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Topgun: An American Story

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First of all, I cannot believe nobody here has written a legitimate in-depth review of this book before, so I'm going to have to do it myself. I don't think anyone's going to read this, but I hope my efforts are worth it for any Top Gun fans (or not) out there who is deciding whether or not to read this book (or have read this book and just wanted to read some thoughts from someone else). Disclaimer: this review is going to feature lots of spoilers for the film, and since I assume most people reading this will probably already have seen Top Gun, I'm not going to be using spoiler tags, but if you haven't, please consider yourself warned! :D It is a sad testament of procurement then and now that the US military had bought weapon systems that were not proved to work. Throughout the book there are a number of mentions of squadrons firing all of their missiles and not hitting anything. By not exposing issues, officers protected their careers. According to the author, no one in the Navy did a thorough evaluation of the aircraft and missiles to determine root cause of failures. Until the Topgun instructors did just that. It seemed like the missle manufacturers had not stepped aboard a carrier to watch how the crews handled them. Amazing that such end to end QA was missing, which ensured our aircrews were sent into a fight with bad equipment. Top Gun and the End of the Homoerotic Action Movie". Consequence of Sound. May 14, 2016. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020 . Retrieved December 2, 2020. Hunt, Dennis (January 16, 1987). " Top Gun Videocassette to Carry Diet Pepsi Ad". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved June 21, 2022.

Greer, Ann. "Story from Palm Springs Air Museum: Naval Top Gun Founder To Be Honored at Palm Springs Air Museum Gala". The Desert Sun . Retrieved 2020-12-31. I like stories of airplanes, especially those my dad worked on while in the Air Force. Placing an F-4 on the cover is guaranteed to draw my attention while at the bookstore. Though it is focused on the Navy, I was curious at how Topgun started and the tactics they devised to make the F-4 squadrons fight better against the North Vietnamese MiGs. Probably one of the best films of the eighties Top gun was shown here in real terms to be a hard ,gritty and technical flying experience from the best of the best Dan shared his life in full and it was a terrific read going through his naval career and family life. March 1969. American jets are getting shot down at an unprecedented rate over Vietnam. In an urgent effort to regain the advantage the Admirals turn to a young naval aviator called Dan Pedersen.

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It was quite technical (which to me made it even better) but Pedersen put some his aviator comparisons into the perspective that a civilian would maybe (if you were familiar with cars) understand.

It’s a brilliant autobiography of a varied Navy career, spanning combat missions in Vietnam, setting up Top Gun, and even commanding an aircraft carrier. The real highlights for me were when he described what it was like learning to fly fighter jets for the first time (which was very reminiscent of The Right Stuff to me), and critically, how he tried to set Top Gun up as a school that would build the best of the best. The teaching pedagogy of Top Gun is truly fascinating and is covered extensively in Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise - it focuses heavily on forcing pilots to confront mistakes made and enabling them to learn from them in a safe space (much like Viper says in the film, “a good pilot always evaluates what’s happened, so that he can apply what he’s learned.”). When you’re writing a movie, the most important things to have is conflict,” Epps explains. “One of the challenges was that these guys all really got along well. It was all about cooperation. It was all about working out the plan. But where’s the conflict?”

5. The movie has been optimised for IMAX, 4DX and ScreenX presentations

Tazewell County Photo of the Month - December 2000". www.tcghs.org. Archived from the original on July 23, 2020 . Retrieved January 17, 2021.

The impetus to create this sort of training environment sprung from the rapid drop in the Navy’s kill ratio in Vietnam, with more American jets being shot down for every one enemy jet shot down. The man who was selected to set the programme up was Dan Pedersen, who wrote this book. Pedersen begins with ripping former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara up one side and down the other for clueless micromanagement of the air war in Vietnam, and also for McNamara’s using his political and corporate connections to make choices of building contractors, rather than making decisions on the basis of what would be best for the people actually using the military equipment. Pedersen really slams the connections between military contractors, politicians and administration officials and top brass in the military who retire and take cushy jobs with the contractors. With this kind of setup, he argues, decisions about what to fund are corrupt and not in the best interests of the armed forces and US readiness. He gives a number of examples, but in particular he argues that stealth technology and too many electronic bells and whistles make the costs of today’s aircraft way too high and that not enough attention is paid to simply making fighter aircraft that pilots will be able to deploy effectively. Dario Leone (September 16, 2018). " "It's time to buzz the tower:" Former F-14 RIO explains how the legendary Top Gun tower fly-by scene was filmed". The Aviation Geek Club . Retrieved September 18, 2023.Top Gun study guide contains a biography of Tony Scott, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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