Jocko Podcast - 230: Push The Envelope and Test Yourself. The Founding of TOP GUN. With Dan Pederson

Episode Date: May 20, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:06:54 - Dan Pederson.  The founding of Top Gun. USN. 3:48:29 - Final Thoughts and take-aways. 3:54:22 - Hot to stay on The PATH. 4:07:06 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 230 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Operation rolling thunder began in 1968. As we flew combat missions, striking Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's hand-selected targets, we lost planes and men almost every day. Flying from Yankee Station, the area of the Gulf of Tonkin where the aircraft carriers operated, we learned what it was like to sit in a wardrobe, in a wardrobe,

a wardrobe, table surrounded by empty chairs. Half the time, we never knew what happened to them. Maybe another pilot noticed an enemy surface-to-air missile launch or caught a fleeting glimpse of a burning American plane heading toward the jungle below. Sometimes we'd hear the air crew requesting help on the ground, dodging enemy patrols and calling for rescue. When the helicopters went in,

the North Vietnamese were often waiting. They shot up the helicopters and their escorting planes. We sometimes got our man and lost three more in the process. We were flying not just for each other. We were flying for each other's families. The man on your wing usually had a wife, maybe some children. You took care of him to take care of them. We all faced moments where we risked our lives for each other to ensure the contact teams did not knock on our brother's door back in San Diego, Lamor, or Whidbey Island.

When the enemy scored, the families were devastated. You seldom see that written about. But we've all come home to tell widows and fatherless kids how sorry we were. We gave them what peace we could. The truth is that loss never goes away. It warps the rest of their lives as they wrestle with the pain. That old adage, time heals all wounds? No.

50 years on, I've seen those families still break down in tears as they talk of their fallen aviator. You don't get over that kind of pain. You just learn to live around it. It becomes part of who you are. And for us, out on Yankee Station, that grief motivated us to sacrifice for each other. Not everyone could hack it. There were days on Yankee Station where I watched air crews lose their nerve. All of a sudden, some mechanical, mysterious issue came up, and a flight had to be scrubbed.

Sometimes it happened when the same plane was on the car, catapult ready to launch they just couldn't bring themselves themselves to face it again the most fearsome air defense network in the world erected by the north Vietnamese with Russian help around Hanoi on rare occasions some men turned in their wings and went home rather than face that crucible again it was easier to fly for an airline in three years the Navy lost 532 aircraft in combat including other operational losses associated with that war the Navy had 644 aviators killed missing or taken prisoner of war the total fixed-wing aircraft losses of the Navy Marine Corps and Air Force together exceeded 2,400 of course it was intensely personal

Darrell Gary lived with nine guys in two houses on the beach in La Jolla when he went through training. After their first trip to Yankee station, six came home. Worse, we were losing the larger war. Destroying the targets given to us by the Pentagon seemed to make no difference in the war to the South. The loss is mounted, and the Migs started seeking us out. The North Vietnamese possessed a small but well-trained air force proxied by their Chinese and Soviet allies as good as it was they were not in the same league as the Soviet Air Force so it sent shock waves through the Navy when North Vietnamese pilots started shooting us down during the Korean War the North Korean Air Force was virtually wiped out in

the opening months a decade later the Vietnamese Migs gave us a real fight they shot down one of ours for every two Migs that we claimed we considered that loss rate intolerable given our long history of deeply one-sided kill ratios. In World War II, U.S. naval aviators crushed the Japanese in the Central Pacific on the way to Tokyo with Hellcat pilots who scored three-fourths of the Navy's air-to-air victories, posting a kill ratio on the order of 19 to 1. In Vietnam, we were simply not allowed to win. So the Navy bureaucracy did what bureaucracies do best. It continued on course.

Micromanaged from Washington, D.C., we made the same mistakes month after month. It nearly crippled U.S. naval aviation. In January 1969, a plane-spoken carrier skipper named Frank Alt wrote a report to the chief of naval operations detailing deadly flaws in our fighter tactics and weapon system. systems his list of complaints was a long one and the Navy decided to act unfortunately many and senior commands worried more about their careers than about fixing the problem by approving the creation of an air combat postgraduate school which we quickly named top gun they gave the appearance of doing something to change things under President Johnson's and Secretary Macroix

McNair's leadership the Navy bureaucracy seemed more interested in appearing to solve problems than risking failure by actually trying to solve them They gave the leadership of top gun to a relatively junior officer Me and that right there is an excerpt from the Opening of a book called Top Gun an American story by a man named Dan Pedersen a of tired Navy captain, fighter pilot, Vietnam Air Combat Veteran, and the first officer in charge of the story storied top gun, the Navy Fighter Weapons School. And it is an honor to have Dan with us here tonight to talk about his experiences and share some of his lessons learned. sir thank you so much for coming on

thank you jaco and because it's top gun and I'm woefully unqualified to speak with any experience on air combat also joining us is my friend from romadi and my colleague from echelon front Dave Burke who's been on this podcast more times than anyone

who served as a fighter pilot in the united states Marine Corps top gun instructor top gun senior instructor forward air controller with us in Ramadi on the ground and pilot of the F-18, the F-16, the F-22, and the F-35. So I figured I'd bring someone you could actually talk to, sir. That's great. So, you know, you go through some of this stuff in the book, but I want to just kind of lay the groundwork of where you grew up.

I know you were born in Illinois. What was your childhood like? and I want to take us through childhood up through where you enlist in the Navy and then we'll get back into the book. As early as real memories, the end of the Second World War, my dad had been in Europe fighting for four years and came home and the job was already filled, moved on to California, came to Riverside, California.

And he worked as a putting pot. pipeline in Palm Springs during that period of time. I was going to school and working a couple jobs and making ends meet guys. And that's where I grew up. Then I went to Whittier. And the draft came breathing on everybody to follow-on draft for Korea. And I joined the Navy Reserve and enlisted guy. How old were you when you joined the Navy Reserves? I don't know, probably 17. Just right there. And did you associate the Navy with aviation?

Yeah. So you kind of knew. You know, you know, Jocka, how I got started really? I was an illicit guy and I mess cooked. There at N.S. Los Alamedos. It was a pretty busy base in those days. A lot of World War II props, corsairs. and I was a mech.

That's what I trained to be. It was a mech. And I was mentored by a chief named Brown during that time to learn the mass cook. It saved my life, brought me out of the galley, and I got out on the flight line, started carrying the man's toolbox and getting his coffee when he wanted.

And he taught me a great deal about it. And what really turned me on, Got me going. This is two things quickly. There was the lieutenant doing a test flying in that squadron. And we were the first squadron and get jets. And we had some two-seaters, TV-2s, empty backseat. Every time I'd work on an engine airplane, go-through flight test.

And pretty soon that lieutenant says, you know, empty backseat is a waste. Come on, go with me. And I flew with him in the back seat, maybe five, six, seven, eight times. And I was hooked. You know that feeling, David? Yes, you know. And so I started flying with him. And he quickly said, you're natural, you know.

