LULZ.
This is hilarious!

"We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. Our obligation is to make money."

Don Simpson
d. 1996

First Name Title in Top Gun: Maverick - "Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films"



Many don't know the many box office records set by the US public, or risk holding a $170,000,000 film for two years without streaming
no US military theme film has ever grossed anywhere near 1 Billion

Release Day 116 - Avatar 2 is nearly $28 Million Domestic (below TG) on 365 US screens, it will not reach $690 Million (woulda lost that bet)
Maverick was at 2,604 US screens on Day 116

Here, Hangman on one of the two $13,000,000,000 sets built for the film

anyone realize that is Bill Pullman's son.    Lonestar.

At the altitude he ejected there's essentially no air, so there would be almost no air resistance/friction, so it could be survivable.

Agreed! I always turn up the bass when the jet engine are screaming!
It’s a beautiful segment honestly.

I think it's his own airplane.  When you bring your own plane to the set, I think they'll let you do substitutes.

Click To View Spoiler

Remember to think in Russian.

More like 633 squadron.

Interesting observation.

Tell Cruise he's an idiot for owning that P-51.

Whilst it was good, this sprang to mind with me too...

My biggest problems were

1.  No motorcycle helmet and they let him on base

2.  No fucking way someone with a callsign of "Maverick" would be a test pilot.

the CAN wear glasses.

Got to go with the best pilots I suppose?.....

Oh yes, and you do know the evil Brits made a major contribution to setting up the real Top Gun school, right?..;


American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British

The American Top Gun fighter pilot academy was inspired by the Royal Navy elite flying instructors, a new book has revealed.

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent

Last Updated: 11:18PM GMT 22 Mar 2009

The British contribution of a dozen instructors was a substantial help to the Americans struggling for aerial success over Vietnam

Despite the all-American hero imagery of the film starring Tom Cruise, the US Navy's expertise was in large part due to their instruction by aviators from the Fleet Air Arm.

When British pilots arrived at Miramar airbase in California in the early 1960s the Americans were losing a large number of dogfights in their multi-million Phantom fighters to the enemy's relatively "cheap" MiG 21s.

The tuition from the British pilots, all graduates of the intense Air Warfare Instructors school in Lossiemouth, Scotland, led to the Americans dominating the skies, the military historian Rowland White has revealed in Phoenix Squadron.

It was then that the their Naval Warfare Academy became known as Top Gun.

"Through the instructors on exchange at Miramar the AWIs methods made their way into perhaps the most well-known programme in the history of naval aviation: Topgun," he said.

Foremost among the Royal Navy pilots was Lt Commander Dick Lord's whose work on the tactics group was the founding on which the "original eight Topgun instructors built their course".

The British pilot, originally from South Africa, introduced simple things such as writing notes on the knee pad of his flying suit during air combat exercises

The Americans trusted Lord enough to give him access to a secret document that played a key part in his writing the Air Combat Manoeuvring manual for the US pilots.

As shown in the film Top Gun the pilots at Miramar were given a structure on air-to-air combat that finished with a final sortie of two pilot instructors against two students. In the film this was when Tom Cruise lost his observer following a difficult manoeuvre which occasionally happened as pilots flew their aircraft to the limit.

Lord's expertise was so well regarded that he was asked to give lectures to US fighter pilots all along the West Coast.

While the former Royal Navy officer, who married his British wife at Miramar, said he enjoyed the film he did not recognise the characters until his wife told him that the big-talking naval fighter pilots were most accurately depicted.

Although the British did their best to fit in their humour prevailed. Rather than call signs of Viper and Maverick they came up with Dogbreath, Alien and Cholmondley

White's book is the first to reveal the British role in Top Gun.

"It is remarkable that any history book on Top Gun studiously avoids any British involvement," Lord, 72, told The Daily Telegraph. "One finds this quite a bit on American history and certainly here they have not given us due justice."

Lt Cdr Paul Waterhouse, 72, another Fleet Air Arm officer at Miramar with Lord, said the British contribution of a dozen instructors was a substantial help to the Americans struggling for aerial success over Vietnam although it went unnoticed by Downing Street.

"We were helping these guys in the Vietnam war because they were going straight from Miramar to fight the enemy who were flying pretty useful Mig 21s.

"If Harold Wilson knew he would not have been happy."

He added: "The Americans did not have the experience to use the Phantom properly and you cannot train experience

"I felt a swell of pride when I first saw the Top Gun film because I knew that we were behind it."

Another British instructor, Cdr Doug Macdonald , 67, said the Americans "were delighted to have experienced people teach them".

He added: "I think the movie Top Gun is great but it's thanks to us Brits that they could make the film."

Soon after the Top Gun course began a Phantom flown by one of the first students shot down a MiG-21, the first time a US Navy had succeeded in aerial combat in two years.

