Good evening. I am Lauren Rosenberg with smithsonian associates. I would like to welcome you to this program. To our members, its your support that makes events like this possible. If you are joining for the first time, and equally warm welcome and invitation to explore the wide range of programs we offer. Now is the perfect time to talk off your cell phone or anything that may make noise. This past march marked the 50th anniversary of the u. S. Navy fighter weapon program. We welcome the programs founder, dan pederson. He formed he served in combat during the vietnam war with a flying crew on the uss hancock and three on the uss enterprise. He retired as a captain, having accumulated 6000 flight hours and 1000 flight carrier landings with 39 different types of aircraft. For those of you who know his story from the 1986 movie top gun, Jerry Bruckheimer is producing a sequel in 2020. His book is available for purchase and signing. Here to keep the conversation going is larry burke, curator of u. S. Naval aviation at the museum. Please welcome dan pedersen and larry burke. Are you ready to go . Im going to take about 10 minutes and set the stage for larry and i and final preparation for the questions coming from you. How many of you have actually read the book . Good. That really gives me free play. [laughter] except for a couple of squadron mates back here to keep me honest. I will tell you how the book came about. The 50th anniversary on the third of march of this year top gun was conceived on that date 50 years ago. Tells you something about how old i am. Jim hornfisher, who is my literary agent, has four best sellers of his own. He came to me along with the famous condor, who you see in the pictures. They said we are getting close to 50 years, its time to put the legacy in writing. Somebody over there says, we started top gun and then the americans took it over. That would ruffle your feathers, which it did. We have been fighting back and forth over time. I happen to be the one who is drafted by the original guys, because i was a senior i ended up being the boss man during the initial phase of this. We will get to how it was done and who did it shortly. One of the benefits of writing this book was it allowed me to think back. I do a comparison with what i know today. I compare what i see. I think i did a pretty fair job based on the reaction of the book and the reviews. One of the things i was most proud of was the reviews we had gotten. I started out working two jobs going to college, like everybody in those days was doing. Four world war ii squadron. And heres the first good one. I was working for a chief name brown. He was my mentor. Mentor is a keyword youre going to hear a lot. I got his coffee whenever i wanted. He spent enormous amount of time teaching me how to maintain those airplanes. Not down here. I do make mistakes. We were in the first jet squadron. Mentor number two. Twin cockpit front and back. He said you are learning to be a jet engine mechanic chief men over my shoulder every minute watching me. I went flying a few times in the backseat. The first jet airplane i had ever been in. I thought, boy do i love this. Over the course of a few months, he said you are really pretty good at it. I didnt land very well. I could flight pretty good. Fly it pretty good. He said, would you consider going to Flight Training if i help you to take the exams and prepare you. I talked to my folks and my folks said thats an honorable provision, we really support that. A long story short there. 1956 and 57, 18 months, i did really well. The lieutenant set the stage, he later went on to be head of the fbi. What a great man. Then we come out in employee training. We had some amazing good grades and i ended up with roommates in north highland. The squadron was amazing when i got there. I know we were very close. We had a lot of world war ii guys who were seniors in that squadron. Mentor number three. Howard found the japanese at the battle of midway. We were surrounded by great talent from world war ii in that first fiveyear squadron. We had 60 airplanes, four different kinds. We stay home, drink a little whiskey and take care of mama and the kids. So they did and they encouraged us to fly. This is a key point of where you are today in america. We had all the flight time we could handle as young pilots. Thats not true today. I can talk more about it later on. Success from that day on, mentoring is a reason. I dont think intuitively i ever ultimately knew what i was capable of doing. I think i was being exposed to great americans. Geno valencia had 23, 28 victories and world war ii. He was ready to rest a little bit. But his enthusiasm carried over to five or six of us in that squadron. It was good. From that squadron, we had probably 1500 hours more than any of our contemporaries because of the abundance of flying that we had in those states, and the only way you really get good in Tactical Aviation is to fly a lot. It is not an airline flying. It is combat flying. You have to center your mind to. It that is my background. I went on from there doctor larry knows. Weve had time together. You know was a good bit of it. We can ask questions and will take questions from the audience. I have a stack, youre probably more than i need. Well see how it goes. I do want to back up a little bit. Is there anything in your background that led you to join the navy in the first place . Was it something you always wanted to do or was it something you just kind of when i got exposed, and that lieutenant smacked me in the back and that airplane the first time, after four or five times youve got to remember in those days, airlines were not airliners. They werent fancy but they were jets. It was brand new and exciting. Those of you who are flying. I know there are a couple of aviators here. It is hard to explain to people who have not been there how absolutely beautiful flying can be. Combat may not be, but flying over the United States i came across california yesterday, and i had a window seat. It was one of those days where i got to look out all the way across the continent and i thought, my gosh, what a beautiful country we live in. Exposure to it. I am of the personality that i loved it. I would go back and do every single day if i was young. Unfortunately time wrapped me. I hope they give you an answer. You already sort of mention you go from there, you go to basic training in pensacola florida. You absolutely love that. It was essentially a boot camp, basic Flight Training. Then you go to interpreter you go on to advanced. If you do well you get tactical jets and you have to realize, particularly for the ladies there was not, other than korea, there wasnt a lot of mail expertise and flying tactics. It was something new and really exciting. In advance screening i got to fly the same if twos. I