You're pretty good at what he said, I'll arrange for the exams. And we'll do a physical on you. will you go to Pensacola? I said, right on. And I was working two jobs and sleeping in my car, going to college at time.

So it was a perfect time for it. And come to one of the last weekends I spent with those guys, in comes Zikormier and the Blue Angels. At N.A.S. I'll meet us.

So I watch the Blue Angels fly. And there was a cutlass, David, put on a, I can't read, Billy Phillips. He may have been flying a famous Billy Phillips flying the cutlass. But he did an air show on Sunday afternoon. Monday, I packed my bags. I'm ready to go to Pensacola. That's the beginning. So how old were you at this point?

It sounds like this happened pretty quickly. Oh, yeah. And is this because were they opening up the flight school to enlisted guys? because of the Korean War? Navcat, Naval Aviation Cadet Program, you know, and I'll tell you more about when we talk about the squadron, the first fighter squadron with the five aces. The old guys from the Second World War we're getting out.

Young guys like me where the future was. Yeah, the other thing I always like to think about when we talk about, you know, the past wars, You getting into a jet. What kind of jet was it that the young lieutenant? TV 2. So you getting into a TV 2. This is like science fiction.

I mean, the state of technology and you're, whatever, 18 or 19 years old, and you're going into the most modern high-speed aircraft ever created. That's right. That's right. And there wasn't any passenger jets in those days, probably a DC-8s were, invented here in San Diego and it was the first Jedi had ever been in. That was an e-ticket bride that first time. So I'm going to go back to the book here.

You get down to Pensacola and you say this. At Pensacola, we flew the SNJ Texan and the T-28. On my first morning there, our drill sergeant woke us up in the barracks with the rattle of his nightstick along the seal frames of our bunks, then double-timed us out to an aging hangar beside the seaplane ramp in the very same building where some of naval aviation's pioneers established our tradition the drill sergeant smoked us with 40 minutes of pt each morning started with the same ritual we worked out in the hangar amongst the ghosts of those who had paved the way for us thanks to them naval aviation became the rebel branch of the service always striving to develop new ideas

new technology and new ways of fighting that would send the age of the battleship into history the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway to the great Marianas Turkey Shoot, they transformed the U.S. Navy into the most effective naval fighting force on the planet. Everywhere we went in Pensacola, we felt that tradition, and it was an honor to be invited to be a part of it. Would my generation contribute to perpetuate in the years ahead? One thing for sure, I was not going to be the one who washed out and went home to be just another college kid with duck tail hair, working odd jobs to cover tuition.

where other cadets bought cars and spent time in town drinking at Trader Johns and other local aviator watering holes, I made a point of staying on base. My dad's ethic became mine, and you talked a lot about your dad's work ethic in here. I studied and worked hard. I was determined to be among the top cadets upon graduation who would be handed the keys to the latest and greatest fighter jets our country produced. After Basic School of Pensacola, we were required to take a cross-country instrument flight to California.

the final stage before we advanced to school in Beaville, Texas. The fringe benefit of this last evolution was a chance to visit home. Now, here's the caveat that I always need to make when I read these things. I'm just skipping giant parts of this book. The amount of detail, the stories that you're telling, the characters that you're bringing out in this book throughout the book are just awesome. It's a historical gem just to be able to read it. But I'm not going to read the whole thing on the podcast and

People need to buy the book if they want to get all that out of it And there's an audio book as well, so either way You need to read the whole book in order to get this But you know this this you felt that and I went to I went to our officer candidate school down in Pensacola and that you know They have the amazing Naval Aviation Museum there which is one of the best me I fact I think it may be the best museum I've ever been to to. I've heard the World War II Museum in New Orleans is equally awesome, but I haven't been there yet. But you just felt that heritage as a guy going through OCS.

You know, just to be selected for something like that, I've done reasonably well in school academically and to be allowed to go down there. And, you know, you guys are all. pros that working out every day. Marine D.I. taught us a new discipline every day in that old hangar. He worked us, and then we'd run. And then we go to the, what do you call it, the courts, you know.

Oh, the obstacle courts. Obstacle courts and all the things I've seen in the SEAL videos and movies. And it was a total new life. But when you make a commitment to go, and it didn't take long in Pensacola to find out how you got to go to the first team, and the first team be a great fleet squad and on a carrier, you got to have the grades. So the motivation was there, and it was fun.

Now did everybody in your flight school want to be, want to get jets? Was it just 100% competition? I had a roommate named Al Clay's Marine. Marine pilot. I pinned his wings on. He pinned my wings on the day we finished. And he was a great football player, Orange County High School. And we went in together. We were roommates all the way through. And he decides to go to Marine Corps at the last minute. But we both out. We had. are going to go and score well, and we knew we'd get fleet squatter. You know, a real piece of history out of that, and it's in my log books. They hadn't sent anybody to a fleet squadron out of Beaville in about a year.

I got the first set of orders. It was worth it. I was just talking about from the book when you were, you had to do a cross-country instrument flight to California. This gave you a chance to go home. And you mentioned this in the book. Mary Beth stood on the tarmac looking up at me with my parents at her side. She was a vision in an Angora sweater and below the knee skirt. Wearing flat-heeled shoes and with her hair down, she had a smile on her face, maybe just a hint.

of awe as well, I could hope. I unstrapped and climbed out, dressed in a khaki flight suit, a matching jacket, a Navy issued chuck-a-boots. I barely made it down the ladder when she wrapped her arms around me. In an instant, the year of separation seemed like an eye blink. I knew beyond a doubt. This was the woman I wanted to marry. And you fast forward a little bit.

All too soon, the beautiful interlude ended. My instructor met me at Al Toro a few. days after Christmas, I wore the ring on my right hand as I kissed Mary Beth goodbye on the ramp. She had given you a ring. Soon I would be an officer and a gentleman. I'd ask her father for permission to propose. We'd start a life together in the Navy, a final hug, no tears, and I scrambled up the ladder and into the cockpit. As Bill Pearson and I taxied out to the runway, I saw her waving goodbye to her Naval Aviation Cadet. When I landed at Beaville, my first jet fighter waited me on the flight line. She was a grumin F-9F Panther, a well-traveled aircraft whose

dark blue aluminum skin was dotted with patched over bullet holes. Like my instructor, she was a veteran of Korea. Her paint dulled by years of service. With her straight wing and sub-Mock-1 top speed, the Panther had been relegated to stateside pastures, where she helped train the next generation of naval aviators. Was Korea over at this point? Or was there a chance that you were still? So what year was this? 1995.

56. Okay. 56 would have been a B-Ville flying. So Korea is well over at this point. Yeah. But you still got these pilots. Your instructors are straight up combat vets from Korea. Yeah.

And they were good. very, very good. They were the best. This section that you talk about flight school, and again, there's so much in this book to cover, you know, it was a challenge for me to figure out where I wanted to spend time. You talk about flight school.

You have a great section in there about when you make mistakes, and you have failures and what your attitude was. And your attitude was, okay, I messed this up, what do I need to do to fix it? And you had that attitude of taking ownership of things and then doing the hard work to get it done. I've read your books and looked at some of your programs.

