The REAL Truth About the Final Top Gun Maverick Dogfight

all right it's been a while since we did a chalk talk so let's talk about the final scene the dogfight scene in Top Gun Maverick this scene is set up by the fact that Maverick is shot down by a Sam trying to save rooster and then rooster gets shot down after bagging an mi-24 saving Maverick so both on the ground it's a funny scene where Maverick pushes rooster over and they wind up stealing a tomcat so the Tomcat startup scene is very realistic it's obvious that the military advisor for this part was a tomcat guy and I've gone through a version of this many times during a cross-country when we weren't convinced that the ground crew that was hosting us knew what they were doing and we didn't want a ladder left open or pins left on the airplane so the pilot would jump in like Maverick does here and then I would do what rooster is doing here and rage around and pull the Huffer and pull the pins generally we didn't go on across countries with live Sidewinders but in this case rooster pulls the arming pins and then he gets in the airplane by climbing on one of the horizontal stabs and just jumping in the back that way which is something I've done frequently so that's very accurate but the thing that is let's just call it current Worthy is as they take the tax away remember they're not taking off on a Runway because the runways have been cratered by American tomahawk missiles launched from destroyers in company with the aircraft carrier that launched the four-plane strike so they're taking off on a taxiway roosters expressing his concern Maverick goes ahead and Powers up but he does a no flap takeoff when he should have done a full flap takeoff let's go to the simulator and see the difference between a full flap takeoff and a no flap takeoff all right here we are at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada just north of Las Vegas and we're in an f-14a I've chosen Top Gun paint job for this episode even has Maverick and Goose's name on the side so want to demo the difference between a full flap takeoff and a no flap takeoff so as I just mentioned in Top Gun Maverick at the end with limited Runway actually limited taxiway to take off and Maverick does a no-flap launch so let's see the difference between a full flap launch and a no flap launch okay we'll start with the full flap take off and I'm also going to time this as well as see how much distance we cover so throttle to Mill off the brakes clock is running staging burner 2000 feet 10 seconds rotating so let's just say it was about 2500 feet and just over 20 seconds all right let's see now how long it takes with a no flapper all right so here we go same drill this time flaps are up power to Mill clock's running off the brakes staging burner there's two thousand feet going flying okay so that was almost 3 000 feet and it took about four or five more seconds to get airborne with a no flapper so basically used about 30 plus percent more Runway and four more seconds all right so back to the action Tomcat launches hits those storage tanks damages the nose gear for some reason Maverick immediately sweeps the wings aft which looks great but it's not a very smart move if you think you're going to be encountering Bandits on your way out of bad guy country so the Tomcat is a fourth generation airplane they're joined by two fifth generation airplanes these su-57s NATO call sign of the su-57 is felon so they put their mask on and wave and hope that they don't notice that they're not they're countrymen but they get a sense because one of them drops back into firing position that they do know that this is not a friendly Tomcat rooster and Maverick weigh their options rooster finally says then it's a dogfight which reminds me of that line in Zoolander it's a walk-off so Maverick's first move is a surprise raking gunshot on the dash one su-57 and it's effective The su-57 Falls away on fire in response the dash 2 Fallon takes a rear quarter Fox 2 and Maverick times it so he drags Dash 2's Fox 2 into dash one the airplane he gunned killing dash one once and for all so the next shot I've diagrammed here the Bandit annotated in red choose the second Fox 2 against the Tomcat pulling into the vertical until Bullseye which is nine degrees nose High annotated by the circle around the plus sign that shot is no kill because of effective use of flares and then the Tomcat does this split throttle move now note a couple of things in this screenshot first the left engine is an idle the right engine is at full afterburner second the horizontal stabilizers are fully deflected indicating the pilot has put in full left stick and third is another cringe-worthy error which is it shows that the airplane has the right aileron fully down and the only problem there is the F-14 does not use ailerons as a control surface to roll the airplane it uses spoilers so let's go to the training AIDS as documented in the Goose's death episode many moons ago the F-14 had a tendency to flat spin under the right conditions or let's just say the wrong conditions and those wrong conditions were low air speed high angle of attack and asymmetric thrust generally due to a compressor stall in one of the two engines and the reason the airplane could flat spin was because 25 percent of the lift came from the fuselage which we used to call the tennis court because it's big and wide and also the engines are pretty far apart if you look at a hornet compared to a tomcat or a Super Hornet those engines are close together compared to the tomcat and the engines were not parallel they were canned slightly outward in fact four and a half degrees apart so if a tomcat crew lost an engine at high angles of attack and low AirSpeed and the pilot didn't counter that yaw rate the airplane would get into a flat spin very quickly so that's what makes this split throttle move problematic for any Tomcat Crews that watch that sequence now for the screenwriters I'm sure they assume that all of those moves would cause the airplane to pirouette meaning that if you split the throttles generating this kind of thrust and you add it to that full left Rudder and full left stick that that would cause the airplane to do this but that's not what it does at all so let's go to the DCS simulator and demonstrate what actually happens when you input those controls okay for the purposes of this demo we're going to assume the Tomcat has wings in Auto which puts them about there also I have roll sass off roll stability is in the off position which we would normally have for any maneuvering of the airplane so here we are down low and this is a 1v0 meaning I don't actually have a bandit behind me but we'll demo the split throttle move and see how it goes all right so staging burner and we're full burner okay into the vertical nice smooth pull to 15 units and as the vdi and the HUD flip flop I'll do the move all right so splitting the throttles full Rudder so at this point you can see the input of those controls just causes the