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Top Gun
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From the Navy’s point of view, the air-to-air war over North Vietnam was conveniently broken down into two phases. They are referred to as: “Before Top Gun, and After Top Gun”. I say conveniently because the Top Gun program was initiated shortly after the bombing halt of 1968, and by the time, the air-to-air war was resumed in 1972 the program had had a chance to graduate several classes and filter the accumulated ACM (Air Combat Manoeuvring) knowledge into the fleet.
The US-Navy Flight Weapons School, popularly known as “TOP GUN”, was conceived as a result of the Ault Report. In 1968, the Naval Air Systems Command, under the aegis of Captain Frank WAult, did an extensive analysis of aerial combat in Southeast Asia. The resultant report recognised the need for improvements in several areas. Recommended were: improved missile reliability, more comprehensive training in ACM for all fleet fighter units, and the development of a hard core of specialists in this area. The report urged the formation of a graduate-level school to train fleet fighter crews in ACM and weapons deployment.
Top Gun began life as “The US Navy Post Graduate Course in Fighter Weapons Tactics and Doctrine”. It was soon nicknamed Top Gun, a name which has stuck despite the fact that it trained F-4 crews, who did not employ guns. It was originally a department of VF-121, the Pacific Fleet replacement training squadron for F-4 aircrews. The first class commenced in March, 1969. The original syllabus called for one week of air-to-ground weapons deployment, and three weeks of air-to-air work. It soon became apparent that the air-to-air portion of the course was far too complex to cover adequately in three weeks, and the air-to ground portion was subsequently dropped. The four weeks of training include 75 classroom hours of instruction and 25 training flights per crew. The academics include aerial combat manoeuvring procedures, air-to-air gunnery, intelligence briefs on enemy aircraft and weapons, F-4 weapons systems, air-to-air missile operation and procedures, electronics warfare, and fighter performance studies.
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Concurrent with the establishment of Top Gun, the Navy began to intensify ACM training in fleet fighter squadrons, and as a result, began to have more accidents. To their everlasting credit, Navy top brass withstood the pressures to discontinue the program because of the increased accident rate, steadfastly maintaining that the program would pay big dividends. (At the same time, the Air Force was de-emphasising ACM. )
The tremendously increased effectiveness of Navy fighters in the 1972 air-to-air war is the most rewarding testimonial that proponents of Top Gun could have asked for.
The reasons for Top Gun’s success are many, but one of the most important is the support given the program by fleet fighter squadron commanders. They are asked to send their best people to Top Gun, and have generally responded with the cream of their fighter aircrews. Top Gun became autonomous of COMFAIR Miramar.
During my interview with Commander Ronald “Mugs” McKeown, the then-current commanding officer of Top Gun, I asked him how Top Gun works.
“We take eight crews per class, and when they report to us they bring their own airplanes and maintenance people along. They fly with us, eat with us . . . everything, for a month’. We don’t teach basics at all. We expect, and demand, that they have a working knowledge of fighter tactics when they arrive. They are the best people in their squadrons and, hopefully, we will make them better.
When they leave here, they will return to their squadrons as the resident experts on ACM, and pass on what they learned here to the rest of the squadron. We don’t try to turn out a Sphinx . . . a guy who learns a little bit more so he can go back and beat up on the “nuggets”. That’s not the idea of the program. We try to attack the problem as professionally as possible. We try to take the “who” out of ACM, replacing it with the “why” and the “how” of winning and losing an engagement.
We find that, early in the program, the students will come back from an engagement saying: “Man! I didn’t want you to get the kill!” We tell them: “Forget the kill. I’m not here to lord it over you because I beat you. I do this three times a day . . . you don’t. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes . . . why the kill occurred. ”
We try to expand and refine the course as we go along from class to class. It’s a dynamic course, in a constant state of flux, because the world is in a constant state of flux. We don’t want to get stagnant. We fight dogma whenever we can. We try to avoid being dogmatic, and we will tell everyone who comes through: “If you think you’ve got a better way to skin the cat, this is the place to try it!” There is no such thing as a school solution. We have very controlled sanitised conditions here, and by attacking the problem with a total air of professionalism, we find that a lot of the ego is taken out of the equation, and a guy is less apt to press the airplane to real extremes. Now, that is not to say that he does not fly it to the limit, and sometimes beyond what is normally considered the performance envelope of the airplane. I think to be successful in the F-4, you have to fly it outside the envelope, just as we did in our MIG engagement. You have to be able to depart it, and recover it. It’s not uncommon at all to see 600 knots and zero knots several times in a fight. You’re not always doing that, but you have to be able to go up, do it, and come back. This is particularly true in the F-4, which was designed as an interceptor. In order to excel in the airplane, you have to be able to depart it and recover, and you find that most guys are capable of doing it.
Before Top Gun, the overall kill ratio for the Navy was 3. 7 to 1. After Top Gun it was 13 to 1. At the same time, the Air Force’s kill ratio went from something like 3 to 1 down to 2 to 1. I’m not going to suggest that Top Gun is the entire answer to our increased success, but one of the things we enjoyed hearing was the comments of fighter crews who returned from successful MiG engagements. When asked what it was like, they often said: “It was just like Top Gun, only these guys weren’t half as good!”
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