[jets roaring]
[fire explodes] Vincent Aiello: Oh,
no, James Bond is dead. Oh, no, wait! He flies through
the fireball unscathed! Hello, my name is Vincent Aiello. I am a retired United
States Navy fighter pilot. Spent about 25 years in service, flying mainly the F/A-18
Hornet and Super Hornet. Also had a chance to fly the
F-16 Fighting Falcon, or Viper. Had a tour as a TOPGUN instructor. And we are going to take a look at flying scenes from 10 popular movies. Steve: Jimmy, he's closing on you! [machine beeping] Put your mask back on! Vincent: In our first scene here, Harry Connick Jr. turned fighter pilot is struggling with his mask. The masks that we wear
are very constricting. Now, granted, they're
providing 100% oxygen at positive pressure, which is great. But they're still on your face, and they're constricting, and you can get a little claustrophobic. Of course, once you've flown
awhile, you get used to them, but if you begin hyperventilating, you might feel like you just need to release some of that pressure, and I believe that's
what's happening here. [machine beeps] Yeah, they might have taken some liberties with the maneuverability
of the F-18 down low and how difficult that can be when you don't know exactly
what the canyon does, whether it just turns and stops or turns 40 degrees, 90 degrees. [jet engine roaring]
[machine beeping] This is not a display
that we have in the F-18. The reserve fuel, which we don't have. When you get to zero, you're done. We don't have drogue chutes on the F-18 to slow it down like a B-52 or an F-5, but it's compelling to
jettison the drogue chute into the face of the attacking alien. When you're almost out of fuel
in an aircraft, you eject, and then ideally you're
gonna go high enough to not hit the wall yourself. [crashes] [makes crash noise]
[laughs] He just crumbles into
this big puddle of man. You survive the ejection only to break your back on landing. In flight school, every aviator is taught a PLF, a parachute landing fall. You wanna land on your feet
with a little bit of a side and then go to your ankles, your calves, your hip, your side, and your shoulders, and you wanna kind of
roll it out, almost like maybe what a karate maneuver
would be if you were thrown. My guess is they took an actual parachute and probably a 200-pound dummy
and had him falling here, which is why he's just
kinda hanging there limp like a scarecrow. Fun movie, but I'm gonna
give it a three out of 10. Merlin: Ice is right below us.
He's got a MiG on his tail. [jet engine roaring] He's firing! Break left, break left! [machine gun firing] Vincent: Now, the names that
characters in aviation movies call each other, actually, those are real. Those are called call signs. They're basically a
fancy name for nicknames. Besides being fun and
funny, these call signs, or nicknames, they're
actually really useful. They depersonalize the
situation, and they remove rank. Slider: You got a MiG on your left. On your left! 3 o'clock. Vincent: Talking about every
little thing you're doing is just gonna clobber the radios. It's gonna make it very difficult for someone to say the
things that are important that need to be said, i.e., "on defensive," or, "fox three," if you're taking an active missile shot, "fox two," for an infrared shot. [jet engine roaring] Controller: Maverick's reengaging, sir. Vincent: Now, you see
Maverick decide to go ahead and get back in the
fight, and the controller on the ship instantly recognizes that, just because he happens to
turn left a few degrees. The radar, the air-search radar
on the Nimitz-class carrier is the AN/SPS-48. It's
an air-search radar, has about a 200-mile range, and at its highest rotation rate has about 15 revolutions per minute, or one every four seconds. Well, at that range,
with that update rate, there's no possible way this controller understands that Maverick is
suddenly back in the fight just because he happens to roll left a few degrees and maneuver back. Merlin: Break left, break left! [machine gun firing] Vincent: Now, the "MiG-28" in
the scene is played by an F-5. A couple F-5s. One is a two-seater. Now, the F-5 Freedom Fighter,
better known as the Tiger II, in real life has a twin barrel cannon mounted on the front of the nose, not a Gatling gun style as depicted, and it might make a little bit more of that standard machine-gun-style sound. But in reality, for what they
depicted, that Gatling gun is gonna come out with a
much higher rate of fire. I've never seen an aircraft,
even Russian aircraft, that are controlled with the left hand. Iceman: I got him, Mav.
