21 Cringeworthy Errors in the Movie TOP GUN

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.

[markdavis]

I was the controlling LSO for “Cougar’s” pass. Filmed behind Carl Vinson in W-291. The actual pilot was LT Ben Schneider from VF-51. If you watch the video he starts rocking his wings hard for Hollywood and the spoilers dumped tons of lift immediately and he started coming down like a safe, very evident in the video.I gave him one hard power call and immediately waved him off. I was seriously afraid he might hit the water. If you watch the belly camera video you can see the waveoff lights. And no, he didn’t trap on that pass.

[kenner]

As a Machinists' Mate, I was always bothered by ALL the catapults failing on a carrier AT THE SAME TIME! Trust me, if the designers of Nimitz class carriers worshipped one god, it was Redundancy.

[scotthill]

I’m a nurse and this is the exact reasons why I don’t watch medical shows on tv. It drives me crazy!!!

[sitbone]

The Navy got what they wanted. A multi, multi million dollar recruiting ad.

[wpmulligan]

My father was an RIO in Phantoms starting in the mid 1960's. He used to say that Top Gun was one of the greatest comedies put to film.

[roycelabor]

Great job Ward! I'm a retired Army officer & was teaching ROTC at The Citadel when Top Gun came out. I was the enrollment officer for the Army detachment & asked my Navy counterparts what impact the movie had on their enrollment. They were not fans because all of the cadets enrolling in the Navy program wanted to be Tomcat pilots which hardly met the "needs of the Navy." We laughed because we'd gone through the same thing with Rambo, everyone wanted to be a Green Beret.

[prism]

I'm glad you did that quickly and not like Watchmojo or something like that and turned it into 30 minutes.

[Abbeville_Kid]

Number 22: speaking coherently while pulling serious G turns.

[richardshipman]

As a former squadron safety officer, I was really impressed that the accident investigation team completed the complex investigation in what - one month?

[JamesSkools]

When I was a kid my dad was stationed in Miramar. He liked to point out the scene where Mavrick and Charlie meet in an elevator. There were no elevators there...

[michaelbarton]

I was a crew member 82-85 on USS Enterprise when they were filming scenes for top gun. In later years watching the movie I picked out most of the errors you pointed out. I am a retired AT2 Having supported the F14 in AIMD most of my career. Thank you for your service sir and pointing out the blatant Hollywood goofs.

[schurb]

Fun Fact. Navy here. I went to AMS "A"School in Millington, TN back in 1988. There was a lounge room by our barracks. There was a VCR and a TV in the lounge area. Every day, Top Gun was on the tv, and and everyone would stop what they were doing and watch. We didn't know the facts at the time. It looked legitimate to out ignorant brains. Hindsight is always 20/20. Thanks Ward for pointing out the facts you know are wrong.

[bigginsd]

I thought every body was aware at this point that Top Gun is as realistic representation of Fighter Pilots as Indiana Jones is of Archeologists.

[joemoore]

I like the frontal shots of the pilot sitting in the ejection seat with the brass unlocking tool in place (behind his head on the left side) . The tool was used to unlock the seat from the rails when you pulled the seat out. Having worked for Grumman on Long Island building all models of the Tomcat the employees picked the movie to death, loads of fun.

[TIGERMOTH]

Former Marine A4 driver. Took my 14 yr old daughter to see Top Gun - the movie was driving me crazy! the comm bable mostly. My daughter told me to settle down as it's just a movie & if they didn't 'bable', I'd be the only one in the theater that knew what the hell was going on. I settled down & watched what became the best recruiting tool for Pensacola for several years.
Whiskey Mike

[the_once-and-future_king.]

To be fair, Jester should have been reprimanded for deliberately diving to the arbitrary hard deck simply because he didn't want Maverick to get a 'kill'. Unless it was a Soviet technique to fly into the ground rather than be shot down?

[scootskute]

My dad was a firefighter at the crash house at NASF while the original movie was being filmed. I remember going on base to visit him and I saw a very small blue jet that I had never seen before. I asked my dad about it and he explained that it was a camera jet, and they were making a movie with some young hot shot star.

Oh, and the flat spin happened about 15 seconds after we have a clear view of sand mountain, a convenient 300 miles from the nearest ocean beach, and about 500 from Miramar. I always laughed at how far he went while in a flat spin. That's the magic of movies. They film it hundreds of miles from the story's location and only the locals know. Basically, if you don't see the beach or palm trees in the shot, you are probably looking at Nevada.

[ajwilson]

My first thoughts when I watched "Top Gun" in the theatre release was, "How does "Maverick" get away with riding his Kawasaki Ninja in California without a helmet?" California was one of the first states with a mandatory helmet law, that came out in the '70's. I was enlisted Navy from '78 to '85 and just to enter SSC/NTC, North Island, or San Diego Naval Station you had to be wearing a DOT certified helmet. The Navy required helmets before the State of California.

[antoniog]

4:32 "Tower, there's some dork riding a motorcycle down the taxiway shaking his fist at us, and he's not wearing the appropriate safety vest." LOL

[watchyourtimeco]

"Why is Hollywood eating an orange on the flightline?"

That one made me lol