster.

Its heart-pounding appeal began not with sight, but with sound. The movie opened with German composer Harold Faltermeyer’s score, beginning with a steady synthesizer drumbeat regularly punctuated by the haunting chime of a synth bell, evocative of a monk tolling a church bell to warn a town of trouble. As the white letters of the title, opening credits, and text appear and sequentially fade against the stark black background, the musical tension and urgency build. This dissolves into the silhouetted closeup imagery of flight deck operations in progress on a US Navy aircraft carrier.

An elaborate martial ballet commences as pilot and flight crew prepare an F-14 Tomcat, because of its size and power called the “King of Naval Aviation,” for takeoff. The musical score overlaps with the clamor of jet engines and dissonant vocal orders and instructions. Then, with a dramatic outthrust of his arm, a flight officer signals the launch. This triggers a powerful steam catapult. The raw, testosterone-powered music of Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” pounds over the soundtrack, accompanied by the afterburner roar of two Pratt & Whitney jet engines, and the 61,000-pound Tomcat roars off the flight deck and claws its way into the sky.

TOM CRUISE

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 2, 1962) made his film debut in Endless Love (1981). This was followed by roles in Taps (1981), The Outsiders (1983), and Losing It (1983). His lead role as Joel Goodson, a rich, high-achieving high school student in Risky Business (1983), put him on a path to stardom that was fully achieved three years later in the international megahit Top Gun. From that point, his career shifted into high gear, with lead roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Jerry Maguire (1996), and the Mission: Impossible and Jack Reacher franchises, among others.

Nominated three times for an Academy Award, Cruise excelled in bravura roles, playing brash, overly self-confident characters with a few cracks of self-awareness in their polished armor. Married three times, he has three children.

After several disappointing films that had dimmed his later career, the release of Top Gun: Maverick may return Cruise to his roots and restore luster to one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

In the movie’s most traumatic moment, a guilt-ridden Maverick holds the body of Goose, accidentally killed while ejecting from their out-of-control F-18 Tomcat. Originally, the accident was to be the crashing of their F-18 on the carrier. The US Navy requested that it be changed to a fatal ejection caused by a malfunctioning canopy release.

Maverick (Tom Cruise) and Goose (Anthony Edwards) are reprimanded by Topgun CO Commander Mike “Viper” Metcalf (Tom Skerritt) after violating rules of engagement during their first training flight that included buzzing the base’s control tower. The two literally wind up in Viper’s crosshairs on another training flight when Maverick violates the Topgun rule that emphasizes fighting as a team.

A popcorn-crunching action-adventure movie, Top Gun was based on the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics program, nicknamed Topgun. (Note that the movie spells it as two words, while the Navy uses only one word. For consistency, whenever the movie title is used here, it will be two words; the Navy program will be one word). The movie propelled the careers of Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, and Val Kilmer, spawned numerous knockoffs and satires, influenced fashion, caused naval aviation recruitment to skyrocket, and ended up defining the high-powered action-drama movie genre of the 1980s.

The movie’s story is straightforward, with as much subtlety as the F-14 Tomcat, its main (and most exciting) prop. The plot centers on the rivalry between US Navy pilots Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and Lieutenant Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer), the former a push-the-envelope pilot with an insubordinate reputation bordering on the dangerous, the latter generally regarded as the Navy’s best fighter pilot, one who plays by the rules.

Maverick and Iceman meet at Topgun, then located at Naval Station Miramar outside San Diego, California (in 1996 it would be transferred to Naval Station Fallon in Nevada). Only the best of the elite Navy pilot and radar intercept officer (RIO) teams are selected for Topgun training. Although their commanding officer has reservations about their conduct, he recommends Maverick and his RIO, Lieutenant (junior grade) Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards), for the program on the basis of their flying acumen.

Maverick an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. “I Feel the Need … the Need for Speed.”
• 2. The Origin of Topgun
• 3. Hollywood Jumps into the Cockpit
• 4. Top Gun in Print
• 5. So You Want to Be a Fighter Pilot
• 6. The Original Topguns
• 7. The High-Flying Heroes of World War II
• 8. Topgun in Korea
• 9. Vietnam: Where Topgun Began
• 10. Dogfighting Technologies: The Early Years
• 11. Genesis of a Revolutionary Dogfighting Tactic: The Thach Weave
• 12. “Aerial Dogfighting Is Dead”
• 13. The Question of Stealth
• 14. The Navy and Aerial Drones
• 15. Fightertown, USA, Heads to Nevada
• 16. Top Gun 2: Maverick
• Index
• Image Credits
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• Copyright