Yes, one of the greatest aviation movies of all time, but full of technical errors nonetheless. (I KNOW it's just Hollywood, but we care about tech details here, especially when they apply to the F-14.) Ward reviews the 21 most cringeworthy among them. WARNING: Once you watch this episode you may never view TOP GUN the same again.
1. (5:00) RIO’s radar presentation shows a 360-degree PPI presentation. Tomcat’s radar only sweeps 65 degrees either side of the nose. (Wouldn’t want a radar that pointed back at the crews. That would be a huge radiation hazard, to put it mildly.)
2. (8:00) Cougar transmits: “This bogey’s all over me. He’s got missile lock. Do I have permission to fire?” Well, whatever the ROE, the question is moot until you do some pilot shit and actually maneuver your jet into an offensive.
3. (9:01) As far as Maverick’s “4-G inverted dive” (as Charlie later labels it) goes, if the two airplanes were that close the Tomcat’s vertical stabs would be jammed into the MiG-28.
4. (9:59) Merlin taps on a fuel gauge that doesn’t exist in the rear cockpit of the F-14, only in the front cockpit. (The RIO only has a fuel totalizer.)
5. (10:06) Cougar rips his oxygen mask off to breathe more oxygen, which would be in short supply at high altitude.
6. (10:12) Cougar has a photo of his wife and baby taped over the airspeed gauge to the left of the altimeter.
7. (12:27) There’s no way Cougar wouldn’t have been waved off by the Landing Signal Officer based on that wild approach. He gets at least five “power” calls during the pass. The Air Boss would have been very unhappy with the LSO after that.
8. (12:51) Cougar traps and immediately shuts the jet down instead of taxiing out of the landing area. Maverick is still airborne, low on gas, and needs to land but can’t now because Cougar has fouled the landing area and has to be towed out of the wires.
9. (13:00) Nice stateroom for a squadron CO. (He’s an 0-5, fer crissakes.) And later in the scene he says, “You can tell me about the MiG some other time” and dismisses the crew to head for Top Gun, thereby committing professional suicide by not getting the only information that anyone above him in the chain of command would care about that particular day.
10. (16:06) “Um, tower, there’s some dork riding a motorcycle down one of the taxiways shaking his fist at us.”
11. (25:52) A hangar isn’t the most conducive place for detailed flight briefs.
12. (29:53) Smoke effect is actually the Tomcat dumping fuel . . . a stupid idea when you’re about to enter a dogfight.
13. (31:31) Maverick “hits the brakes” by pushing the throttles forward, which would increase power, not decrease it.
14. (35:52) Maverick explains, “We weren’t below the hard deck for more than a few seconds. I had the shot. There was no danger. So I took it.” The hard deck simulates the ground, so basically Maverick is saying, “We didn’t hit the ground for more than a few seconds . . .”
15. (55:31) Why is Hollywood eating an orange on the flight line?
16. (57:26) Logic of the engagement is ridiculous. Maverick lets Jester go and then flies in parade formation behind Hollywood who’s saddled in super-close behind the other bandit. Hollywood whines at Maverick not to leave him when he should just shoot the bandit right in front of him, and then Maverick leaves to go after Viper and ultimately winds up getting shot because Goose does a shitty job of looking behind them for bad guys (at 59:23).
17. (1:06:56) Goose says “Shit, we got a flameout. Engine 1 is out.” The RIO has no engine instruments in the rear cockpit of the F-14.
18. (1:07:13) Iceman transmits, “Mav’s in trouble. He’s in a flat spin and headed out to sea.” When an airplane is in a flat spin it is not heading anywhere except straight down.
19. (1:26:50) Aviators wouldn’t get orders at the Top Gun graduation. They’d get them via a frustrating process of arguing with their detailers via email and the occasional phone call over the period of a few months.
20. (1:39:47) Maverick leads a two-plane fly-by next to the carrier with a wingman that’s been riddled with bullets and most likely has sustained major damage to the hydraulic system that powers the flight controls.
21. (1:41:14) Iceman says, “You can be my wingman any time,” which ignores the fact that unless he’s the ops officer or schedule officer or squadron CO who signs the flight schedule then he just needs to suck it up and fly with whoever he’s assigned to fly with.
We’re all looking forward to TOP GUN MAVERICK and the trailer teases the idea that the F-14 might just still be part of the fighter inventory . . . we’ll have to see.
For a longer list of TOP GUN movie flaws see: www.military.com/off-duty/201...