And when you play in the league as a possible naval aviator and you make a commitment to finish, is the same as a program you guys went through. and I'm talking about the training, okay, and you're dealing in human life each other's everyday fine. Failure is unacceptable. You make a mistake, and this mistake that's in the book had to do with a very old navigation system,

but we were required to be proficient at it. And I got confused. fused in the weather one day and made the mistake and went back and flew that check ride again and out of 18 months of training that's the only time it happened to me but it was unacceptable to fail guys that's what I'm telling you and I wanted I wanted to be a naval aviator so bad well on March 1st 1st 1st. First, 1957, I got my wings. When my orders arrived, I tore open the envelope running through my worst case scenarios.

The first of which was blimps. Yes, the 1950s Navy still flew airships. We called them poopie bags. Nobody wanted to go from flying panthers and tea birds to puttering around at 70 knots with a gigantic bag of gas over your head. No, thank you. Then there was ASW, anti-submarine warfare. This meant multi-engine flying and interminably long patrols over open ocean where everybody aboard tried not to fall asleep. I took a breath, looked down on my orders, and read the official verbiage directing me to report in 30 days to San Diego.

I read it twice. Then a third time just to be sure I wasn't dreaming. I was going to a squadron known as VF, AW3. V stood for heavier than air. No blimps for me. F stood for fighters. A.W. stood for all weather. I'd done it.

I was going to be a jet fighter pilot. I was on the road to top gun. How many guys from your group ended up making it to jets to fight? fighter jets to al cloyce and i my roommate wow he went to maca oh down in the flu fj furies at down on miami beach opalaka was the name of that base down the marine base and i went to i went home to marimar in san diego and the same state as my merry beth which was i got to be honest about it was part of my motivation. I wanted to be back.

I miss her a lot. Incidentally, in the middle of the book, there's 16 photos. Some of the airplanes that you described, Jucko, and a couple great pictures of Beth and I, and particularly her. And what's nice is they put together,

they use color, full color photographs. I can tell you, you had a lot more clout rolling into your book publishing. You can look at the first edition of my first book, has a bunch of crappy black and white photos on bad paper. You got the full glossy scenario going on. Thanks to the first top gun movie.

So we're going back to the book here. My first act as an ens in the U.S. Navy was to buy a car. My gang of new officers at lunch for the first time at the officers club in Corpus Christi, Texas decided at least one of us needed to have a set of wheels. We rolled the dice to see who would go down to the dealership, and I lost. I picked out a brand new 1957 Ford Fair Lane Raven Black with Black and Colonial White matching interior

Sidewall straight out of American graffiti I drove home from Texas in my new ride eager to see Mary Beth make amends and take her for a spin I had 30 days of leave before I needed a report and I intended to use every minute of it counting my girl

The morning after I got home I went to meet with Mary Beth you didn't write she said said. I didn't get any letters for a while. I was about to explain when she said, Dan, I'm seeing someone. When you didn't write, well, he was persistent, and I gave in. I didn't know what to say. He was a football player at college. They'd been seeing each other for a few weeks. And you know, I talked about, well, you talk about it in the book when the training was really hard, obviously you had to prioritize what you were going to focus on. And even though you wrote Mary Beth,

every night when the training got to a point where you had to focus more on the training you didn't write for some time or sometimes you didn't write and that was the little break in the um an opportunity for this football player it was when i had the i had that one navigation flight failure and uh it had rocked my it rocked my foundation and i missed a couple weeks of writing to her otherwise for For 18 months, we had written back and forth every day, except for that period of time. And a beautiful young girl going to college, and she was pretty popular girl. Yeah, yeah. And a damn football player.

You're up against some tough competition. Yeah. But you have to drive on. You go to North Island. At North Island, the guard at the front gate gave me directions to VFAW3. The squadrons executive commander was a guy named commander Eugene Valencia. Round face and solidly built with thinning hair. My new XO happened to be the third highest U.S. Navy ace of World War II, one of the great legends of our community.

In one engagement over the Japanese home islands in 1945, he shot down six enemy planes. He finished the war with 23rd. three flags on the side of his F-6F Hellcat. The man introducing himself to me held the Navy Cross and six distinguished flying crosses. I was in awe. Yet Commander Valencia was anything but arrogant. He greeted me and set me at ease with his relaxed unassuming nature. It was hard to believe that a man with so many accomplishments could be so grounded and approachable.

it was exactly that you know and did you did you know this going into the room oh no i had i had no background on the on the fighter squadron and he was one the skipper the squadron was Howard 80 who flew and found the the Japanese fleet the battle of midway he was a commanding officer and there were four other aces, the famous Tex-O-Neil was in that fighter squad. You talk about you walk in the ready room, man, you knew your pecking order. And these guys were bigger in life. What does it take to become an ace? You got to get five.

You got to get five. That's the number. Yeah. And he became an ace and he shot down six planes. In one day. How long did it take you to start putting this together? I mean, are these guys wearing their dress uniforms? Are you looking at this guy's rack of ribbons,

seeing that he's a Navy cross-wrecking? You know, most of it's done at the bar. And quiet, there's a bar at North Island called the I-Barr, which these aces, they control the place. And they had their own bartender. And once in a while you get invited to go with them. And good valentious. story. I hit it off with the old man. I flew with him. His eyesight wasn't the best, but I got enough

I got enough verbally to pick up on his MO, how he operated during combat a lot about tactics. He and Texanil and these guys, they were mentoring us. There were five incidents eventually in that year in that squadron and we had all the 50 60 airplanes I think four different kinds all the flight time David do you ever ever find yourself where you had all the flight time he could physically handle I don't ever remember flying too much yeah well just and we we we he they all mentored us I started I went the first tail hook, first tail hook convention. And what I did was, I carried this briefcase full of scotch. That's the Ensign's mission? Yeah, the ensigns. Enson's all went down there with Valencia, Alex Verishoe, another living 825 victories. These guys are bigger in life, you know.

And your teams have the same reputations. Yeah, when I check. in the SEAL Team 1, the executive officer was a prior enlisted guy that was a Vietnam legend. There's a famous picture of the SEALs in Vietnam of this. The picture always says the dirty dozen on it, even though there's more than 12 of them, but it

says the dirty dozen, and they're holding up a Viet Cong flag. And he's one of the guys in that picture. He's the guy that, he's one of the guys that the SEAL team's reputation is built upon. And I remember looking You know, look, at that time, I didn't know the difference between a marksmanship ribbon and a medal of honor when you're looking at the uniform.

And I just looked and said, that's a lot. These guys got a lot of decorations on his uniform. And, you know, the ones that I did know, the Purple Heart, the Silver Star, I'm looking at it going, okay, this is, this is, this is everything you dream of, right? It's to be sitting across my table. I'm 19 years old. and this guy's telling me welcome aboard SEAL Team 1. That's right. It doesn't get me better than that.

