A Former Navy Pilot picks the movie "Top Gun" to itty-bitty pieces
As a former military officer and pilot, I have on several occasions been asked by acquaintances who were never in the military to comment on popular entertainments (movies, television series) that deal with those subjects.
These are always difficult moments for me, because I generally find these productions almost impossible to watch. The TV series JAG, for example, has been so excruciating that I have been unable to sit through more than 10 minutes of an episode1.
Overall, I find Hollywood's treatment of military aviation in particular and military life and personnel in general to be curiously distorted at best, and twisted out of all recognition at worst.
I think the reason why stems from the fact that almost no one in the creative community of artists, writers, actors and filmmakers has actually had any military experience.2
I personally have no doubt that a prevailing left-wing climate in the entertainment industry also tends to color things, although to what extent is a topic probably best left to a political asylum debate.
Also, I think that being really creative, and finding a way to say something new, is very, very difficult. With the best will in the world, it's difficult to escape the trap of the well-established archetype, and the well-worn cliche.
The psychotic general with nihilistic, megalomaniac designs, for example, is so firmly burned in to public consciousness that audiences expect even a "good-guy" general to turn bad by the end of the picture3. Rod Steiger's last dozen or so roles all seemed to be in this mold. I avoid these (Broken Arrow, you could name a half-dozen more yourself with little difficulty) like the plague.
Mostly, though, I just think that Hollywood doesn't understand or know anything about the military, and so fills in with what they think it must be like.
Which brings us to everyone's favorite movie about naval aviation: Top Gun.
This film came out during my last year on active duty, and, for a while there, I couldn't go out in public in my uniform (complete with gold wings) without someone asking me what I thought of it.
I remember it being criticized for being no more than a recruiting film. I must agree there is something to that criticism. The number of volunteers for naval flight training spiked a bit after this film, but so, unfortunately, did the "wash-out" rate...because the program is more difficult and less glamorous than portrayed. Navy flight school is a notably Kelly McGillis-free zone.
Criticism of the film for its artistic value, however, is not my focus here. I graduated from Texas A&M University with a degree in Computing Science, served eight years as a naval officer, and now make my living developing software. Not exactly credentials that would lead to my employment as a reviewer for the New York Times.
No, my aim here is to dissect the technical authenticity (or lack thereof) of the film's portrayal of naval aviation. I can think of no better way to do this than to itemize descrepancies, with a detailed explanation of each. I do this with a full acknowledgement that deviation from absolute fidelity is necessary in a work of fiction. Note, also, that it's actually been years since I've seen this movie...so I may have left something out from simple dimming memory. If you can think of an aspect of the film that may be inauthentic and I've missed it here, shoot me a /msg and I'll try to add it to this writeup.
So, without further ado -
In the picture's first sequence, we have the Sensitive but somewhat shaky pilot who tapes a snapshot of wife & child to his instrument panel...
...You see, naval aviation quite rigorously selects for a personality type that can compartmentalize. That means, when it's time to suit up, man up, and go shooting off the pointy end of the boat, you box up any extraneous personal issues, and bury them deep, deep, deep down4. Constantly reminding yourself of your loved ones in such a situation does NOT make you more efficient, effective, or safer. Rather the opposite. Such a person would have been ruthlessly weeded out from the program. And there's not really a place to put a snapshot of your family on a navy aircraft's instrument panel that wouldn't block your view of some important instrument...
And in a hassle with some advanced MIGs, he has to be rescued by Maverick (Tom Cruise)...
...Who does so by joining up in formation with one of the MIGs, only flying upside down, canopy to canopy, while his RIO, (Radar Intercept Officer) call-sign "Goose" takes some quick snaps. Sorry, couldn't happen, wouldn't ever happen. The navy flight demonstration team, the Blue Angels may do something like this, but both lead and wingmen are very carefully briefed, extensively practised, and the lead is doing all he can to fly very, very smoothly and predictably. In a maneuvering dog-fight, fuhgedaboudit5.
But Lieutenant Family Guy is so badly shaken that he basically freaks, freezing up during his landing approach, and again has to be rescued by Mav...
...who obliges this time by joining up and flying formation on FG's wing during his landing approach to the carrier. Once again, couldn't happen, wouldn't ever happen. See my WU on carrier landings, but basically you're too low and especially too slow to fly formation in the landing pattern, what with wheels down, flaps down, hook down. You're behind the "power curve", as the aero engineers would say, just a thin few knots above the speed at which you stall and fall from the sky. Your controls aren't responsive enough to be safe. Besides, you wouldn't be getting advice and encouragement from a pilot in another plane...because it's the job of the LSO.
Afterwords, Mav and Goose get chewed out by the gruff but fair CO, who, despite his better judgement, gives them their orders to the TOP GUN school...
...I'm not sure who the bald guy was supposed to be. Wouldn't be their squadron CO, because they don't have offices that big on the ship. Air boss? CAG (Carrier Air-group Commander, to whom all embarked squadron COs report)? Ship CO? No, because they wouldn't directly give aircrews orders like that. And they don't post pilots to the Top Gun school from deployed squadrons...they wait until they come home to a shore period. The whole thing doesn't ring true, and leaves me with that queasy, alternate universe feeling...
...and then we cut to Maverick riding his hog alongside the runway at Miramar, racing a plane, leather jacket flapping, wind rushing through his hair...