that geno valencia and these guys, armstrong. They had flown in korea. Its a ticket ride every day. And they pay you to do it. That is why. I think i was born to do it. I enjoyed it that much. Long winded answer. laughs regarding the panther, you started out as a prop trainer and basic. You went to, the tv to . No no. That was not stage it was not a typical airplane. We flew a tee 28 after that. Then of course i want to advanced training in texas. They bring you along pretty fast. Six months. And six months he will cover the spectrum airplanes. If you are good and safe, youve got to live through it, remember that. You have to live through it. I think when i finally got out of the navy, i think of the original 17 guys in my class. Seven of us were still up and kicking. In those states we did not have a lot of jet experience. Maintenance was not nearly what it was or what it is today. Could you just Say Something a little bit more about your first experiences in the panthers . This is the first time you are getting into a frontline aircraft by the book. The ftoo, you could see where the bullet holes had been covered over. Airplanes were repainted. It was just dynamite. It was a totaly ticket ride. You are flying by yourself for the first time. And there is more thrilling than that nothing more thrilling. Oh i like guns. The guns are the primary weapons of choice today. 50 years later. And they always have been. Sadly when you read the book and find that the fforehead never had a gun, washington decided not put a gun and the airplane. I could have saved so many guys on the ground from being p. O. W. s. I got called in a couple times when they got shot down and captured by the guy on the ground. If i had a gun. I had no other weapon in the airplane. That was the downside. Sorry. Its a dynamite to fly. You described a couple of instances and advanced training, really reinforcing the fact that you are on your own. Would you care to tell our audience the dallas . In a division, you fly a wedge if you will. Part of the syllabus was to go to dallas recast there, and fly back down to be ville. It was only several hundred miles, three and a half hours by car. In an airplane doing 450 to 500 miles an hour, it is a handful, particularly and die light. There wasnt any weather, like the weather today. We went and we had about 600 foot overpass overcast. We were four of us trying to keep track of each other. We flop the lead back and forth and we are going up to dallas and we are doing pretty good, except coming back. We come back and we are probably a bit misaligned on the exact track coming back to be. Bill all of a sudden between me and my winnie, is the tower. The tower, we later found out was 1500 feet. And we were cruising along 500 feet just below the classic. That think went by so fast. The red light really caught my eye. I said that is a reality check. laughs it is a dangerous business. And a lot of things you can plan for it. And thats the only one knowing my age but remember radio range when we used to fly radio range before you had all the modern technology we had today. You have to be able to fly in the soup and navigate using just code, just code letters. In 18 months of training i got it down. I got disoriented, and it was just terrible. No excuse, youre a naval aviator is supposed to be able to do these things every single time. And i didnt. And i got it down. Grab a cup of coffee with my instructor. I thought this is not good, you are in trouble. The first one i had 18 months. With a good lesson of humility there. I took that with me quite a ways beyond that day and paid dearly for it. I made it through, got orders. Three at north island. We were going to go to old weather Fighter Squadron three next. What was it that made the squadron so unusual . It was all veterans. We probably had the best flight leader. We were broken into four different flights. We probably had the four best instructor pilots, leaders that i ever flew with. It was, when you fly one or twice a day or as often as you feel like it, truly thats what we did. You are around these guys with alert watches, working for the air force in a hokey mission. Somebody in those days we had to do it. And we got good at it. We won the awards every year that we had that duty. The benefit of the young ones like me and an abundance of why and our mentors and teachers were all the cream of the cream of the crop from the second world war. Thats what we ought to be doing today. We need to mentor more young ones in todays naval aviation. Therein lies part of the story of top gun. Did you ever find out how this loan Navy Squadron became to be part of norad . No. I didnt care as long as i got to fly. Im not much of a politician. The other thing is you were flying, nicknamed the ford because of that designation. What was that like . That was the hot rod of the day. That was fun, challenging. Never in the history of my flying career i never flew anything and thats why learned to dogfight. In the book it describes a place where it was illegitimate. It was the only way we could keep dogfighting alive back in57,58 and59. People were trying to revert back to missiles and radar and all the magic stuff. We go out and dogfight. We would have gotten courtmartialed. But we were pretty quiet guys. When you know youre doing something you probably shouldnt be doing. Im not sure that our bosses didnt look the other way a lot. Which brings us to something. The other thing about the f4d is it had a lot of guns but not a lot of rounds. It was primarily intended to use guided missiles, which were just coming into services at this point. Rockets, at that point they had 2. 75 rockets on them. If you doubt my statement and mentality you change they took off all the gun ports. And they eventually just covered them all. Even in that day and that time, we never got to use the guns. We never got to fire guns. We won the all navy weapons next year. Were you with them on that cruise . He had an engine failure. He was as good as they got back in the days. Sometimes you roll the dice and you dont win. Makes me nervous. What about it makes you nervous . Its an art. All of you. Its an art to dogfight. We come up with some sayings. One of them secondplace was dead last. Chances are you are in a parachute or worse. The movie did it in justice in that regard. It painted us as a bunch of cowboys. My original guys for all phds at least intellectually they had two combat tours in vietnam. They were the seven best i knew. In those days, we include the israelis. I put that in writing. His wife gave me a big kiss. But mel was that good. I enjoy telling you about this, larry. What makes a guy that good . Maybe its a godgiven talent. But mel would strapped in the f4. He had that kind of perception. The airplane became one with him. I picked top gun. He redefined the envelope of the f4. He knew that airplane. I got a lot of trouble, because we flew that airplane way beyond. We never killed anybody, we never wrecked an airplane. Pretty soon the kill ratio goes from two to one in vietnam. 