Our airwing (Airwing One), on USS America were conducting FON (freedom of navigation) ops off of Libya and gave Mohammar an early morning wake-up at about the time the original Top Gun came out. One of our squadron (VF-33) wives somehow got a counterfeit tape and sent it to us. After we watched it, it was then given to the ship’s TV station where it was put out on USS America’s TV system. It was a huge hit except with the A-6 squadron since they had been the ones to actually drop the bombs on Mohammar’s facilities but the movie, of course, focused on fighter squadrons and the Tomcat. 😀
Some of the flying scenes in the original do a good job of showing the maneuverability of the Tomcat but as far as I’m concerned, the best part of the original and the only part worth watching, is the opening segment with all the flight deck scenes. Watching that part alone and hearing the whine of the TF-30 engines is enough to give me goosebumps ‘cause I’ve seen all of that hundreds of times. Brings back lots of memories.... most good, some not so good.
My wife and I will probably go see it and I’ll have to do my best to refrain from saying, “that’s B*** S*** “.
My wife took my daughter (9) and son (5) to see the original and in one scene with the XO “Jester” he had a VF-33 patch on his flight suit. When my son saw the VF-33 patch he jumped up in the theater and yelled, “THAT’s MY DADDY’s SQUADRON!” 😀 Good kid😊
