High Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority

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From the Writer

INTRODUCTION

Whether or not you spell it “Topgun” (the Navy program) or High Gun (the 1986 film), the picture evoked by the time period is similar: that of elite US Navy fighter pilots—the very best of the very best. High Gun, the blockbuster film that starred Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, and Val Kilmer—together with, after all, the F-14 Tomcat— uncovered the broader public to the US Navy Strike Fighter Ways Teacher program.

In 2019, the Topgun program will have fun its fiftieth anniversary. However the historical past of Topguns—fighter pilots who’re the very best of the very best— has its origin in 1914 over the skies of Western Europe throughout World Conflict I. In that battle, courageous males flew their flimsy fabric-and-wood plane and dueled like aerial knights.

Fly with the very best in High Gun: 50 Years of Naval Air Superiority—the definitive, extremely illustrated, in-depth take a look at the Navy’s well-known fighter unit, together with its historical past, know-how, and tradition.

The Origin of Topgun

Pursuant to CNO message DTG241506Z July 1968, through the interval 8 August–8 November 1968, a 5 member overview staff, directed by Captain Frank W. Ault, USN [redacted]/1310, NAVAIRSYSCOM, (AIR-001), performed an in-depth overview of the whole course of by which the Navy’s Air-to-Air Missiles Programs are acquired and employed in an effort to determine these areas the place enhancements can and ought to be made.

Thus, within the dry, acronym-filled textual content that’s the army type, begins the fifty-eight-page report, with six appendices, formally titled “Report of the Air-to-Air Missile System Functionality Evaluate (U).” Its writer, Navy Captain Frank Ault, lent his identify to the doc: “the Ault Report,” because it got here to be identified, without end modified US Naval Air fighter doctrine and ways.

High Gun in Print

The actual-life heroic exploits of fighter pilots created an insatiable fashionable demand, and the publishing business was fast to capitalize on it. English crime author, journalist, and playwright Edgar Wallace was among the many first. The weapons of World Conflict I had been nonetheless firing when his brief story, “Tam O’ the Scoots,” appeared within the November 1917 subject of All people’s Journal. Tam was an RAF fighter pilot with a heavy Scottish accent (thus the “Scoots” for “Scouts,” an early reference to fighter planes). He appeared in quite a lot of journal brief tales that had been collected into an anthology revealed in 1918. The tales had been mild on accuracy and heavy on motion and thrills. Younger Charles Lindbergh was considered one of numerous boys captivated by Tam’s high-flying derring-do, impressed by goals of turning into fighter pilots after they grew up.

So You Need to be A Fighter Pilot

Within the wake of High Gun’s launch, a protracted line of hopeful younger males took a shot at turning into fighter pilots, blissfully unaware of how lengthy the percentages had been—longer than the strains they stood in on the recruiting workplace! Current numbers illustrate the problem of creating the minimize. Greater than 16,000 younger women and men utilized to enter the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, in 2017. Of that group, about 1,100 had been accepted; 240 of these midshipmen had been accepted as pilots, and eighty out of these 240 had been accepted into the jet coaching program. Lastly, solely fifty women and men succeeded in turning into fighter pilots for the US Navy.

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The Authentic Topguns

World Conflict I used to be the primary battle by which pilots dueled in aerial fight. It noticed the debut of the time period “ace” to explain a pilot who scored a minimal of 5 aerial victories (extra on that in Chapter 10). Any depend of aces within the warfare (or any warfare by which aces had been acknowledged) is at finest an estimate, as a result of it wasn’t all the time potential to find out who downed an enemy aircraft, to kind out overlapping claims (typically leading to shared “half” credit), or to substantiate if a aircraft was simply broken or shot down. Based on a US Air Conflict Faculty research, there have been a complete of 1,305 aces in World Conflict I from twelve nations. Listed here are some tales of the distinctive knights of the air from the Nice Conflict.

The Excessive-Flying Heroes of World Conflict II

The ear-grating order got here by way of the loudspeaker within the pilots’ prepared room. The pilots of Air Group 15 had been ordered to man their planes, with one exception: “All besides air group commander. He isn’t, repeat not, to go.” Commander David McCampbell, Air Group 15’s commander, air group (CAG), slumped in his chair as the remainder of the pilots filed out of the prepared room and as much as their F6F Hellcat fighters warming up on the flight deck above. As a substitute of main his males into battle, the Navy’s high ace, with twenty-one Japanese kills, must cool his heels, a sufferer of his admiral’s ire.

As soon as once more, the outbreak of warfare caught the US unprepared for battle. This time it was on the Korean Peninsula in June 1950. Within the post-World Conflict II demobilization and drawdown, the nation’s hundreds of thousands of active-duty personnel and weapons had been drastically decreased. The place earlier than the US army comprised hundreds of thousands of women and men in uniform, now there have been only a few hundred thousand. And the oncemighty armada that had efficiently waged a two-ocean warfare had for essentially the most half been bought for scrap or to different nations, or mothballed.