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.