The living example of where they've been and what they've done. And their willingness, like Philentia and that holds five or six of the guys who had really done it all, they made no bones about it. They were there to mentor us. They went home at night with their families and their grown kids and their glass of scotch and they let the fly into us. I flew two to three times a day

just as much as I could stand. And that's why when I showed you the logbooks today, that's pretty good for a fighter pilot at my age. And I ended up that first squadron 1,500 hours ahead of my contemporaries. Dave, how many hours did you fly at your first squadron? I left my first squadron after four years with 1,200 hours. So the numbers you're talking about when I said I don't ever remember flying too much is because I didn't get to fly like that.

That's impressive. So you did 1,400 hours after four years. Dan, you're saying you had 1,500 hours more than your contemporaries. Yes. Well, you know, I thoroughly liked it. While I was there, I got to fly the F6FL cast. Gino, they had a bunch of them at the repair facility at North Island. And Gino kept talking about the guns and how he worked everything in that airplane.

That's where he got his victories. So he says, you want to fly it? So I picked the phone up and he calls the chief over at the naval repair facility. And he says, I got six of them on you. I can't get anybody to fly him. So I went over and I flew the F6FELCat. When you're transferring from one aircraft to another aircraft, how hard is it to make those adaptations?

It's easy. If you love it, Jocko, it's easy. Later on in the book, I'm sure, we were up at Dreamland, area 51. And in 30 minutes, I came in a transport, didn't even know where. where I was. They took us in a hangar, unopened the hangar doors, because they didn't want the satellites to see what they had.

And the guy walks in with me and says, come on, climb up. So I climbed the cockpit of a mig. 30 minutes later, I was in the air in that same airplane. You know, it's like driving your, it's like driving your Porsche. Right, right. Once you can handle a porch. Or my Dodge Caravan in my case, but it's all good. Any of a long wind of answer, but it's easy.

Once you're either a part of it and you can do it. Yeah. New airplanes are exciting. You go on a little bit more about your checking in and you say this. The officer of the day said, why don't you go get your flight gear and put it into your new locker? He pointed out a bank of them in the main hangar. When I found my assigned locker, I opened it up to find it was full of somebody else's stuff. I think there's been a mistake, I said.

The officer of the day looked stricken. Sorry about that. We forgot to clear it out. Clear it out? That locker belonged to the Lieutenant J.G. Replacing. He was killed a little while back. Accident.

Go ahead and throw everything away. The rest of his effects already went to his family. I walked back to the locker and stared at the items inside with a new perspective. A rady old t-shirt hung on one hook. A few other knick-knacks and toiletries sat on the shelf. Then I noticed something unusual. A pair of eyes were staring back at me. I reached in and pulled off the top shelf a tiny stuffed mouse.

It was about two inches tall with big eyes, soft gray fur, and a tail. The toy seemed out of place in a fighter pilot's locker. Was it a gift to his child never delivered because of that last fatal flight? Was it a gift from his child to him? If it was a lucky talisman that served as a reminder of who waited for him back home, I hated to think it had failed him. Suddenly I didn't want to know. Talk about an attitude adjustment.

My problems seemed trivial, selfish, compared to the death of the mouse's owner. I trashed the shirt and toiletries, but as the mouse hovered over the can, I held it there and regarded it again. Who am I to throw away another man's mouse? I took the little guy back to my flight bag and made him a nest deep inside.

And you will that that mouth is part of the whole story He's he he he lives right now on about the fourth bookshelf in our library at home in Palm Desert he's there You continue on and this is what you were starting to talk about a little earlier But in my squadron the senior leadership came of age in World War II and Korean and the Korean war They told us how during the Pacific War they learned to avoid getting into a turning dog fight with more maneuverable Japanese fighters Trying to turn with more agile Japanese planes would get your tail shot off

So they took their shot and flew away one pass haul ass was the axiom They learned to work together in pairs cooperating to make sure that an enemy couldn't latch on to a pilot's tail The other American pilot was always ready to turn toward his partner and stick his guns in the enemy's face My flight leader Bill Armstrong explained to me that in Korea the opposite was the case the tactics of World War II would get a pilot killed going up against a communist Meg 15 those jets were faster and flew higher than anything the Navy had including the hot F-9f Panther I had flown in training given the Meg speed and advantage given the big speed advantage the horizontal plane became the Panthers playground it could outturn the

mig 15 so in just six years we changed tactics altogether one pass haul ass went away and US fighter pilots found their advantage in sharp turning dog fights in the missile age it was all changing again at least that's what the Navy believed we we would simply be directed by ground control to a point in the sky lock our little circle on the dot and let loose with a missile no more see to the pants flying and maneuvering and sharply sharply turning fights. Technology promised a revolution. So during my time at FVAW3, the old ways were outlawed. Dogfighting, officially known as air combat maneuvering or ACM, was forbidden. In 1960, the year before I left for my next assignment, the Navy shuttered the last of the old schools that trained fighter

pilots to dogfight, the fleet air gunner unit at El Central. From then on, air combat maneuvering was banned. If you were caught hassling, as we called dog fighting, your career could end. The edict against dog fighting divided our squadron into three factions. Our senior leadership, whose experience ran counter to everything the Navy was doing now, had fought two wars and had seen friends die. Having spent years away from their families on fleet deployments, they focused on being dads and husbands. At the end of their careers, they were content to mentor us nuggets on the ground, share experiences, and teach us how to be leaders. They left the bulk of the flying to the younger guys.

In the second camp were junior officers who bought into the new way. They never hassled, never pushed their skyraised to the edge of the flight envelope. The third group, a quiet group of young tigers, fought otherwise. I was one of them, and we decided to do something about it. It's a little A little division Little groups little cliques of people The old retired guys

Look they're doing their jobs But they're not too concerned The guys that are listening to the way the Navy is saying it's going to be done And they're okay with that And then you guys that wanted to scrap It's a matter of your personal Courage It's in one of your books

You know Depending on how good you want to be in the airplane, a lot of guys were getting ready to go with the airlines, just booking flight time to go with the airlines. At this time, airline pilots made a ton of money, right? Then and on for about 10, 20 years. Yeah. Yeah.

But I never even considered that. I couldn't give up going to 50,000 feet at 60-degree climb angle. Right, Dave. Dave, you didn't get tempted by Delta or American? I'm squarely in his camp, squarely. So this is what happens. This next chapter is called Fight Club. You say here off the California coast, about 80 miles west of San Diego,

there's a sector of restricted airspace that encompasses San Clemente Island. It's a military reservation. Air controllers call it. Whiskey 291, the U.S. Navy squadrons in Southern California. use it for training exercises. That was our playground. I first heard about the West Coast illicit dog fighting scene one night after hours in a San Diego bar. It might have been the Hotel Del Coronado or a Mexican restaurant where we knocked back tequila.