21 is a reason after five years of war topgun got started. To the end of the vietnam war, top gun was going strong. Guess what the end kill ratio was . 241. Thats a whole lot better. You can hold your head up high when you get out of the airplane. Anyhow, im sorry. Well come back to it. You sort of brought this up, flying beyond the ford and what it was meant to do, one of your themes was the bean counters restricting what is possible. You write about the fact that the navy actually restricts or prohibits combat maneuvering, dogfighting, so not to put strain on the aircraft. And combined with this idea that it is all going to be missiles, you go up and shoot up the seekers, the sidewinder and the sparrow, and they will be Long Distance shots. Do you think this practice of hassling grew out of the restriction . Those guys knew because they had been there. You are not going to publicly tell washington what she really thinks. Probably an authority for here. We listen to those guys. Theyve been there, or congratulate whatever you want to say. It worked. Stressing the airplane, air combat maneuvering, dog fighting, the way that works. I described in detail in the book for you. My wife even understood. Two guys go up alongside area 51 or, correction, four out of a restricted area out there. You find eight, ten airplanes. Everybody is getting along with each other. Breakaway. You do 500. Thats what real combat is like. And that is what real combat is like when you see the enemy. Currently and in vietnam, magnum era mandated the rules of engagement that we had to see the enemy before we could shoot them. That totally negates the concept of guided missiles because at that rate, 1000 miles an hour, the guy is pretty close to coming at you before you can identify him. So anyhow already. It does not work the way it is. That is one of the things i will just be candid right now. That is what is wrong today in some of the current fighting positions this country finds itself in. Weve got the wrong people writing rules of engagement. I do not trust the combat experienced leaders to set the rules of engagement. We are going to end up, i cant think of anywhere and the world, that we are not going to end the dock fighting when we try to go there or engage. Wherever the enemy happens to be, we will end up dog fighting. That is me, personally. Im going to try to skip through the next one quickly and get to the good stuff and not run out of time. From the ef3, you go to be f to 13 aboard the uss hancock. You are now flying the ef3 hd. The mcdonald. The foreigner to the four. It was a beautiful flying airplane but it had no power. When we first put him out on the fleet we killed five guys in one day. Out of japan, they happened to come down through the radar, not quite as good as it is today. They would come down through a thunderstorm. Lost five guys when slick afternoon. This is really interesting. What happened is the water would come in, and it would surround the engine, and when you cool metal, it tends to shrink. It would shrink around the turbans and the engines which sees so all the guys came down, went through a thunderstorm coming above the land and all the engines quit. Major fix. What they did is they just went in to get it repaired, they would cut a small amount off all the turnines turbine blades. You would lose a great deal of power. It scares you flying that thing. It is a beautiful airplane but so bad power wise. I told larry tonight, the phantom was so much better in a sense that it had power beyond anything i had ever flown. I flew an airplane at 2. 4 seven times the speed and she would heat up frictional heating of the air flow over the airplane. And the warning lights would come on. She would say, do not go faster. I do not like this and boy, i tell you. I would come on a burn and slow down. It had phenomenal power. That is why top gun worked. I will tell you more about that. So you go to your next tour at sea. It is with yet 92 sober canes, off to the uss enterprise. And the enterprise, you report on board the enterprise and go to the yankees station vietnam. What was your experience in vietnam . 1967 i joined the squadron miramar very briefly. And then 1 21 teaching tactics. Lock of the draw, i ended up in the four eight squadron with the leader. The man i respect most and combat probably kept me alive a couple of times. His name is snake but nobody calls him that. We call him skiing. What made him such a great leader was a phenomenal natural ability, charismatic man. Whenever the hard missions, oh no. I shut that thing off. I told her not to call. Me laughs . Forgive me, please. Anyhow, he had programs quietly bringing the young guys up. He never put anybody into combat situations that was going to get him hurt until they were ready. Ive had some experiences, i dont know if i have time to tell you about them. But i love that man. I was with him i was not with him on this mission, but he is in there wandering around in vietnam. He gets shot. A rifle got him through both legs. It went through the fleshy part of his leg and so, being the cool lombardi is, he brings leg restraints, we had leg restraints to keep your legs from flaring. So he braces them up. Puts them above the wound and meeks tourniquets. He flew 150 miles back to the carrier on the carrier landing. The medics bring him out of the airplane. Iran up there to see him. They lifted him out of the airplane, put him into surgery. Two weeks later to the day he was back flying in vietnam with us. That is my measurement of real leadership. Ive got Better Stories than that about him. Go ahead. Im sorry. No that is fine. Just as a bit of background, and we have sort of talked about this, i just wanted to put it all together for our audience that again, part of this idea that the navy had at the time that it was all going to be Straight Line flying and firing and longrange guided missiles, protecting the United States or protecting the carrier crew, and you find yourself in a very different war in vietnam where you are prevented from shooting anything until you can usually identify your enemy. Key point right there. You design an airplane as an interceptor to shoot missiles. Youve got to different kinds of radar in the airplane. You paid for it incidentally. When you get out there, the rules of engagement are so stringent. Lbj, you cannot fire your weapons because the rules of engagement are mandated. If you break them, they will courtmartial you. We just kind of went along with it. But god, that is why it did not work. So top gun, frank all. It is the start of top. 1967, i came back on the enterprise having experienced my best crews of my life with, and i am teaching at 1 21. Teaching a tactics face with 15 guys. Those were some pretty good drivers. Really good sticks. The 1 21 for you audience, this is where you are training everyone who is about to go out. For the force. 