Talk:United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program/Archive 1

Rename

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

don't move. &mdash; Nightst a  llion  (?) 11:21, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

This needs to be "Top Gun". The name is not an acronym. Update: I can accept United States Navy Fighter Weapons School if that's it's official name. However, please note US Navy usage of "Top Gun": 162 "Top Gun" vs 43 "Topgun" or "TOPGUN". Also, it is well-established publishing practice not to capitalize things that are not acronymns or initialisms, regardless of the namer's preference. --Tysto 23:20, 10 March 2006 (UTC)


 * OPPOSE — the shorthand U.S. Navy notation for the Naval Fighter Weapons School at NAS Miramar, Calif. was/is "TOPGUN." If a move is necessary, it would be from TOPGUN to United States Navy Fighter Weapons School. Mustang dvs 19:11, 10 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Oppose - if it needs to be renamed should be to something like Top Gun (fighter weapons school) or to its full name United States Navy Fighter Weapons School. that way Top Gun can remain as a disambiguation page.


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The original TOP GUN instructor cadre were from squadron VF-121 at NAS Miramar, California. Below is a photo of these very experienced British and US Navy aviators. Should you have a question regarding the genesis of TOP GUN you can contact Vernon L. Jumper CDR USN Retired (F4 Combat Pilot, Instructor Pilot, LSO, Operations Officer) who flew F4's at NAS Miramar from 1961 to 1969. He was with VF-121 during those years, except while deployed to Yankee Station Vietnam with VF-21 as an F4 combat pilot and CAG LSO (USS Midway and USS Coral Sea combat cruises 1963 through 1966). At TOP GUN he flew adversary in the TA-4 Skyhawk, in addition to his other normal duties at VF-121. Vern Jumper - vjumper2@cox.net https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Original_TOP_GUN_Instructors_Cadre.jpg

F-21
TOPGUN never operated the F-21. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.65.24.33 (talk • contribs)

F-5
There's still F-5s operating out of NAS Fallon - here's a picture of one from summer 2005 -. I would presume those F-5s are used for TOPGUN instruction, although the article implies that only F-16s and F-18s are in use. 170.130.6.10 21:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

That's because those F-5s are operated by VFC-13. Hence the "VFC-13" on the aircraft's spine. This is a reserve adversary squadron based at NAS Fallon. TOPGUN flies only the F-16A/B and F/A-18A/B.

Topgun patch
Using the patch from the movie seems out of place as lead image. Why not use real patch and relegate the movie patch to popular culture/movie reference?HJ 01:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

VF-121 Pacemakers
TOPGUN did not start off as VF-121 as the article states, rather it was part of it. VF-121 was the F-4 Phantom RAG unit for the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet, and existed well before TOPGUN came into fruition. Am amending the article to reflect this. Wikiphyte 15:27, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

USAF Fighter Weapons School beginnings?
This article is incorrect when it states that the USAF Fighter Weapons School was established as a result of the success of TOPGUN during Vietnam. The USAF Fighter Weapons School was established as such in 1954, thereby predating TOPGUN by several years.Double493 15:01, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

It's TOP GUN, not TOPGUN
Don't believe me? Examine the patch. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.177.10.97 (talk) 21:03, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

-NFWS patches do not say "Top Gun" in any form. Unofficial/Movie patches do use the term as two words. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.253.69.199 (talk) 06:02, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I was a Topgun instructor from 1984-87. I just re-checked the program from a change of command ceremony of 1 Aug 1986, and the squadron name is definitely written as one word. Will be happy to scan some of it if anyone is interested. It's also in all caps, but that is addressed elsewhere on this page. As further evidence, I personally took a call from the Tailhook Association (unofficial guardians of naval aviation heritage) after the movie came out and its title was two words, chastising us for not correcting that. But actually Paramount made it two words to deflect any potential licensing or other issues the Navy might raise -- which the Navy never did, to my knowledge. I'm sure that some Navy personnel, and even some Topgun instructors, wrote it as two words and continue to do so. But I would say the "correct" was was one word. Dave "Bio" Baranek, Bio@topgunbio.com. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TopgunBio (talk • contribs) 16:42, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