It was certainly not at the North Island Officers Club or in the ready room. There were too many ears that could make things difficult. We were free to fly almost anywhere we wanted. Our squadron had plenty of aircraft and our chain of command encouraged us to get stick time. Almost always we could find a valid reason to fly. Here's the thing you learn by doing. Those of us who lived till fly learned our craft by flying a lot. One Friday afternoon after a long week on standing alert,

I went to the maintenance shop and signed out a Ford. I had heard that at the bar on Friday afternoons, before cocktail hour was the best time to find our version of a street race. I took off from North Island and headed west for Whiskey 2-9, The unwritten rules in my mind. One of them established a hard deck at 5,000 feet. This meant that the fight was over the moment you dip below that altitude. It was a nod to safety.

If you ran into trouble and entered a spin, you needed that altitude to recover. By joining this fight club, we were keeping the flame alive for a certain way of being a fighter pilot. It was also serious. We were preserving our birthright as naval aviators. The first time I went out there south of San Clemente, I was amazed. at what I found. Marine A4 Skyhawks, Air National Guard F-86 L interceptors, Air Force F-100 Super Sabers, and lots of Navy guys flying F8 crusaders.

There were even a few other fords from North Island. The word had spread far beyond the Navy community, and the services mixed it up with fierce relish because they all were going through the same institutional evolution away from air combat that we in naval aviation were experiencing. This is classic. I learned the ropes that first time out. Pick your opponent, roll up alongside, and give the signal. The signal being the bird.

So you flip the guy off. That's how you kick this thing off. That's how you initiate it. A smile and a wave and a 45 degree bank and opposite break in opposite directions. A break means we rolled the wings and turned one way. The guy to the left broke 45 degrees left. The guy on the right broke 45 degrees right. We'd extend out away from each other for several seconds until we were a few miles distant

Then we began the fight we turned into each other pushing throttles forward in what to the uninitiated Looked like an aerial game of chicken in mock one fighters approaching head-to-head or close to it two fighters Inevitably passed each other close aboard We called this the merge closing somewhere north of a of a combined thousand miles an hour meant the merge is over a mere three seconds before a collision we'd break away showing our first best move. That was when the hassle began. There was no script for what happened after the merge. We reacted to each other flying our aircraft as best we could.

We learned that power is king. Power gives you the ability to climb above a fight to reenter it with even more energy and a diving attack. Power means you can push your bird in a tighter and tighter turn and maintain the airspeed longer. When we had enough and we're ready to admit defeat, Maybe our opponent gained position at 6 o'clock and never let go. We waggled our wings, pulled up alongside our opponent, and flew wing to wing.

Sometimes we smiled unseen behind our oxygen masks and waved. Nice flight, brother. Sometimes we just eyeballed each other, pissed off that somebody had gotten the better of us. Invariably, out there, there was someone a little better than I was. But each time I went out, win or lose, I improved. How fun was that? and they pay you to go too, you know. And it sounds like at this time you had unlimited fuel, unlimited,

you do this as much as you possibly wanted to. The Navy had bought some Douglas Skyray's Batwing airplane, took the guns out, which was a shame. But getting ready for missile stuff. So it wasn't a great carrier airplane because lateral stability, it was pretty dangerous. kill a lot of guys on the aircraft carrier during the initial phase of trials with the airplane. So they sent them all to VFAW3, and it would climb like nothing you've ever seen.

Just cram it and burner and hang on. A stick was about six inches high. Just lock their arm and break ground 30 degrees, go to 60 degrees, they go to 50,000 feet. You know, that's a neat ticket ride in anybody's book. Dave, did you have any experience where the Marine Corps didn't know what you were doing, but you were out with a bunch of your friends in the Navy and the Air Force scrapping? And I don't know what the statute of limitations is on this. And if you can still get in trouble at this time.

No, I'm safe now. It's not like what Yanke is talking about. There isn't an illicit thing. What there would be is four guys in a squadron going on the road together. Squadron, everybody knew we were going. And we would do things very similar to what he talked about is we would do things that patently we weren't supposed to be doing. And we're doing with other guys. Now, there was a degree of safety in the organizations that communities had come a long way because of what they learned.

But man, we would, I have done a lot of things in an airplane that if I had came back and told my boss I did it, it would have a real problem. And more than anything, it's the culture that that generation created. We were smart about safety. We do a lot of things to keep the airplanes and us safe. But man, that spirit and that culture, I'm just, I mean, I'm grinning ear to ear, listen to this because that's where this all came from was pushing against the organization. These are things we have to do. And look, there's a lot of things I wouldn't tell anybody about.

You know, while I was doing it, looking back on it now, it's actually kind of fun to think about it. But, man, we did some going on the road, four ship out of Miramar. man, you had a license to steal. It was awesome. You know, you mentioned this earlier, which I read. You talked about the naval aviation being the rebel branch of the Navy. And, you know, that attitude right there, if you don't have that rebel attitude, these thoughts don't even enter your mind to push the envelope like this.

You know, you're dealing in human life. You all understand that fully, I know. Every day, it's not just fun flying. It's serious business. It's professional excellence. And you keep building it. You got to remember we're talking about the fight club being illegal in the 58, 59, and it's 61.

and then for the next four years it was still semi-illegal and then come along came me a four which we'll get to in a minute I'm sure and and it became it was the menu of the day hassling was God I wish everybody could hassle

you're getting their butt kicked out there in Vietnam and all the stuff we learned back the 58, 59, 60. It was easy to sell it. Yeah, you talk about here. You say, I learned the basics of air combat in those hassles. Never lose sight of your opponent. Lose sight, lose the fight.

Never go vertical unless you can own it. Meaning you have to have enough pure engine power to blast Iward and leave your opponent unable to follow, follow you, and hammer you from behind. Turning fights are like back alley brawls. When similar aircraft engaged like that, The difference is pilot skill and aggressiveness. The winner usually is the one with the most guts to push his aircraft to its aerodynamic limit.

In this way, we preserved our perishable skills, our perishable skill sets and kept alive the fading art of the dogfight. The rest of the Navy was letting it slip away in the early 1960s. I flew whenever I could. Holidays were a great time to hassle because the married guys were at home with their families and the pace of the activity on base relaxed. I was still trying to get over Mary Beth, so I'd climb and afford and go look for a good fight. This is also important. Fighting against different types of planes was useful.

It taught me more than fighting against the same type of plane I was piloting. In later years at Top Gun, we would call it dissimilar air combat training. But back in the late 1950s, we didn't have a name for it. We just, we just intuited it based on experience. Each fight with a different type of aircraft, each with. its own advantages and weaknesses taught us how to exploit our edge and minimize theirs How did we learn by losing failure as a teacher be honest with yourself extract the lessons and you'll never make that error again I spent many long flights back to North Island repaying what I did wrong so that on my next bout in the inner service fight club

I'd bring the heat and win and win when we found a top gun this part of the experience in whiskey 291 became a very important component of our culture. That's what my point was. All of a sudden, it wasn't illegal. It's, we need something like this. Can you teach us how? And it worked. You end up going on deployment.

I'm skipping ahead a little bit. My very first cruise gave me a front row seat to the U.S. Navy power projection in action. Deployed to Westpac. We guarded the sea lanes, trained off the coast of Japan, and flew the flag at various ports of call. Our F3H demons intercepted Soviet bombers that periodically dropped down to snoop on us.

