EDIT: Just realized my editor used the wrong image in the beginning! This is a reaction to Top Gun NOT Top Gun Maverick (that is already recorded though and will be next!)

What would my call sign be?! Lite is obviously an option, but I also feel like it would be related to crying 😅

Pilot here.  The F14 had a flat spin issue.   In a normal spin, the nose is pointed down, both wings are stalled, but one is in a deeper stall than the other, or one is stalled and the second is still producing lift.   If the Center of Gravity is too far aft, it can cause a flat spin where the plane is spinning in an upright position (nose on the horizon, and the plane is just falling).   Bad bad news unless you can get the nose down.  Air isn’t going over the control surfaces at an angle where they are useful and you can’t recover.


The canopy was designed to discharge up, and because in 99.999% of cases where it was used, the jet is still traveling forward at a few hundred knots, by the time, a Half second later, that the seat rockets fire, the canopy would be clear….in this case, falling straight down, the canopy was hovering right over the cockpit when the seat rockets fired.

Four decades later, and we all still shed tears for Goose!

Goose's death gets everyone... even 30 years on after seeing the movie 100 times.  RIP Mother Goose.

This is the movie I took my girlfriend to at the drive in on our first date.  She is my wife now and has been for 37 years now.  Love this movie and always will.

This movie was funded by the United States Navy as a recruitment tool. It worked, Navy recruitment intake went up 80%. Everyone wanted to strap themselves to a steel Dragon.:face-green-smiling:

As someone who served on a flight deck and deployed to support ground forces, that opening credit scene always gets me crying. It was an experience.

The 2nd pilot (the one in Goose's seat) is the RIO (Radar Intercept Officer). They do all the scanning radar and other tactical systems. The HARD DECK is the simulated ground in basic terms. They allow for safety thousands of feet, but flying into the hard deck would be a loss or death in a simulation.

Saw Top Gun in the theater when I was a freshman in high school & there wasn’t a dry eye there when Goose died.  If you don’t tear up in that scene you ain’t human

The open hand hug is a more emotional connection hug vs the closed fist being a brotherhood/bonding kind of hug.

To emphasize how dangerous a flat spin is... Art Scholl was one of the best aerial stuntmen, and he died when his plane crashed filming for that flat spin scene for this movie. RIP

This was hands down the best reaction to this movie. The ejection reaction was so visceral I teared up on your behalf.

"Give me a call, I'll fly with you" Hits hard every time.

This is my mom's favorite movie and thank to it she has the biggest crush on Tom Cruise.

When Maverick came out I took her to the midnight showing and she was so excited she was actually crying before we got to the theater. Core memory right there.

No CGI in the 80s, all the flights were real. This is the movie where Tom Cruise learned to fly WWII and 80s fighter jets, which he purchased and owns to this day. Great reaction.

Fun Fact: Kelly's hair was up and under the hat because she had already grown her hair out and dyed it dark for her next role and the elevator scene was added during post-production

Fun Fact:  The US Navy allowed the Top Gun film crew to fire only TWO actual missiles for the filming of this movie.  They set up several camera pods on the fighter jets themselves as well as on multiple nearby "chase planes" to record multiple angles of them firing these two missiles.  Because of these multiple angles, the film editors we able to splice together the footage in several different ways so each of missile shots in the final battle in the film look unique.

Holy cow, based on this reaction to the first movie, you are going to absolutely LOVE Top Gun Maverick !

15:19 the hard deck is a simulated elevation when you were doing combat training. It essentially means that at 10,000 feet you have hit the ground. They do it in the military for safety reasons. In this case, Maverick went below the hard deck meaning that he crashed his plane in combat simulation.

Now she can watch Hot Shots! (1991) 😁👍
(that's a Top Gun spoof)