1600 enlisted guys. Weve got over 100 airplanes, and they were going night and day, some of them getting wasted out in vietnam. We would have a replacement airplane. Frank on, uss, the great frank altwrites a 400 page report, unsolicited, he is so fed up with it. He sends the report back to washington. We had some great people in washington during the war, but they were all like mcnamara. That is as close as i will get to politics. They were controlled by people they could not do what they wanted to do. But, they said, and one of that 400 number of recommendations and the 400 pages was two things. We have got a good get well program done very rapidly and we need to rethink the side winder missiles that do not work. It shot over 600 of them and they had less than 10 success rate. Those were expensive. So, we knew it was going to come back right back at us. Came the 1 21, tactics face, they offered the job to me. 60 to 90 days, you can have first class. This is graduates cool. This is above and beyond what they have been teaching the whole time. How do you put a Teachers College for teachers how do you put it and you got to be credible. If we were not credible, they would have never believed us. When you stand up in your at the podium. You better pack the gear and the information better be tactically better than the guys you are lectured to know. Youve got 90 days to do it. I handpicked you saw appear. They were brant. The only thing, everybody says what did you learn from the israelis. The only thing the israelis taught me was how to pick your people based on their intuitive or academic background, technically. I did that with every one of these guys. Jimmy, who you see out there. Many people know him in washington. Brilliant man. He knew more about the ffor radar and the missiles, and he took that job on with a guy named walley. Three months later, they were teaching away a firing. Mehl and i did the air bananas, instead of fighting in a horizontal we used all of the power the ffor had. And it worked and every guy including, we had no building, no classrooms, we had nothing. He says, just dont kill anybody and do not wreck my airplanes because i had to borrow airplanes in order to have put a flight syllabus together. So the first thing we did was, we needed a place to meet and write and study and talk. So a guy named steve smith just a dynamic personality guy. He says i will do anything. He would make a list every morning. I said steve, we have got to find room to have the classroom and have an office kind of place. So he is wandering around on friday afternoon. It is in the book. Youll just break up reading about it. Coming down the street he sees this big crane. It has got this 40 foot by 20 foot building. It is an old salvaged it would be destroyed. He talked to Civil Service crane operator into bringing it down on friday afternoon with the case of scotch. It cost me a case of scotch to get them going. laughs so over the weekend steve had them delivered new flooring. So we put new floor in it, repainted the outside. An atrocious red. I said steve why the color . He said nobody will ever think we stole it. It was painted red so anyhow that is how we started. That is not in the book. laughs . You think about the time 50 years ago. No computers, no laptops, no cellphones. We had a couple of typewriters. Fighter pilots do not type very well. Let me tell you. We would burn up to xerox machines making copies of the curriculum that we had. We rewrote he entire air combat maneuvering. We incorporated mcdonalds top manual we we wrote each individual flight profile and how it was going to be conducted. I wrote the mandated safety requirements because i knew if we killed anybody or wrecked an airplane i had to borrow the dam airplanes. If it did not work, school is over. So it worked. Every guy pitched in. I make the statement. I get to write a book. I get the credit. I wrote a book a good book. I get to go on fox news and do all the pr work making the book go. The book is a legacy to all of the top gun guys 560 of them on may 1st this year the 50th reunion and san diego. We had 42 skippers there. Were they good . We have a four star admiral in the mix. Weve got five or six three star admiral weve counted two stars. But those who got out of the navy actually made a real success of their civilian life. I am really proud of them. All of them. As you can tell. That had we not had any single guy. Had he not been part of the equation in the beginning it would not have gotten done jimmy laying, you see pictures in the injection. Jim lang each acted twice over there. He shot him in down, and the other one inches in the picture for those of you who have been around. He was general of the airplanes. The call sign went smash. He got a silver star for saving jim langs life in North Vietnam. The brotherhood the brotherhood is real. It exists today it was in san diego. You see them after 50 years and the only reason the school has gone on and grown to what it is, internationally now they have a reputation bar none. Its up in falin that if you get up in rio. Go and see. It belongs to you. You paid for it. Theyve got their problems right now with politics. Same business. Its almost gone full circle from when we started. That airplane maybe you dont really want, we dont know how to use, but we wont go much into that. It worked. The school worked because of the individual. And here is my last comment. It is not the airplane or the Weapons Systems that winds and come back. It is the individual. It is the man or the woman driving the airplane who is professionally excellent at what they are doing. Not in the way we buy airplanes anymore. Anyhow that is my billy graham for the night. So you come back. You are at 1 21. Youre shown the report. Ceo says i want you to take this. But we have no facilities. We have no money. We have vague and struck shun that the navy should establish a school and teach fighter tactics. What is your rank at this point . Im lieutenant commander. 