We chased them as soon as our radars caught them. When the TU95 bears took their photos of us, we wanted a demon in the frame. Proving up our ability to destroy them at will was a game we played with the Russians for the entire Cold War. More than once, I watched a Russian gunner wave at me as I snapped pictures through the canopy. Such moments were rare and fleeting, just two aircrew at the tip of the spear, making momentary personal contact at altitude over the world's largest ocean. And they usually showed Playboy magazine, which was newer than we had on the carrier. It was a game. You know, the news media now makes it sound so serious.

It was a game. They're just competitive. What could you do? One time I was out pull up alongside a bear, later on, flying a fan. And my call sign for my backseater was a wart, little guy. And I look in the mirror and we're sitting right next to this bear. And in the back seat, it's a plastic, a pink rabbit. He's inflated to rabbit.

And the only thing the bear guys can see, and they're all in the back turret back there trying to look over and laughing because he's put a pink rabbit up and he's grunged down. Yeah, a little humor. But it was no work. Yeah, that's awesome. You never done anything like that in the Marine Corps, did you?

I was lucky enough to intercept a bear on my first cruise. I have just a legendary shot of me and a hornet up against a bear, got to intercept an Iranian. I think it was kind of their version of the C-130, right on the line there in the Gulf, pull up alongside, and reliving or living for the first time these stories that I'd heard about for literally decades, looking out the window of my fighter at an Iranian, you know, cargo plane flying.

He's on his side of the line. I'm on my side. There's probably, you know, 100 feet, 200 feet between us, waving maybe some other hand signals along the way but those are things that those are pictures in your mind you'll never forget those things the first time I intercepted a bear on an alert seven launch off a carrier just sitting in the cockpit launch off I go 20 you know 12 minutes later I'm I'm in parade off of off a bear just thinking how many times this happened for me for anybody else before the bear they'd love to come down and go go fast and right along the deck of the carrier

they'll make a low pass on the carrier. So you got to be in the picture. You got to let them know that you have been there the whole time. And only because of you are they getting to do that? That's right. It's a cool history to say I've gotten to do that. Speaking of always all business, you say here, we broke out above the cloud layer at 15,000 feet.

And I'm fast forwarding. No moon, no visible horizon. My demons suffered electrical failure and the lights went out in the cockpit. A wind-powered auxiliary unit was supposed to deploy in such a situation, but that failed as well. There I was surrounded by absolute darkness using a 90-degree angled flashlight to periodically check my instruments. I was flying that mission with our squadron executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Joe Polk, who realized my predicament and came to my rescue. Joe signaled to me with his flashlight, follow me, and pointed to the Hancock's latest position. It was an eerie sensation flying on his wing in the dark en route to.

the Hancock's waiting deck. I forced myself to keep my wings level relative to his wing and belly navigation lights. I used small, precise control inputs made easier by Joe's smooth flying. We broke out of the cloud layer about a mile and a half a stern of the ship. We could see the white strobes beckoning us. I continued flying Joe's wing until his lights went out and he turned away to give me a clear shot at the deck. The electrical failure had knocked out my radio which meant I could not talk to the landing signal officer all I could do was watch his lights a green one meant keep coming flashing reds would be the dreaded wave off go around and try again I didn't have enough fuel for that so if I missed I'd have to eject trusting that someone would find me in the stormy

sea I made it down and felt the tail hook catch one of the deck wires the demon lurched to a hole a close call for sure but it wasn't over the next night while flying the same demon the same thing And again, I was on Joe's wing, and he brought me back to the Hancock for an encore performance. I landed safely after another gut check approach. Perhaps we joked about him saving me twice. The interesting point on that, Jockel. You mean beyond the fact that you landed in a complete darkness? You're reading a lot of the book, okay?

And the next paragraph says, can't figure out two nights in a row it happened to me. and the airplane flu during the daylight hours successfully with no electrical failure in between the two events. So I started to get spooked a little bit, you know. What? Somebody sent me a message. Yeah.

And the reason I brought that, or the reason I wanted to read that is, look, it's peacetime, it doesn't matter. When you're flying and landing on an aircraft carrier in the weather and mechanical failures, You know, I used to say this about, you know, I would tell the young seals, when you go out and do water operations, everything you do is a real world mission. Because the ocean can kill you. If you make a mistake, you die.

And I used to say that pre-war, you know, in the 90s, when I would try to be getting guys to make sure they're taking stuff seriously and not gaffing off procedures. And it's the same thing here. I mean, I can't, you know, just this idea. and I'm pretty sure I know the angled flashlight that you're talking about. It's probably the same. Yeah, that piece of crap. You're lucky that thing didn't fail. A green one?

Yeah. You put it on the harness. Yeah. And then the other thing I thought was awesome about this was Joe knowing, all right, I'm going to guide him right in. And then I'm going to black myself out. I'm going to get out of his way. And it's on you. You guys can't even talk, but you know what to do.

He knows what to do. The guy that's landed in you knows what to do. do that's awesome that's naval aviation training there it is right date amen uh you go on here you say mary beth had gotten married to her football player i never tried to win her back and that was on the you talk about this this was on the advice of your mom who said nope nope you let her go her marriage was the final nail in the coffin of my wishful thinking i had let her go eventually i met a wonderful girl a wonderful young woman in Coronado Maddie and married her in 1959 a year later our daughter Dana arrived my wife and I began a 17 year journey in navy life with far too much of it spent apart

flying is a dangerous game of risk and reward push too far and you pay the price before i joined the black lions i only had to look out for myself and my squadron mates different game now i live for two others who depended on me becoming a family man coincided with my first four fleet assignment on board the Hancock. My 1962 deployment lasted from February to November. We got back to the West Coast and started training for the next one, running simulated intercepts in our demons three or four nights a week. On that schedule, even when we were home, we were really not home. Our 1963 deployment began in the spring and after being home for less than six months. Hugs, goodbyes, tears on cheeks. Dana's little hand pressed into mine. Then back to

the ship to manage a long-distance relationship through handwritten letters, voice messages on cassette tapes, and an occasional phone call. The second parting from my family was worse than the first. I didn't want to be a stranger to my own daughter, but what choice did I have? The Navy wanted me to go, the Navy needed me to go to the other side of the Pacific. It was my sworn duty to go. After 10 years of flying fighters, now you're on deployment. After 10 years, and I'm fast-forwarding, after 10 years of flying fighters, I felt ready and confident. I'd ace the F4 training at VF-121, the West Coast Replacement Air Group, RAG for the Phantom community. The squadron prepared all new F4 crews for their Vietnam deployments. We flew constantly training hard at our beyond visual range missile

intercepts. We even got to shoot at a drone with a sparrow, one of the only times I'd actually fired one of these high-tech weapons. So you guys get the, you're flying an F4 Phantom now. I think that's my favorite American aircraft. I don't know. Well, a matter of fact, I'm actually sure it is my favorite American aircraft. I guess the second maybe be the Corsair, the World War II Corsair. I mean, obviously. But then you got the P-50.