Can you say "Base security, we have an unauthorized vehicle on the taxiway?" Thought you could.
...cut to first day of class, where their instructor is a long-legged supermodel who just happens to be the top intel expert on the latest MIGS...
...Oh, please. Oh, PLEASE!!!
...and then they begin their rigorous training, flying daring air combat maneuvers all throughout the valleys, skimming the hills...
...Uh, no. Air Combat Maneuvering training is always, always done at altitudes above 10,000 feet. Ten grand is the "deck" in ACM. If you go below that, the fight is called off, and you lose. Using terrain features in ACM is not something that is trained for, nor would it ever be necessary or useful.
...Of course, all aircrew must follow the unwritten law of cinematic aviation: Oxygen masks must be dangling from one attachment point as much as possible...
It's obvious why, of course: with O2 masks properly affixed, a film audience couldn't tell who's who. I totally sympathize, but it's another point of inauthenticity. Your radio and intercomm microphones are in your mask. If it's dangling, you can't talk to anyone. Plus, it's awkard as hell. It's an unbalanced weight to one side of your head, and it hampers your ability to swivel your head freely to look all the places you need to look in a dogfight. Standard procedure is to fasten it on at engine start, turn on the O2, and leave it that way until you land.
...during all this training, the competitive instinct comes to the fore. You must WIN to pass at TOP GUN...
...A disclaimer: I was a navy jet pilot, but not a FIGHTER pilot. I never went to TOP GUN, aka the Fighter Weapons School. But I do happen to know a bit about it. The focus is training, not a testosterone festival6. Students at Top Gun are intended to go back to their regular squadrons and be instructors in the dissimilar air combat tactics they have learned. The Top Gun instructors, for their part, are probably the most practised, skilled air combat pilots in the world, and could easily win every practise engagement against their students. But then, nobody learns anything. So they do their best to simulate the actual, real-world tactics known to be in use by U.S. adversaries.
..and after one triumphant hop, Mav just can't resist buzzing the tower...
...Nope, nope, nope. Couldn't happen, wouldn't ever happen. If it did, that would be the very last flight in a navy aircraft by that particular aviator.
...but the knowledge thus gained is not without cost. For Maverick loses his buddy/sidekick/RIO "Goose"...
...when they go into a spin, and have to eject. Goose boinks his noggin on the canopy as his ejection seat rockets out of their doomed, crippled plane. Maverick takes it hard. But, actually, on an F-14 the canopy is blasted away from the aircraft with explosive charges and is carried away by the airstream a significant fraction of a second before the seats fire. To my knowledge, it has never happened that a flight crew member has collided with the jettisoned canopy after ejection.
...But Maverick presses on, determined, and wins the respect of Val Kilmer...
Well, there's no technical inaccuracy here. Though it does seem a bit unlikely...
...And returns to his carrier just in time to save the free world...
..in an incident that's so sensitive they have to just completely keep it secret. Well, okay, call me a quibbler, but I actually lived through the 80s, struggle though it was, and on every occasion that US aircraft shot down adversary aircraft, it was on the evening news that night, usually accompanied by cockpit video from one of the F-14s...
...Finally, let me just say...
...that I think the creators of the soundtrack for this film have a lot to answer for. Them I blame for our long national nightmare of endless, Frank Stallone-ish, 80's power rock that we endure to this day. See, for example, the Bowflex commercials. Makes my head ache just thinking about it, so enough said.
Postscript:
...Fellow noder Corran tells me that the climactic dogfight at the end of the film was NOT covered up, as I said in this writeup. Corran, who owns a copy of the movie on DVD, reports that someone tells Maverick that he's about to be famous, or all over the news, or whatever. As I say, it's been years since I've seen this film, so I stand corrected. I don't think it fundamentally affects my assessment of the film. Thanks, Corran!
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1) I find the most authentic portrayal of a military officer to be in, believe it or not, the TV series Stargate SG-1. The actor portraying General Hammond (Don Davis) seems to really know how a real General walks, talks, what is important to him, etc. The Major Samantha Carter character (Amanda Tapping), though too glamorous by far, also has an authentic integrity. Richard Dean Anderson, on the other hand, should probably have quit while he was ahead.
2) With the notable exception of one Oliver Stone, whose rather paranoid outlook, in my opinion, so grotesquely twists his output as to rob his work of any credibility in the realm of art as truthful commentary on life.
3) Of a piece with the sinister psycho General (indeed, if anything even more prevalent) is the sinister psycho CIA agent. I'll yield the task of breaking down Hollywood's portrayal of the Agency to an insider, except to submit that, after eight or so years of X-files, there should be a moratorium on CIA characters.
4) As you might expect, this has consequences. Naval aviators quite frequently have personal lives somewhat strewn with wreckage.
5) No, they weren't really MIGS. They were Northrop (Now Northrop-Grumman) F-5s borrowed, I think, from the adversary unit at the Fighter Weapons School (the real name for "Top Gun"). I personally cut them slack for this; real MIGS weren't very available in the mid 80s. Although the same is not true NOW. Any of 8 or 10 former east-bloc nations would probably JUMP at the chance to rent out a flight of MIG 29s for a movie. For the right price, of course.
6) Not that testosterone isn't there. Oh, it's there, all right. But it's not as simple as that. Naval aviators are technical professionals and are, by and large, able to sublimate the machismo to, well, accomplish the mission professionally.
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