Now that the F-14B is in early release for DCS, people are doing recreations of various scenes from Top Gun.
The end scene is sticking in my craw. It has been for decades.
The big deal about the Hollywood/Wolfman, Iceman/Slider fight against the six MiG-28's is the concern about them carrying Exocet missiles, thus if they break a certain distance the carrier is vulnerable.
First off, all of the carrier aircraft for the AM39 I've been able to find are NATO spec, and nearly all of those French.
The Soviets would have sold their own anti-ship missiles to a MiG customer rather than trying to integrate a NATO missile. The Soviets never really developed an equivalent to the Exocet.
So, Exocets and...
Why not Mirages?
The Mirage was widely exported.
Mirage III and V both have been adapted to carry the AM39. The F-5E is used to simulate a MiG-21 at TOPGUN and the Mirage III is kinda in that same envelope.
So from now on when they say "MiG-28" in the movie, think Mirage III or Mirage V.
Second: The "MiGs" are dogfighting Hollywood and Iceman, who have closed to visual ID ranges before the fight starts. They can see that the enemy aircraft aren't carrying air to ground stores, and the dogfight kind of proves it as well. The Exocet is a fairly large missile and you don't want to bring it to a dogfight, you'd jettison it before the merge.
So our bad guys are pure air to air.
What Hollywood and Iceman will want to do is get the fight moving back to the carrier to shorten the alert-5 response time to their location, this appears to be happening because of the concern about the range to the boat.
Third:
Just two planes up for the CAP? In a place where they've been warned if they see a hostile act they will respond?
Fourth:
The loadout of all three F-14A is two AIM-9 and two AIM-7. Obviously the E-3 is airborne because Enterprise has an excellent picture of what's going on. That means the LINK-4 is up. That means that Maverick/Merlin know what's friendly and what's bandit. From BVR ranges. This means that they could have taken two Sparrow shots long before Maverick gets all emo from some jet-wash at the merge. Actually, it'd be Merlin who fired those at that range.
I feel better.
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Hm. I thought you would have lost it at MiG-28. I mean, someone couldn't have looked up back then what people were actually flying and extrapolated a correct number sequence for a mythical air craft, like they did in "Firefox"?
ReplyDeleteAnd, wanna get specific, they (the F-14s) could have and should have stood out of range and peppered them with long range missile fire that would have caught the badguys totally unaware, which was the purpose of the F-14 platform armed with Phoenix-es and Sparrows, amiright?
So much fail in the movie. Makes it hard to watch.
I spent a decent hunk of that first viewing realizing that the F-5's were actual bandits and not red-air.
DeleteWith the lack of a camera under the chin and a visual ID requirement, I could see them getting into a turning fight.
But with the E-3 being so damned capable, there's no need to VID a plane they've been watching from the bad-guy airfield. On the other hand, the rules of engagement appear to require bad-guys shoot first. Hollywood must have thought Carter was still in the White House.
WRT the "let the bad guys shoot first" ROE, I trust you've seen the YouTube LEGO video in which Mal Reynolds and Starlord tell Han Solo about the virtue of shooting first.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite quote (by Mal):
"Better for everyone if you be the one livin', and the bad fellow be the one dyin'."
But I remember... when Han DID shoot first!
DeleteDamn you, Lucas! Yaratbastard!!!