Oh, okay. We won't go down that. But you're flying the F4 Phantom. And that's, once again, this is like a spacecraft almost. Yeah. It was beautiful. That's the bird that they have at, Pensacola. Did you go to Pensacola, Dave?

I did. Yeah. That's the bird that they have in the like the premier spot at Pensacola. The big giant one sitting where you march by every day. So that's what you're flying. And now you're on deployment. You go to Pearl Harbor for a little while. After a few days in Pearl, we were on

our way west to Sassabo, Japan. Our arrival was met by massive protests. Student and radicals opposed to the Vietnam War. When the carrier or Oriscani, how do you say that? Orskiney. When the carrier Oriskini called at Sassabo, around the same time we did, we learned that its air wing had lost half its aircraft over North Vietnam. And it suffered a third of its air crews, either killed, wounded, or missing in action.

Their casualty list eventually included Lieutenant J.G. John McCain, future senator from Arizona, who is captured in October 1967. Only a few weeks before our ships crossed path, one of the F8 pilots, Lieutenant Commander Dick Schaefert, fought an epic duel against six North Vietnamese MIG-17s and MIG-21s. He had been escorting an A-4 Skyhawk strike when they were attacked. Schaefert fired all three of his sidewinder missiles, but each malfunctioned or missed. When he switched to his 20-millimeter cannon, the high-gee maneuvering jammed the pneumatic feed system leaving him defenseless. Nevertheless, he stalemated the migs with an

exceptional display of flying before slipping away on the dregs of his remaining fuel. Other fighters showed up a moment later and downed one of the migs. They fired seven missiles in that fight. Only one hit. So this is where, and you go into, the history in this is awesome, talking about the weapon systems, talking about the failures. You're talking about, you know, it's not only the pilots not getting trained the way they should be, but the weapon systems aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. And this idea of intercept fighting was,

hey, we're going to stay 12 miles away. I lock on my missile system. I shoot it, and then I run away, and the missile does the job. Yeah. That was the, that was the, that was what the plan was from the Pentagon and from the brass.

That's, you know, industry designs them and they build them and we fly them what we're given. And each subject that you've read about here is leading up to why top gun was formed. In other words, the missiles never worked. They're big, they're expensive. How you handle them on the aircraft carrier is another problem.

All problems, you know, somebody paid for them. They were paid for them. They send them a fleet. and they don't work. But in peacetime, you never use them in anger so you don't know that. And the Phantom was designed one way. Mack built a beautiful airplane,

but it was designed as an interceptor. We had never had it in combat. And all these situations that you're talking about led to Top Gun. Failure, make it better, now, you know, the time frame they gave us was two months. Put the graduate school together. We've been doing this for five years of war, and it ain't working. So you give you a couple months, put it graduate school. Initially, the original nine guys or eight guys were with me,

we were trying to figure out whether we were getting sandbagged, you know, whether somebody is setting us up. You blame it on the young guys. They couldn't cut it. Well, it didn't turn out quite that way. So, anyhow, go ahead. All I want to make point is a lot of what you're reading is how and why. Top Gun ended up and then we're about there.

Yeah, no, it's the way you lay the pieces out of how it comes to fruition is history that I don't think a lot of people know about. No. They only know about the movie Top Gun's original movie There's a little situation A little scenario that unfolds In Korea There's a little

A problem And you end up having to go up there And you arrive on station Going back to the booker We arrive on station to face terrible winter weather We sailed through blizzards and snow squalls That left us unable to see The end of the flight deck

From the ship's island The flight deck turned out to be covered in ice. The crew had to assist us to our F4 Phantom so he didn't slip and fall. Once in the cockpits, we were towed to the catapults so we didn't slide around on the ice. A night cat shot is always an experience. Add snow flurries and heavy seas and you've got a real adventure. We climbed it once you launch you, we climbed above 20,000 feet but never broke free of the storm. It was so thick that Skank and I couldn't even see each other.

My backseater, Dennis Duffy, tracked him on radar. and we followed a few miles behind snow and ice lashed our phantoms the windscreen was a kaleidoscope of snowflakes it was like flying through a snow globe the enterprise finally vectored us to a holding pattern before we returned to the ship as our approach time grew near I thought it's strange that they never gave us a weather report we started our descents individually through the heart of the blizzard visibility was almost nil skank went into land first guided by radar from the ship he saw nothing on that first approach He saw nothing on that first approach. No lights, no carrier, just blizzard and blackness. The landing signal officer said, you sounded good when you went by us. When he finally landed, Skank and the landing signal officer talked to me as I swung around the ship again. Stay low. Follow the ship's wake.

I got down close to the water as I dared, 40 feet maybe. The flight deck sits at 65 feet off the swells. A red light began flashing in my cockpit. Low fuel. This was it. Either land or eject into the frigid seas and see how good our survival suits really were. Our life expectancy in the freezing water was five minutes. No thanks.

In the darkness, I found the carrier's white wake and followed it until I spotted the droplights on the ship's stern ahead. They were above me. The landing signal officer told me to climb. I pulled the nose up as the phantom's nose topped the ramp. I pushed the stick forward and an instant later pulled back up. This was an old trick of World War II ace named Zeke Cormier taught me. It saved mine and Dennis's life that night. The phantom touched the deck, the tail hook caught in a resting wire, and we jerked to a stop.

As we waited for the deck crew to clear us, my knees trembled and my feet shook on the brake pedals. Of all the flying I'd done to this date, this was the most demanding. Why somebody in Washington wanted us in the air that night is anyone's guess. I can't think of what we accomplished in our 90-minute sortie other than perhaps impress the North Korean radar operators who undoubtedly tracked our progress through the weather. We had risked our lives for nothing. Who are these politicians to play games with our lives?

That sort of mandated operation happens far too frequently. even today. They've never been there. They couldn't do it, but they've got the power. And that's a problem I have emotionally. I've tried to think about a book

of how to, how to, the military historically has always been subservient to the politicians in Washington. Well, if you look at the entire Vietnam situation. LVJ and McNamara and the way they they dictated what we did every day. And it would never, ever, ever convinced me that what they were doing was the end result was to win. We weren't allowed to win. And I kind of breeze through the section in the opening of this when you're talking about the

fact that you guys are hitting targets that you're getting from the world. White House from the Pentagon. That's who's doing your target selection. Totally crazy. They're coming from McNamara's office. We'd find out. They'd come in on the wire about midnight. The ships people would put out an airplane for the next day.

But the targets were being dictated from Washington. And even since then, it come out that there's been tests. that that same target list was sent to the Swiss Embassy and the Swiss Embassy had related to the North Vietnamese. The logic in D.C. was if they know where we're coming, we won't kill so much collateral damage done. and and there's a pretty good case that that actually happened. Can you imagine? Imagine risking your life every day. And by the way, the North Vietnamese,

they don't care about civilians getting killed. They care about their migs. Well, that's what they care about. That's right. And they actually want civilians to get killed because then they can use that as propaganda against America. We could never, Jaco, we could never understand how the next day we'd go into targets

and they'd have moved the mobile SAM sites and AAA that were all on wheels and they'd move them into the targets that we were going to hit. And that's why I think you'll hear from most of the veterans of flu out there. It's probably the toughest air defense system that they're ever gone against.