You're welcome...

I look at it this way - when was the last time the US military has decided to just GIVE UP a capability. If multiple crews are to be believed, The Blackbird brought a few things to the table that satellites, U-2s, and now UAVs couldn’t provide. Maybe things have changed over the last decade or two, but when the SR-71 was retired I believe there was another airframe there picking up the torch.

Think you used enough zeros there, Butch?  

m

Scramjets operate around 10x the dynamic pressure that broke up Columbia.  Stagnation temperatures are literally off the charts; there is so much kinetic energy that it changes the very chemical composition of air.

A pilot surviving at multiple mach numbers is fact.  As in it has been proved to be possible at something above statistical significance.  Because it happened.

One other thing I feel the need to say on the subject of a naval aviator flying off in an Army Air Corps aircraft.



I finally got around to seeing this. At the end of the film we see that one of the aviators covered in this documentary has bought a biplane with US Army markings on it.

Interesting guy, call sign Faceshot. Because he survived being shot in the face by some jackass with a handgun when he was in high school.

Yes, there are lots of active and former military pilots who fly their own (and foundation/museum-owned) warbirds which saw service with different services.

I'm not sure where anyone gets the idea that one's service somehow determines what someone might own or fly for fun.

No, A-12/SR-71 pilots surviving sub-M=3 ejections is not evidence of the survivability of a M=10 ejection.

All it brought was speed...and that was important in a day where there was US political policy of actual overflight of the Soviet Union to get overhead imagery.

And it sacrificed some capability for that speed: U-2s took much finer OBC and ASARS shots than the SRs due to the Blackbird's speed and ride at speed.

It wasn't some magical miracle...it was simply a tool in the tool box that had some capabilities that did not overlap wither other HAISR tools.

So can pilots.

Your callsign isn't one of the application/interview elements for entry into TPS.

I saw it in the theatre and watched it again last night at home.  The list of movies I have seen twice is pretty short.  Top Gun 2 is an awesome movie.

Fact not in evidence.  Even putting aside that it's a freaking movie and dramatic license is a thing.


We know the following facts, and can infer or deduce some others.

Mach indicator read 10.something.
Various things happened.
Pilot pulls back on the throttle.
Ground experiences LOS
Plane is observed in pieces (from ground)
Pilot walks down a road.  Slowly.  'cause i mean... who wouldn't be walking slowly??

I was commenting on the why would the Navy test an airplane from land, not the mythical hypersonic aircraft.  Plus, why don't you tell me the stall speed of this imaginary plane? You claim 250 knots - based on what? it is imaginary, after all. Maybe it stalls at 65 knots? Maybe it can hover? it doesn't exist.

Landing speed is around 185 knots minimum in MSFS. I think stall speed is ~160.

I did get to see a B-1 do a high speed landing once, when I was deployed, due to the wings being stuck/locked in the retracted position. That plane was moving when it touched down.

Click To View Spoiler

Whether it's real or not, it's always good to keep your adversaries guessing.

It was this super hottie that said that. Yummy.

Hans Zimmer doesn't fuck around.

Few good scores on the soundtrack.

Yes.

It looks better on film, because its a movie.

Probably got to write off a year of maintenance and maybe even an engine overhaul too.

In the extras they show how they did it multiple times, and actually did a lower speed pass turning the throttle up vs a higher speed pass, because of what happened.

Case in point, I just see a bunch of people in that one.....not Ed Harris.  Could be full of it, but either way.

A few years ago when the B-29 was used in a Better Call Saul episode, that paid a substantial part of the year's operating costs.

So it would make sense that a larger movie production, and one that included flying, would have generated a substantially larger income for Cruise and his Mustang

Tax writeoffs....not so much.

You were the one who said "proved it was possible", hoss.

CGI can add/remove people just as easily as it can turn a Hornet into a nonexistent hypersonic aircraft.

No, high speed passes do not remove roofs from guard shacks.

I'm guessing that one low enough could....

Valid point, hah.

From a real guard shack, sure.  Do we know if that was a real one or just a half-ass prop for the shot with a roof just sitting on top of the walls?

Read my statement again. I said "multiple mach numbers."


Larger point is this.

Everyone holding that up as some sort of 'gotcha' in a freaking movie because "ejecting at mach speeds is totally unrealistic" are incorrect.  It's happened.  And in that case the dude didn't eject.  Plane broke up around him.

Flying the Darkstar mission in MSFS is extremely cool

I've jumped out of a vehicle doing 5mph and landed on my feet.  So it's definitely possible to do it at 50mph!

Weren't those dude super fucked up afterwards?

I listened to a podcast recently where a Hornet pilot recounted his story of an ejection at near-Mach and it's a damn miracle he's alive.  He got severely fucked up.  Granted, he punched out at low altitude.