31 years old. My youngest guy was the famous condor. He was 22. We had to combat cruises under his belt. Jimmy lang had to. Mehl had to. We all did as a matter of fact. Common trait among these guys is deadly serious about what they were doing as professional naval aviators. There was nothing of what you saw in the movie. The top gun guys in 1985, they did the flying for the movie, but my guys, for phds at least, the schedule was so tough. Now, they dont believe us. We finished at a club and had a beer together and critiqued many of the guy slept in their cars. There wasnt any bunkroom. We go wake them up. We would start the next morning at 4 30 every morning. But when you are dealing and human life, the only reason the schools started, the only purpose we had in everything we were doing was, guys are still fighting every day in vietnam and they are losing. They are losing because they were trained the wrong way. So the sooner we can get it all packaged and back out there. That is what our students were doing. They would go teach the squadrons and the new tactics. If i may it is an important point to make. I dont have infinite wisdom. It was a collective work of eight guys. But, one thing we pulled off thanks to vx for. The techs swatch and. We got access to the mace. Up in dream land area 51. When i went up there we, did not know where we were going. The next thing i know i am in a transport going somewhere in an air force transport. They parked the airplane. We get out and look around. I had never seen this place before i and going in the hanger, there is beautiful silver mix. A fire half hour later, test pilot vx for, he says come on, lets go flying. He climbs and one puts meighen sets up on a front canopy looking over and says, dont worry about the instruments. As long as they are green everywhere. laughs try that went on. So anyhow 30 minutes after we landed, strapped in a mug and we are rolling on the runway. The hardest thing of flying is the taxing. I wont get into it. But it is very difficult. Do not mistake the engineers. We got the validate the tactics. That we had all come up with against the real thing. Graduation day the first class i say ive got a surprise for you i put him on an airplane and said follow me we went up to area 51 we took on mix and briefed, it was the real thing. I will not tell you what they said, but jeez, where did these guys come from . They get to prove their knowledge if you will. Nice way of putting it. So anyhow we validated the tactics. The last bit of that story is a man shot down the force mace after top guns graduation it was the first victory we had. He now owns a bed and Breakfast Hotel over in scotland and he came to the reunion and told the story of the whole thing. I he was pretty happy about it. Top gun has been established in 1969 your first classes out there. Your first test comes in 1972, the first time you get to see what happened. 1972 in vietnam, the north Vietnamese Army launches a massive attack on the south. President nixon authorizes operation linebacker. Now the navy in the air force are going to go in and bomb places in North Vietnam previously offlimits. Also changes the rules of engagement. How did that go . It went as a rapidly up 24 to one. The tactics worked, the guys got their momentum back and their pride back. You have to risk your butt every day. If you dont have pride in what you are doing and confidence you are not going to do well. We did well. The students went out and taught their own squadrons. In the squadrons did really well. Most of us had and moved on. Gonna get some questions . I have one or two. I want to get you before we get to the questions. You stayed interested in what was going on since you have set it up. You are interested in the success of this thing you created. How has it changed since you founded it . That is a beautiful set up up there. A lot of airplanes. The young guys. I was up there in may for a day. When you watch them fly, they are so good. Intellectually, they have picture board up there. It goes across row after row after row of instructors. This is part of the best collection of photography you will ever see. They are absolutely the best of the best. We like to think we were good. Go up there and watch these guys after that. The only problem is there walking the fence politically to try to keep everybody happy and keep up with the new, sophisticated airplanes. This is a pretty big challenge. You mentioned that you and your other original bros mostly loved the 1986 top gun movie . Eh. It is mixed . I had someone say to me other night hey maverick. I said dont call me maverick. The navy had a backlog in pilot training. It was that sensational. The top gun guys in 1985 did the flying for the movie. All of that was good. I love the music, personally. The rest of it was hollywood glitz. I am worried about the new picture. I did not have a thing to do with the new picture. The last thing i have for you before we turn it over to the crowd, and your final chapter, you say there are some fundamentals about fighting in the air that never really changes. You implied these were lost after the second world war. You had to rediscover them for top gun. My guys had all of them individually great egos but you could not let them fight each other. If they fought each other and we lost one, there would not be a school. That is true today. Great satisfaction in the bros. These guys are in the picture. The four of us are so proud to be together. The navy is a great profession. If you get the right mentoring, flying jets, that is a good way to go. The navy takes good care of you. I had a great career. I had a big supertanker. The same rules applied. Dont run it around, dont hit him with it. I went through Nuclear Power training. That was very difficult. Really tough math. I had the privilege of skip ring the ranger. Being skipper of the uss ranger. I had number seven. During eight years of cutting back, financially, they sold it for a dollar in scrap. You did not know that. That happened. The other day, i was up in new york and i was doing a tv appearance. I met a couple of interesting people. I talked one of them into trying to get some power going down here to name one of the new carriers ranger and carry on the tradition. Thank you so much for listening. We will go to questions. I am kind of longwinded. I was prepared if you were not. There are lots of Great Stories in this book that we did not have time to get to tonight. I encourage you to get your hands on a copy. We have a question down front. Thank you for your service and your great presentation. I was wondering how aware you were of what the air force was doing . At the time john boyd. How much costs crosspollination was there in terms of bringing back dogfighting . I know jon voight. He is a brilliant academic. He has been very influential in a lot of good airplanes. We did not have time. We had a couple of meetings with him. Nows argument always comes down. John boyd mels argument always comes down. John boyd always tries to think about what makes a great fighter pilot. They had a couple of meetings in front of big audiences. He says you cant quantify what the human being driving the airplane would be like. That is really true. The pilot is always a key factor that is whether this agreement was. We are friends. You can buy me a drink. Excellent presentation. I want you to make clear