One MiG passing between us. [jet engine roaring] Vincent: There's a
couple editing mistakes. So, example, you hear Iceman say, "He's passing between us." And it's a MiG-28 that passes between us, and then you see from
Maverick's point of view two aircraft with one go down the middle. Well, the other aircraft
is another MiG-28 or F-5, and so that didn't really make sense. [machine beeping] Slider: You got a MiG on your left. On your left! 3 o'clock. Vincent: Slider in the back seat, saying, "Check the guys at the left, 3 o'clock." Well, he's looking out the right side, and in fact, "right 3 o'clock" would have been the
right thing to say there. Iceman: I'm on his tail. I'm going for it. Vincent: Ice is shouting,
"I'm on his tail." And then the very next clip
is the F-5 chasing the F-14, where you can clearly see it's the F-5 that's behind
the F-14 and not vice versa. So, overall, "Top Gun" of
course is a fan favorite. I've enjoyed it since I was a young man, and I'll have to give this scene, let's call it a seven out of 10. [machine gun firing] I love that they brought in the F-35B. Relatively new when they filmed this. But my question is, if you had a high-power rifle and almost unlimited rounds, and you could employ against someone you're trying to take care of from even 50 feet, 100 feet, why would you go up and get
in a phone booth with them, where now the gun is unwieldy, and he can turn around you and stick you in the back with a knife? You've got the advantage. He could have gone
about a half a mile away and seen the entire scene
in his heads-up display. You know, we see examples of people trying to hold onto aircraft.
I've never tried this. Now, I do know from walking around on top of the F/A-18 Hornet on occasion that the surfaces, well, they're smooth, and there are various nooks
and crannies and openings that someone could get a handhold, a lot like a rock climber on a wall, but add to that the
acceleration of moving aircraft and the momentum and
the wind and all that, this would be a pretty difficult task. I'm gonna give you a one
out of 10 for this scene. Doug Masters: And you can
deal with me, Doug Masters. [jet engine roaring] Ted Masters: Watch it, son! Doug: Hey, nice shot, colonel. Anything else you wanna send over? Ted: Way to fly, Doug. Vincent: That Hollywood
thinks a simple aileron roll is going to defend your aircraft from almost anything that's happening, somebody pursuing you, a shot at you — "If you just do a quick
aileron roll, you're fine." Yeah, not so much. Akir Nakesh: Time to die, Iron Eagle. [gun fires] Vincent: I don't understand
why they can't get the gun sounds correct. I mean, I guess we're
all conditioned to hear the individual bullets sounding, but, in fact, with a high rate of fire, like the M-61 cannon and the F-14, it fires 6,000 rounds a minute. That's 100 rounds a second. You don't hear individual bullets; you just hear that "zzz" sound. Ted: You can do it. Vincent: When an aircraft is
directly at your 6 o'clock, there's almost nothing harder
for the defender in this case. Because no matter what
you do theoretically, the other aircraft can follow you. I mean, as long as the performance is not grossly worse in the attacking aircraft. And yet, we have this scene where dad, being the good dad that he is, just some happy talk, "Come on, Doug, you can do it. Let's take care of this guy.
Let's take this guy out." And magically, the next moment, we've got Doug in the
F-16 behind the bad guy. A dogfight, you're limited by physics. I mean, that's a dumb
thing to say, but you are. I mean, you can't just
instantaneously swap positions traveling 200 to 400 miles per hour. You can't just suddenly
trade spots, hit the brakes, and he'll fly right by. Heads-up display actually
is real F-16 HUD Symbology. We don't have to go through all of it, but you can see air speed and altitude, you can see heading, you can see G. The one thing that they mix up, though, is towards the bottom off to the left, you see the letters SIM. That's SIM. That means you're
in a simulated war mode. That's what we used to do in training. I'm gonna give it a three out of 10 though for this particular scene. [jet engine roaring] James Marshall: These MiGs,
how far away are they? Vincent: The F-15s love to fly in what's called an Eagle Wall. They might have as many
as 12 eagles in this wall, but what they won't be is right next to each
other, as you see depicted. They might be a mile,
up to two miles apart off each other's
altitude, because that way they can't be so easily targeted. Then you see the afterburners stage in, and of course Hollywood loves to show any fighter jet ever in afterburner. You gotta have some orange glow behind it. But the acceleration here, probably a little bit artificial. Yes, afterburner does
provide some extra thrust, and it's wonderful, it's a lot of fun, but it's not gonna be like a drag car coming off the green light there. When we go into combat,
one of the things we do is we have what is called FENCE check, and you quote, "FENCE-IN." And one of the things you do is you turn off your anti-collision lights, and at night you turn
off your position lights, only leaving those
night-vision-goggle-type strip lights of green. Both the F-15s in this
case and the MiG-29s are shown with their navigation lights. Caldwell: Coming at us.