airplane to roll it doesn't cause the nose to move to the left at all so this isn't a pirouette now I can see it from the external View burner's lit pull into the pure vertical there's the input of the controls and the airplane simply rolls in the vertical it does not do a pirouette and as discussed if you were to do this at higher angles of attack meaning a slower AirSpeed you'd risk putting the airplane immediately into a flat spin so let's go to our other training aids for this part of the discussion so for the purposes of this brief the MiG-29 is the su-57 and the Legacy Hornet is the Tomcat so as we described Maverick does his magic move and somehow he winds up behind the Felon in turn the Felon does this pirouette which is absolutely what this airplane can do in real life and here's some air show footage that demonstrates how this airplane can just kind of turn on itself in a way that is very fifth generation due to Vector thrust nozzles and the flight Control software that that airplane has very impressive but the other part that comes to mind here is if the f-14s Fox 2 is defeated kinetically by the felon a fox 2 is taken at about a mile and a half or so recorder so he watches the Felon do that move and he has a chance for a snapshot forward quarter gunshot but because he's so mesmerized he just doesn't take it and the airplanes merge a very cool scene and at that point the Tomcat dies for the deck and Maverick says to Rooster this will defeat his weapon system and in real life that probably wouldn't be the case I'm sure a fifth generation weapon system can discern between not moving Canyon walls and an airplane moving at 500 knots but in any case the Felon decides to switch to guns and takes three different gunshots first trigger pull no hits second one hits third one no hits at this point the F-14 decides to try another uniquely Tomcat trick which is Maverick pulls the wing sweep handle out of the spider detent and manually pushes it forward so node in the still of this the throttles are at idle and the flaps are down now I think that they did this because they didn't want those things to be in the way of the motion of him moving the wing sweep handle all the way forward but at that point in this fight he's definitely got the throttles at full afterburner and the flaps are for sure all the way up so that's a cringe-worthy error so would a tomcat pilot do this would you pull the wing sweep handle out of the spider detent and move them all the way forward so let's review the Tomcat Wing sweep system briefly here when you're in the auto mode the wing sweep handle is engaged in What's called the spider detent meaning the computer is deciding where the wing sweep angle should be based on AirSpeed G altitude and some other factors so the pie can manually move the wing sweep aft of where the computer thinks they should be but not forward when you're engaged in the spider detent now if you disengage the Spider detent by pulling the handle up you can physically move the wings forward of where the computer thinks they should be but by doing so you're hazarding the structure of the airplane and no Tomcat pilot ever did that so in this case the screenwriters said okay we need this airplane to be able to move aggressively like right now and so he pushes the wings forward to 20. can be done but most likely at that air speed he would have damaged the wings and the fuselage so Maverick does another sort of put on the brakes and the band will fly right by kind of thing a la Top Gun original movie and it works he does a negative G push away and he winds up behind the second felon he shoots his second Sidewinder so now he's out of sidewinders that missile is defeated by the su-57 dispensing flares effectively then he winds up taking four gunshots first one snow hit second one he gets one hit third trigger squeeze no hit now he's got one more because the bullet counter is reaching zero last trigger squeeze kills the felon Splash two felons Tomcat is now feet wet but their problem isn't over so right as rooster finds where the uhf2 circuit breaker is and he puts it in bringing everything alive including the radar system they get a raw gear indication that somebody's around and Maverick gets a tally of a third su-57 on their nose that su-57 takes a forward quarter missile shot so back to the training AIDS Maverick manages to defeat the third felons forward quarter missile shot by doing a tight barrel roll into a hard left hand turn while rooster dispenses flares so it works I've diagrammed it here felon takes a forward quarter I'm assuming it's a fox 2. it's defeated by a tight barrel roll and a hard left hand turn while dispensing flares effectively no kill but because of the maneuverability of the Felon versus the Tomcat fell and saddles in pretty quickly so the Tomcat is now what we call Winchester meaning he's out of missiles and he's out of bullets so Maverick tries one last desperate move into the pure vertical so right as the Felon pulls the trigger and its next missile comes off that missile doesn't guide because the Felon blows up due to a Super Hornet Fox 2 kill so this is Hangman's second kill remember earlier in the movie while they're playing pool he says yeah how many migs do you have and they talk about it was a cold war Relic and so forth so Hangman's got two kills Maverick returns to the ship does a high speed pass which is a lot like what happened in the original Top Gun when Iceman did a high-speed flyby even though his airplane was leaking hydraulic fluid due to Bullet damage so that's kind of cringe-worthy wouldn't happen in real life but it's a cool Visual and he gets to buzz the tower and this time it's the three-star Airbus who gets rattled instead of just the normal Airbus that you have on a carrier and after Maverick informs them that he's got a damaged nose gear they rigged the barricade led by Hondo who is Maverick's right-hand man throughout this movie and successful barricade arrestment just like the first movie high five celebration on the flight deck Phoenix walks up and mentions that as a result of the kills during that sortie Maverick is now an ace all right that'll do it for this episode if you're not already a subscriber click the button and ring the bell so you don't miss anything if you'd like to help support the Channel please consider using the super thanks the heart icon below or become a patron at patreon.com Ward Carroll check the links below for Merch like the T-shirt I'm wearing yes I'm that guy who wears his own merch or where to get the punks Trilogy my first three novels about life in an F-14 Squadron now available both as a Kindle and an audiobook for the first time ever thanks to your support and in the meantime I look forward to talking to you again very soon foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Ward Carroll

Views: 439,343

Keywords: Ward Carroll, Top Gun, Top Gun Maverick, F-14 Tomcat, SU-57 Felon, DCS, DCS World

Id: DsbkZdirzM8

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 23 2022