rumor. I will go back to top gun for a second. In parts of the movie you hear the guys in the room joke gust thing i ever saw, something along those lines. What i am asking is that i heard rumors that tom cruises character is essentially meant to randi cunningham. I heard that somewhere. I dont have any authority or knowledge to comment on that. What tom cruise does with his money and his movies is his business. As long as he does not hurt my navy. Yes maam . Thank you for your service. Thank you for a great story tonight. I appreciate the comments about mentorship. I am interested in how did you chose that first class. Did you get to choose the students . Were they nominated by commanders . That is a great question. First of all, if you want to multiply the benefit of it, you have to bring the best ones in. They have to go back and teach. They have to go back and teach like graduate level. Very quickly. We had to argue. Remember there was a war going on. Some opinionated guys are the squadron commanders. The ones out on the carriers. This young upstart group. We do not have great publicity or advertising of what we were doing at the beginning. We started calling around. Steve smith, i get him on the phone and i say finally find me students. He says ok. Some of the people he got he says what do you think that you know that we dont know . We are fighting a war. They hang up. We came to washington and we had one magic phone call from somebody in washington. When commander on the east coast and one on the west coast. All of a sudden, it changed. It was not a voluntary change. If youre going to do it, just get on with it. When the kills came and, in, top guns reputation grew. Everybody wanted to pick up what they had not been exposed to. Prior to going back. One in the back. Cant see you. One in the middle. Thank you, captain. Im joe gavin from the grammy family. I hope we have a few grumman people here today. My question is, around the late 70s, there was a refereed and monitored slide off between the f14 and the f15. What do you know about the results of that experience . Believe it or not, i try to stay out of the political. Im a big fan of grumman iron i miss your company very badly right now. It was a competitive factor. Grumman made great airplanes. Their reputation was good. Along came several others. You both you and i both know what happened on the 14 and a6. I dont think tonight is the night to go into that. I wish grumman was back and competing. It would not take 26 years to bring a new plan to fruition. That is all i will say. There is a question over here. There is one right here. The little gentlemen. With the microphone. Did the air force pilots participate in top gun or do they have their own program . The kill ratio went up to what i told you it was in vietnam. The air force, their senior leadership, they would not change the tactics. We brought him down to fly. The great general himself. I idolized him. Great pilot. He is living proof of what should have happened. They should have used someone like him and join right in. They later went on. After they got started, and you know about that im sure. And after they got started, the general who controlled them. He retired or something. But the air force came along and joined in with top gun. Today, i will not say they are joined at the hip, that they shared information. They are both american fighter schools. Theyre gonna end up sharing airplanes as they share information. I never said about word about air force. I dont know how many of you know the f or five southeast asia. They built 800 and some. Its one of the readings. We did a lot of research. He lost 340 something airplanes. 45 in vietnam. That is a tragedy. Those guys were as good as anybody in the world. Yes sir. Right here. Microphone, sir. Please. I salute you for all your service and i thank you for that. Previously you talked about putin being told you took the bullets out of the aircraft. Did they take the bullets out of the air craft . They give it to the infantry null to . I think hes asking about the comment you made earlier where the navy took the bullets and the guns out of the sky ray and hes asking if they took them out of the aircraft that were supporting, doing Ground Support in vietnam. Oh no. But you know, the navy never had gasoline gun. Its got sick centered rounds. You squeeze. And i guarantee you, even today, it is the weapon of choice in combat. I dont care whether i have any missiles. You give me that gun, from the carrier support ships. I will go anywhere. Particularly the reason i am against those again in the politics. Number one, they are too long to make, there are too expensive. All the whistles that are built into it overload the pilot. And combat. There he is. Active duty, right there. He just nodded. In combat, you do not look inside, otherwise you check your fuel gauge once in a while. You look inside, and the get you. So, no. I dont, youve got to look outside and what you do not see is what kills you. Ive got a friend and Flight Training. Theyre telling him now that he is the last generation. What are your thoughts on the . Manned planes. Then again, you get into the industry airplane, straws. Drones have a reasonable mission, a certain application to them. Im not sure that on a 30 plane strike i want somebody somewhere controlling the armed drone in the middle of this shooting missiles full. That strikes me wrong. You cant get hosed that way. That doesnt work. My point is. My point is, the pilot go on, the human will always be the key factor so on in a win and aerial combat. Some of you may not believe that. But take a look at the volume of an airplane and china or russia or north korea. Theyve got a lot of them. And we ought to have you do not want to find ourselves numerically inferior to any of those countries. Both our deterrence. I do not want anymore combat. I do not want it for you young ones. I do not want to see it again in my lifetime, i hope we never have it. But you have to have the deterrence. Youve got to have the ability. The other thing, one last thing. When as skipper ranger, i had 400 to 500 guys with me. Does anybody want to venture the average age . 