Countermeasures are activated. Vincent: Next you see the VC-25, which is the name of the,
what we would all call a 747. Air Force One, don't forget, is just the title of that aircraft when the president is on board. The defensive systems on a VC-25 are not well publicized.
Of course, why would they? They don't want opponents to know what the president's
protective measures are. I assume there are some sort of expendables like chaff and flares. [gun fires] Why not just fire a bunch more missiles, or why not just sit back
there and fire the gun? Instead, the next thing we
see is this slashing attack over the right wing, where, oh, lucky him, it hit the No. 4 engine. Here's the crazy part: OK, you've got this lieutenant-colonel
sitting right next to you. If that's a first officer at my airline, I'm a first officer, I'm fully qualified to fly that airplane. I'm not gonna sit there and
wonder where the fire light is or have somebody on the ground tell me we need to trim out the aircraft because — with the rudder trim here. This guy should be able to say, "Hey, president, I got this, sir." The F-15s firing what I
presume would be AMRAAMs. That's the AIM-120 air-to-air missile. Pilot: Fox three. Vincent: They call fox three, which is the right terminology. The rules of engagement, clearly, we are in a self-defense situation. Lots of exaggerations and liberties taken, shall we say, from the point
of view of military aviation. We're gonna give this
one a four out of 10. [explosion] I've not tried this, but I'm pretty sure air-breathing jet aircraft don't fly too well
through massive fireballs. Plus, we're always dripping hydraulics or fluids of some sort
that are usually flammable. So not something you wanna do. Of course, note to self,
if you ever knock out the back seater, make
sure you spend the time to get him out of your back seat. [guns firing] He's kinda shaking from the recoil, and I just, I've never flown an L-39 with gun pods. I can't imagine though that you're gonna feel the recoil like a
machine gunner would. And he's flying with his knees. Now, I actually did this
quite often in the F-18. The F-18 has a center stick, and it's conveniently located
right between your knees. The F-16, on the other
hand, has a side stick. Now, in the F-18, if I were
busy with both of my hands — I never had to defend from
someone trying to strangle me. But if there were times when I needed to adjust my helmet or
maybe I was doing something with the throttle and
I was writing something on my knee board, then
I could, for a moment, fly the aircraft with my knees. Of course, in Hollywood, anytime you have the main character in an aircraft, you'll always be able to see his face. No masks. Maybe a clear visor, but you'll never have that dark visor like you're just some random bad guy. This flying scene, I'm gonna give it a two out of 10. Sorry, James Bond. They actually went out, like they did on "Top Gun" and other movies, and filmed real flying scenes
on a real aircraft carrier, in this case the USS Nimitz. You have real F-14s,
you have real ordinance, you have real deck personnel. They're not gonna bother with actors. The AIM-54 Phoenix that they depict there, now, the yellow band is a way
to know for a live warhead, and that's why it's on the forward part. And a brown band tells you
it's a live rocket motor. So when you see yellow and
brown on that white missile, which, the white doesn't really matter, you know that's a real war shot AIM-54. Now, if it was white
but with blue stripes, blue means inert. Or if the whole weapon
happened to be blue, then you would know that that
was an inert weapon as well. [jet engine roaring] Here we have the F-14 pilot getting what might only be considered a real kill. Frankly, a zero is probably traveling about 120 miles an hour, maybe. F-14 looks like it's doing about 300. That's gonna be a tough shot, frankly, for the F-14 pilot, but
given the correct position and getting slow enough, then that could be very easily done. [jet engine roaring] Here you have a red shirt that's dealing with the arresting wire. Usually that's a green shirt. I'm not sure why they
used a red shirt there. Maybe it was someone under training. But normally the different shirts on the flight deck are important because that way when you can't hear, you can still tell what someone's job is. So, red is ordinance. Green
is catapult and arresting gear as well as squadron maintenance. Blue are the chock and chain handlers. White is safety and LSOs.