IT'S "TOPGUN," NOT "TOP GUN"
Further to the posting above, by the Topgun instructor, I can confirm that the original founding instructors of Navy Fighter Weapons School in 1969, including its first OIC, Dan Pedersen, use the term as one word, not two. The movie used two words, but the Navy favors a single-word term. The original Topgun patch created in 1969 did not use the term Topgun at all. It indicated only "Navy Fighter Weapons School." The final authority on this matter is the forthcoming memoir by Dan Pedersen, titled TOPGUN (Hachette Books, forthcoming March 2019). I have been fortunate to obtain a pre-publication copy of this important book, which settles the matter. Leftdefense (talk) 16:33, 18 October 2018 (UTC)Leftdefense

Missing from history
Not wanting to get into any flag-waving argument, and while the headline does seem a little exagerrated, this article does indicate an important contribution by British Fleet Air Arm pilots in the early days. Nick Cooper (talk) 13:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Single source book is not corroborated by any other history of TOPGUN. One of its claims (a two year gap in USN aerial victories) is demonstrably false.  Since the last aerial warfare the Brits had engaged in was the Battle of Britain, I'm sceptical...E2a2j (talk) 15:05, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * That last quip undermines the authority of your opinion somewhat, given that the BoB ended in October 1940, and RAF and FAA combat operations demonstrably did not end at that point, and of course both operated during the Korean War and the Suez operation. Nick Cooper (talk) 16:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)
 * Point taken; quip retracted; my apologies. I stand by my scepticism. Cheers.E2a2j (talk) 13:11, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * It would probably be wise to wait until someone has actually read the book in question - I suspect that there is more than a little journalistic jingoistic hyperbole at play in the Telegraph report. Nick Cooper (talk) 17:14, 27 March 2009 (UTC)
 * I've read it - Rowland White's "Phoenix Squadron" which mainly concerns itself with a flag-waving exercise by the FAA over Belize in order to discourage any thoughts of invasion on the part of Guatemala. He states pretty clearly that a South African-born FAA pilot (whose name escapes me ATM) was instrumental in establishing the methods used by the fledgling USN outfit.  White is a well-respected aviation writer (published by Bantam Press in hardback and Corgi in paperback), whose work is well-researched and well-provided with references. Mr Larrington (talk) 14:02, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
 * OK, now I'm at home and reunited with The Library, this is what White (who, it transpires is actually an amateur historian as his day job is as an editor with those well-known pedallers of bobbins, Penguin Books. Though the fact of his amateurism should have no bearing on the accuracy of his work, and if you find that hard to swallow, look up 1. Nazi fuck David Irving and 2. Len Deighton)) has to say on the matter.  The FAA officer in question was (then) Lieutenant Dick Lord who, on leaving the Royal Navy, returned to his native South Africa, joined the South African Air Force and rose to the rank of Brigadier General.  Lord was seconded as an instructor to VF-121 at Miramar in 1966.  The quoted material (in italics below) comes from pp. 58-61 of the Bantam Press hardback edition of Phoenix Squadron (ISBN 9780593054512 if the rather poor light in here has served my mincers adequately), published in 2009.


 * As he passed around the debriefing cubicles that surrounded the main room he listened in. No one teaching tactics was more revered than those pilots who'd killed MiGs in Vietnam.


 * 'All right kid, you fly like this,' Lord heard them say, 'because this is how I flew in Vietnam. And if you don't, they're going to bust your ass!'  Then in the next cubicle he'd here something completely different.


 * All right kid, you fly like this',' Lord heard them say, 'because this is how I flew in Vietnam. And if you don't, they're going to bust your ass!'  There was no clear, consistent message.
 * [...]
 * For the debriefing following his first sortie as an instructor, Lord asked for coloured chalk. On the AWI [Air Warfare Instructor] course at Lossie, after every engagement he scribbled down headings, speeds, who did what, when, where errors were made.  Then, in the debrief after sortie, he could re-create the flight on the blackboard, pick it apart in detail and learn from it.  It took the ego and subjectivity out of it - stopped a debrief just becoming a pissing contest.  Now using the same techniques at Miramar he pointed out his students' errors and explained how and where he'd gained an advantage.  And he soon found out that his debriefs were starting to get crowded.  Don McIntyre, boss of the air-to-air section of VF-121, noticed it too and asked him to write a revised ACM [Air Combat Manoeuvring] syllabus for the whole squadron and tour the West Coast bases lecturing US Navy attack pilots on ACM.