19 somebody hit it right on the head 10 11 of them those beautiful moves. That is the greatest deterrent and the world. Dont let anybody tell you that theyre really vulnerable. In a group like this, if anybody wants to debate that with me, i can tell you how to disappear with an Aircraft Carrier. And it works every time. Given the weather, electronic signatures, running on two screws. Drop in mind, super tankers. People are putting up a lot of bravos year to sell our planes. I am sure they will find a good use for the drones are phenomenal for the groundwork but i do not personally want them on the aircraft. Good question. Yes. Followup question to what we are just talking about. The latest aircraft on board now is the joint strike force. He f 40 tour of 35 or Something Like that. Would you care to comment about how that aircraft compares with the current that we not have on our Aircraft Carriers . I will only tell you, i saw the day i was a bad falin. They had 100 missions that were flown. Airplanes from all over the world there. A little mix of everything. Let me tell you what they did. Skipper at top gun right now is just phenomenal young guy. Youth is where it is. His name is pops. I call him pops. That morning, all pilots met. The drew times and piece of paper. They all went around to do. This what that drawing was, was the drum a range time. They were going out to find somebody. They had no idea who it was. Whether if was and its 22 or f35 or and a five. I listened to a lot of the d briefs, and the hornet guys i do not particularly it is a great little airplane. A super hornet is. Theres a reason i did not like it. It would not stay there wasnt enough gas. But those guys in the Super Hornets went out and waxed the f22. They waxed a lot of the sophisticated airplanes that day. The taiwanese spot and 16s and hornet guys held their own. Naval aviators, i will put them in a simple reliable airplane. Read the last chapter. Quote. Simple, reliable, carrier maintenance guys are only 19 years old, and that is the abundance of them. A rely on the chiefs and the first class and the second class to maintain those airplanes. If you do not maintain them right you kill somebody. That is unacceptable. Right now, somewhere in this town, you are talking about keeping pilots in so they dont go out in with the airline. Let me tell you why pilots are getting up. For eight years theyre sequestered, and during the transition time now, they have not had any real flying. The guys at top gun i used to go up there and talked to pops. They get ten hours a month. That is enough to barely know what you are doing. There wasnt any money for flying. Now it is a lot better. When you look at and i told larry this earlier. Weve got 40 hours. 40 hours was enough, working as hard as we were. I could not handle much more physically. Family wise, i could not handle any more. I was never home. Condor, the great condor is its best month atop gun were 60 65, hours a month. Flying is a reason naval aviators stay in the service. Simple. Simple is better. Ultra reliable. If youre going to bonus anyone, bones the enlisted guy. I spent a good bit of guy as captain of an Aircraft Carrier talking to people about the poor enlisted guys with high hopes, with their kids and had no money. That is not the america i know. We are dress pretty good and drive nice cars. We ought to be able to take care of the guys that are maintaining these big expensive airplanes. That is my second billy graham for the night. I think we have time for one more question. Excuse me. 85 to 87. I saw these great pictures appear. I was wondering if we had time to run through it. Maybe you can talk about some of these pictures and these great people . Would that be all right . We have five minutes . Incidentally, i had lunch. I spoke at charleston, the york town museum two weeks ago one night to a group about the size of this. I had a run in with jimmy flatly the next day. Skipper. He had just good naval aviator. He had just had a right hip replacement two days before. He shows up. I could not believe. And he comes into a wheelchair. Okay, that i cannot walk anywhere with this. That is an snt. That is what we did basic training with. I own hundreds of them. Great airplane. They cut your tie off on solo day. Youve got one to . Did you wear ties . laughs this was a squadron that ron and i were in. Hell of a great airplane. Douglas built that sky rate. I love the mainly because i lived through 3000 hours and. But that airplane there was fun. Great friends there. You want some reality check . I looked at that picture today at the hotel. And there are eight guys left. That is the reality and a lot of it not necessarily part of the performance. But in those days what they did with the airplane was pretty risky. A terrible airplane on the boat. Unstable on the boat. Laterally. In lexington when we were out they tried to night qualify it on the lexington and they lost a bunch of guys. They pick up on that story. Almost daily, the russians and americans are at each others throats. Let me tell you, this is an average day of the sea of japan. My back held up something. Penthouse or playboy. The guy back there, he would show them the playboy. It was more current than the one we would have on the carrier. I have had guys run across my area on the carrier and say you dont want to do that again. And then i had an Electronic Warfare plane go over them and turn up the gain on the sensors. He probably blew every fuse on that trawler. Dont do that again, im telling you. That is a great enterprise. I do not know i was on the cruise or not, but she has got her beautiful remember the radar array up on the island, and someone in their infinite wisdom said buy the lady a new hat. They took that beautiful array off there and they made her look like everyone else. But theres only one enterprise. They took the core out of it. The. Nuclear power plant has been removed. Shes in salvage. They dont know what to do with it. Boy, that is a tough decision. That is a great ship. There is the phantom. Dropping 500 pounder. You want to know something that is in the book, when you get to the part about yankee station. And flying. Read carefully the part about caisson. I went there one day. Didnt expect to go down there and got called down 400 knots, dropping those kind of bombs. They were snake eyes. They had clamshells that go straight down. I flew Close Air Support for about four days. That is when i had to learn to love grunt marines. I have never seen American Kids that brave. That is a whole different story. Had some, some mig drivers. I can see North Vietnamese. Theyve since been over here, some of the guys, hosted them here in san diego. Some of the mig guys here. I never cared that much, so i didnt go. And theres the original. John nash on the right. Jimmy. Second one on the lower right. Im the third one. Hank who took all the risk. God, man. Id go in to him and complain. Hed say, get out of here and go do it. Most of you are here in washington and business. We never had a consultant. [laughter] i dont mean to hurt anybodys feelings. We had no consultants. And i had no one outside a uniform involved in top gun for the first two ye ars. That is jimmy, the great jim lane. Chairman emeritus of john, i want to say, bernie, big Real Estate Company in san diego. Wonderful guy. You know, the image that was painted in the movie. This guy goes to Catholic Church every morning. And devout. And i think he did that even before he was flying