Brown is plane captains. Yellow are aircraft directors. You've got all these different colors. I'm gonna give this
scene an eight out of 10. Just docking a couple of points. [jet engine roaring] He's gotta fly away pretty quickly. I mean, the BD-5J
Microjet's got a top speed of about 320 miles per hour. This whole notion of missiles that can fly next to you and continue to pursue
you until they kill you, now, in real life, a
surface-to-air missile such as this is gonna go up to maybe close to 2,000 miles per hour. It's going to be able to go after it, and it's ether gonna hit it or get close enough to proximity detonate and take it out, but
what it is not gonna do is come over here and say, "Oh, yeah? Well, I'm gonna get you," and just keep following you around, and if it does miss get mad and come back. The whole idea that we have these angry missiles that can follow us,
in this movie and others, it just always struck me as funny because in order to do that it would have to fly at
roughly the same speed. [jet engine roaring] Just because an aircraft,
and any aircraft, is diving, doesn't mean it's going to sound like a World War II era Stuka dive bomber. Guess what? They put particular
sirens on those aircraft that were wind driven,
and at a certain speed they did wind up like that, and, yes, we all associate
that with death from the skies. Now, the fuel light here,
actually, I love this, because the Microjet only
carries 30 gallons of fuel. Still love the scene, so I'm going to give this opening scene of "Octopussy" a four out of 10. [guns firing] Hal Moore: Broken arrow! I'll say it again, broken arrow! Vincent: "Broken arrow" is a term used for a nuclear weapon that
has been compromised. Maybe it's either been lost or dropped inadvertently
or something else. Apparently it does mean we
are either being overrun or in threat of being overrun, but the idea is that
it calls up everybody. It's like calling 911. As he's talking, it depicts
them coming in and attacking. There is some coordination that exists, because the whole idea
of close air support is that you are in close coordination with the folks on the ground. You are dropping right next to them, and in fact, as we see in this scene, sometimes it can happen
that it's too close. [jet engine roaring] What you're seeing here is napalm. It's nondiscriminating,
as most weapons are. But if dropped in the wrong place, it's gonna burn up anything. And the one thing they
didn't quite get right here is a Mark 77, or a napalm canister, is deliberately not equipped with fins, because what fins do is
put a spin on a weapon to make it more accurate, for the same reason a quarterback puts a spin on a football
when he throws it. I feel like they're showing the releasing aircraft
just a little too low. It shows fighters going both directions. That might be a little
bit of an exaggeration. Generally you don't want that because they could employ
against each other by accident. I'm gonna give it a nine out of 10. Just loses a few points for the reasons we talked about. Pilot: Lime zero one, we
got a tally on three trucks. Eastbound on the bridge. Harry: Roger, Lime Zero
One. Prepare to engage. Pilot: Ringo is padlocked.
In hot with guns. Vincent: What bothers me
though about this scene is this expectation almost in Hollywood that they can feed the audience that somewhere in America,
even off the coast of Key West, as depicted in this scene, are fully armed aircraft
just flying around, doing maneuvers. In reality, particularly since 9/11, we do have aircraft
that are armed on alert at various bases, usually on the coasts, and that is for Noble Eagle, and that is in case we have another 9/11. But for training, it looks to me like it's really Harriers
flying by this helicopter. Harry: Recommend using your Mavericks to take out the bridge. Pilot: Roger that. Lime
flight, switch Mavericks. Pilot: Two. Vincent: Two. OK. You know, normally you do wanna acknowledge a call that's made, but they just felt very scripted. [jet engine roaring]
[missiles firing] You see the Harriers peel off right away. Presuming they're the ones
designating the target, they just need to make sure that the laser is continuously on
the bridge the entire time. And then when it hits, yeah, I mean, these could be
miniatures they're blowing up. It looks fairly realistic. The Maverick AGM-65 was
designed to go after tanks, so it's got pretty good punch, and it's going for armored
targets, so against cement, yeah, it might do pretty well. Of course, the Harrier keeps flying later. You've got Dana, the
daughter of the hero here, and some more gunfire and AIM-9 shots. Really love this scene. Overall, I'm gonna give it a
six out of 10 for "True Lies."