 * Lord threw himself into it and, in early 1968, was slipped a dusty file marked 'Top Secret: For US Eyes Only' containing USAF Major John Boyd's work on energy manoeuvrability. Shot through with mathematical formulae as it was, he could see why the report had been gathering dust.  But Lord stuck with it and realised it was gold dust.  Boyd has used graphs to illustrate the performance envelopes of different fighters.  By overlaying one graph with another, Boyd's work would show you exactly where your own aircraft's advantage lay.  And exactly where your weaknesses were to be found.  Lord added it to his teaching, amused that he was now lecturing on something he wasn't even allowed to read.
 * [...]
 * In the summer of 1968, Dick Lord left Miramar to become the Royal Navy's pre-eminent weapons and tactics instructor, the Air Warfare Instructor of 764 NAS itself. But his legacy at Miramar was there for all to see in the standardisation, organisation amd rigour of the new VF-121 tactics course.  A couple of months after Lord returned to the UK, Lieutenant Commander Dan Pederson USN, the squadron's Operations Officer, became the first CO of the Navy Fighter Weapons School.  NFWS was soon dubbed 'Topgun'.
 * [...]
 * Topgun wasn't consciously modelled on the Royal Navy's Air Warfare Instructor's Course, but the similarities were pronounced, and Pederson was quick to acknowledge Lord's contribution - he'd attended some of the Fleet Air Arm pilot's lectures himself. Dick Lord's work at the VF-121 Tactics Group was the foundation in which Pederson and the original eight Topgun instructors built their course.  One of the eight, John Nash, maintained that the month-long course was 'nothing more than an extended course of the RAG tactics syllabus'.  And, of course, Lord had written that syllabus.
 * [...]
 * Dick Lord's parting gift to Miramar was a typed fourteen-page document he called 'Flying and Fighting the Phantom'. It was a distillation of all he'd learned about the jet in his time in the tactics group.  Copies were handed out to every single VF-121 student on his arrival at Miramar.  It was also sent to McDonnell-Douglas, the Phantom's manufacturer.  They were sufficiently impressed to quote from it on the opening page of the F-4's operating manual, known as NATOPS:


 * To be successful in the fighter business the aircrew must, first and foremost, have a thorough background in fighter tactics. They must acquire an excellent knowledge of all their equipment.  The they must approach the problem with a spirit of aggression, and with utter confidence.


 * It sat alongside just one other quotation, And that was from Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron: the most famous fighter pilot who's ever lived.


 * I'm fed up with trying to make this format acceptably, and it's nearly time for CSI: Miami. Make of the above what you will, but it seems pretty clear that, if White and/or his sources are to be believed, Topgun was based on Stuffs created by Lieutenant Dick Lord of the BRITONS' Fleet Air Arm. Hurrah for BRITAIN and Brenda's Royal Navy! Mr Larrington (talk) 20:12, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

1. That the USN expertise (in aerial warfare) was largely the result of British aid. 2. British pilots, all graduates of a Scotland air warfare school; taught the US how to win back the skies in North Vietnam. 3. At that point (of victory?) the school was crowned "Top Gun." 4. The British taught US pilots how to write on their knee pads while flying (wasn't this done well before the Vietnam War?). 5. They did this training at Miramar without their government knowing it? 6. If their Prime Minister knew about this "training", he'd be upset about it? 7. US pilots did not have experience with the F-4 Phantom until the British taught them? With the remark, one can't teach experience. (Is the Phantom a British airplane? Did the British extensively use the F-4 Phantom in war, and are combat veterans teaching Americans?). 8. The British have pride in viewing the film "Top Gun" as they know they are responsible for it's creation.
 * It could possibly be the film "Top Gun" that's being addressed; a Rowland White apparently wrote a book, and an ARTICLE mentions the following (concerning the book?):