with us. He is one of the great human beings ive had the pleasure of serving with. And hes fearless. Go ahead. And that is jimmy jackson. They had just taken a large dose of flack, and both engines were quitting. And front seater got out about a second later. We needed double exposure but we got it. That is the great mel holmes. These guys are talented. I mean it, he was the best in the world. I knew who the ten best were, and i put him up top. He started micronesia airlines. Owned his own airlines. Risk takers but just incredibly talented people. And this is the famous condor. Hes like my son. Only had one problem. I think my wifes in love with him. Hes movie star good looking. So successful. Hes a developer bigtime. And a prince of a human being. And thats, thats the other one. Incidentally, condor was a backseatseater in the beginning of top gun. And i found out, this is how much in control i will he was, i found out, we were flying two seat a4s. I found out, i would look for him and he would be gone. But he would be in the air. And hes talking the rest of the guys into putting him in the front seat of the a4. They taught him to fly. So, he comes to me later on when we were up and running well and he said i want to become a naval aviator. I want to go to Flight Training. I already know how to to fly. So confident. I said, send in an application and i will endorse it. I did. He aced Flight Training and came back to top gun as an instructor. Right out of training command. You know, i think in his total career, condor has been at top gun four times. But that is called an insurance policy. Having talent around you. It is always the guys around you. Lets see. And thats the big, jerry. He was known for bending airplanes. He and mike gunther were a matched set. They were both good. They started our adversary program. You had to be able to fly like the russians. So jimmy put the program together inside top gun, and he flew both sides. Hed fly the american side one day. Hed fly the adversary side later on. How does this evolve . Right now there are about four squadrons that are dedicated in the air force. But the air force just funded 25 or 30 f5s to a dedicated adversary squadron. And i noticed in the press the last couple weeks they took the f35s, the new ones, from tindle, which got devastated by the hurricane down there, and they are moving those up to nellis. They are going to form an adversary squadron of the new airplanes. Try to figure that one out. Anyhow, two great ones. There is the building. Thats home. And theres, those are a4s. We painted each airplane a little different camouflage. Around the world and took a look at various color schemes. Some of those airplanes actually work so good you could not see them from a mile away, you know . And then you think about the merge coming head on at 1000 miles an hour. So, anyhow, hey, there he is. I borrowed a guys a4. That guy in the back seat, pretty famous. That is j. C. Smith, when you read the book. He relieved me as in charge of top gun. He got the first mig of the war, first one shot down. Before the school even started. A wild man. Hes at san angelo, texas. I cant believe it myself. He owns two cadillac agencies in texas. A fuel parlor and a country club. And i think hes a deacon in his church. Anyhow, mig21. Great airplane. They are still flying. The chinese are still building these. Theyve got two thousand of them. And theres the boat. Going off the catapult. Thats the most dangerous occupation in the world, working that flight deck. And condor wrote a chapter in there for me that, as a lieutenant, he had asked to brief the last mission on the carrier coral sea. He flew the fighter protection over saigon during the exodus, when we were dragging all of the people out. And his pictures were the boat people coming out trying to get on the carrier. One of the few times ive ever seen him totally sad. He said, i cant believe it. Were leaving these people the way we are. Give you an inside look at him. The kind of thats a typical classroom. You can tell by the long hair what period it was. That is one of the beauties. A two place on. You got to look up and find out during the debrief that condor was in the front seat, and one of the pilots was in the back. He was getting a private pilots lesson. [laughs] little risky. And thats the airplane i talk about in the last chapter, the example of what i would buy right now. I would take one a boeings defunk factories that they have in middle america, not using it anymore and i would build 2000 or 3000 of these to be able to fly them for under 10 million apiece. That is pretty cheap. 10 million bucks. And the cost per hour is the thing. Cost per hour, flight hour, is how the pilots get back up to 40. So, american have got to end up with airplanes they can afford in large numbers because you have got those beautiful Aircraft Carriers and you have got to have airplanes to put on them. My question is, what can we afford . So, i would build a lot of cheap ones. That one in the hands of a good driver would take anyone on. And theres the f14. My wish. I wish we hadem. I wish we hadem, but somebody saw fit to destroy all of the jigs in all the history of that airplane. So, we cant rebuild it right now. But id sure like to have about 1000 of those to put on the Aircraft Carriers. Hey, there i am. As i said, if you behave yourself and you are good guy, somebody gives you a boat. Big mother. That was a wonderful 600 feet l ong. And maybe 50,000 tons. I had 14 officers and a crew of 400 in the the best story is my supply officer when we went to the indian ocean. I looked the invoice of what we had on board so i could have an idea when i talk to other captains we were resupplying. I look at the invoices. 3000 turkeys. He said, well, were going to be gone thanksgiving, christmas and new years. He said, you really want us to have some fun. Well negotiate all of the ship and give them holiday turkeys. He got known as the big turkey out there. [laughter] and there is my ranger boat at the top. That is how we refuel at sea. And theres mama. Thats the love story in the book. I met her on her 14th birthday. I dont think i dated anybody else. I went away to serve my country and fly. I didnt see her for 32 years. She married a College Football player. But there was a time in our life, both of us, i dont want to tell you all of it, you got to read the book. 32 years later, i met her and married been married 27 years, and she is just my soulmate. Thats mary beth. The penguin. They didnt put the other picture. There is one of the picture of beth and i today. All we have. Thats it . Thank you very much for your patience. [applause] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2019][captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org]
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