If those above statements are true, then "maybe" it's a "self published" book, written by an author who is longing for the glory days of Britain's past. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.2.62.58 (talk) 22:24, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Have just listened to the BBC interview that has been linked to the article and it is pretty obvious that the British DID NOT contribute anything to the creation and formation of TOPGUN. "Haggis", the ex-RN instructor even admits this himself as he came aboard Miramar in 1972, a few years AFTER Topgun was created. Am going to remove the texts and references from the article because they are simply not true. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.130.103.206 (talk) 06:30, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The text you deleted doesn't say anything about "creation and formation," just the claim that the, "early school was influenced," by the British pilots. 1972 is only three years after the creation of the schools, so "early" is still valid, and it would be arrogant in the extreme to claim that the Americans could have learned nothing from the British who were already graduates of the FAA Instructors schools. Nick Cooper (talk) 13:01, 24 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Dick Lord's obit in the Telegraph.GraemeLeggett (talk) 07:14, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

It seems pretty consistent with a common theme that the British will always seek to take partial or complete credit for the formation or training of nearly any special military unit or school. Examples include, "The SAS were the basis for all special forces in the world, the British Commandos trained the American Rangers, the SEALs are trained by the SBS, etc, etc..." I'm really not sure why they are so obsessive with it, but they are. Don't believe me? Just look at their media. It is determined to give the impression that the British are the best, and desperately attempt to make it seem as if Americans acknowledge that, even if it means distorting the comments or speeches. Examples include:


 * The wording from the Telegraph article regarding the Top Gun school: "American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British ...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."
 * Thank goodness the British arrived to save us from imminent disaster! They single-handedly showed up and built us an air-combat instruction school.


 * Or perhaps the headline from The Sun & The Telegraph regarding General David Petraeus' speech. "Brits are best says US leader...US military leader General David Petraeus said British soldiers are the world's best and the SAS are "absolutely spectacular."  In fact, the actual phrase Petraeus said was "It's what sets forces in the UK - and I'd argue the US and a handful of other countries - apart from all others in the world."

When you have a media like that that consistently distorts reality to reenforce the idea of superiority, it's no wonder you have so many Brits on the internet going around making such outlandish claims.ForwardObserver85 (talk) 06:02, 15 September 2013 (UTC)

NO BRITISH CONTRIBUTION TO TOPGUN PER SE
The idea that the British had any hand in this highly classified wartime project that was Topgun has been disclaimed even by the British who were there at the time. VF-121, the Phantom Replacement Air Group (or Fleet Replacement Squadron), had numerous foreign exchange pilots attached to it. Some of these were Brits. Their senior guy for a time was Dick Lord. But these gents, for all their contributions to the RAG, had no involvement with Topgun. The author Rowland White has confirmed this and apologized for any notion that his book suggested otherwise. The British claim is based on a UK newspaper misreading his book (not understanding the difference between VF-121 and the Navy Fighter Weapons School, basically). There had been much good-natured joking between the U.S. founders of NFWS and the Brits who's served in the RAG. The latter are embarrassed and apologetic. The former no longer really incensed, but amused. The press will typically get things like this wrong, not understanding the military. Leftdefense (talk) 16:37, 18 October 2018 (UTC)Leftdefense

"In popular culture"
I notice a distinct lack of mention of the movie. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's interested in what the real TOPGUN is like compared to what I've been told through a movie. The article does a good job in clearing up a few miss conceptions, but I still think a 'In popular culture' section is warranted. KristianLyngstol (talk) 23:55, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

2015 News - Will evolve Changes/Adds at the TOPGUN facility
see this article: http://news.usni.org/2015/01/19/navy-build-aegis-trainers-surface-warfare-officers-topgun Once this occurs and is implemented, there will certainly be impact, perhaps changes to TopGun. Wfoj3 (talk) 18:26, 25 January 2015 (UTC)