You know, you go into it a little bit here. I got to read this part. It says, By Secretary of Defense Robert McNamaran approved by President Johnson our bombing campaign was meant not to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war It wasn't designed to demolish their air defense network so we could operate over North Vietnam With impunity it had nothing to do with tangible results or victory It had everything to do with sending gradual messages to Hanoi Where I had expected to be the tip of the spear we were instead the thumb and forefinger of Lyndon Johnson's gradual escalation of pressure on the North Vietnamese we weren't

allowed to apply pressure anywhere that it might hurt we were only allowed just to pinch their metaphorical their metaphorical shoulder as a warning that if they didn't behave we would pinch harder what rolling thunder campaign was the rolling thunder campaign was LBJ's personal billy club he would send us to smack the North Vietnamese for sending supplies and troops to the insurgents then order unilateral stand downs known as bombing pauses to give the North Vietnamese time to internalize the punishment and heed its lesson. But the pauses just gave them time to rearm.

The American response seemed only to emboldened Hanoi and convince its leadership that we were more worried about the widening war and possibly fighting China or the Soviet Union than we were about defeating them. They used the bombing pauses to resupply and prepare for the next onslaught. A lot of Americans died as a result. Some were friends of mine. on Yankee Station, the Enterprise Air Wing learned that this, what this meant to individual air crews, Johnson and McNamara, micromanaged the losing air war from Washington, D.C., going so far as to pick our targets.

There were perhaps 150 worthwhile things to bomb in North Vietnam. Airfields, military bases, supply facilities, power plants, bridges, rail centers, oil and lubricant facilities, a few steel mills, and, of course, high fongs port facilities. Am I saying that right, Haiphon? As both China and Russia wanted to be Hanoi's primary alley, they each tried to one up each other with military support. Large convoys of weapons and war material flowed across the Chinese border to Vietnam, while the Russians heavy-hauled tanks and surface-to-air missiles systems via ships into the Haifong Harbor.

The enemy thus had sanctuary to bring in whatever was needed for years. afraid of escalating the war, the Johnson administration refused to sanction attacks on Haiphong Harbor or the shipping there. As we started to fly missions up north, we would pass those cargo ships as they waited their turn to offload at the docks. We could see their decks crammed with weatherized migs and surface-to-air missiles that would be shortly used against us. But we couldn't hit them. And we couldn't mind the harbor either. What a tragedy. The simple execution of an off-the-shelf aerial mining plan long before perfected during World War II and carried out in three days could have shut down that big port.

The only one of its kind in North Vietnam. But the word from the White House was no. Those big surface-to-air missiles as large as telephone poles would spear up into the sky after our airport, homing on their radar signatures. They took a heavy toll. We could seldom bomb the missile sites for fear we might kill their Russian advisors. When the North Vietnamese began flying Russian and Chinese built-Meg fighters, the Navy and Air Force asked Washington for permission to bomb their airfields. The request was denied. Categories of targets that could not be struck under any circumstances included dams, hydroelectric plants, fishing boats, sampans, and houseboats.

They also included significantly populated areas. Seeing the military value of these restrictions, the North Vietnamese placed most of their SAM support facilities, and other valuable cargo near Hanoi and Haifong places where we were forbidden to strike. The airfields around Hanoi became sanctuaries for Miggs. The commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Ulysses S. Grant Sharp, who had overall responsibility for the air war, urged the Joint Chiefs of Staff to lift the crippling restrictions. Meanwhile, the enemy fighter pilots could sit on their runways in their planes without fear of attack, waiting to scramble when our bombers showed up.

Eventually, Johnson and McNamara caved to the pressure and allowed strikes on the airfields, yet they micromanaged even this, picking specific airfields and leaving others out of bounds. It was always necessary to virtually beg target authorization out of Washington. Bit by peace, Admiral Sharp wrote. Instead of letting the Navy launch a blitz that might break the back of the North Vietnamese Air Force, We hit a few air bases at a time while leaving the rest unscathed. And I got to read this too. It was a setup for failure, you say.

And it got a lot worse. Those rules of engagement negated the way we had trained to fight in the air. The value of our F4 Phantoms was their ability to destroy airplanes, enemy planes, from beyond visual range. The AIM 7 Sparrow was the ultimate expression of that new way of fighting. Track and lock with the radar system, loose the missile from 10 miles out, and say goodbye. of the mig this is how the Navy trained us to fight we abandoned dogfight training because of the Navy's faith in missile technology most of our air crews didn't know most of our air crews didn't know how to fight any other way yet our own

rules of engagement kept us from using what we were talked the rules of engagement specifically prohibited firing from beyond visual range to shoot a missile at an aircraft a fighter pilot needed to first visually confirm it was a mig and not a friendly plane the thought of an invert and aaxial shootdown of our brothers was of course intolerable it did happen sadly in the heat of combat yet three years along the training squadron in california was still teaching long-range intercept tactics to the exclusion of everything else our training was not applicable to the air war in vietnam this played directly into the kind of the fight the mig pilots wanted the mig 17 was a nimble fighter armed with cannons but no missiles it was an old school

derived from the Soviet lessons learned in the Korean War. With such a plane, the North Vietnamese needed to get in close and track our planes with their gun sites. They would sometimes wait to open fire until they were within 600 feet. Here we were, trained to knock planes down at 10 miles. The F4 carried only missiles. It did not have an internal gun

because contractors in the Pentagon believed the age of the dog fight was over. We brought our expensive high-tech into this knife fight in a phone booth. the result, the MIG pilots scored a lot more heavily than they should have. Yeah. It's a good read, yeah. And again, even when I'm reading chunks like that, I'm skipping over sections, you know, just to, but the history, and, you know, from a leadership perspective, this is a nightmare.

It's a nightmare that there's no connection from the people that are making decisions to the folks that are on the front line fighting. They're not listening to the feedback. It's a disaster. Their motives are, their motives are different. You know, I really have thought about a book. I'm not good enough to write it, I don't think. But you've got the, you've got industry building weapons, whatever they are, airplanes, fire control systems, everything. The industry's building them.

What's their motive? Profit. and the goodness of American weapons. Okay, I'll give them that. But mainly profit motive. Then you keep coming down. The politicians, we know what their motives are like. And you come down to the poor guy who's wanting a machine.

If it doesn't do the job that's required in the operational scenario you're involved in, you're going to lose. And losing second. best in tactics. Yeah, and losing is dying. That's right. Exactly. You know, the other thing, and I go after Robert McNamara a lot, you say this, Robert McNamara was a numbers guy.

And this is the thing. There's secondary effects. There's tertiary effects that happen when people are motivated by certain, certain metrics. So here's what happens Robert McNamara was a numbers guy Under him the Pentagon measured success In the ground war by the body count Can you believe that?

In the air the metric was in the air The metric was the number of sorties flown Over North Vietnam One sortie equals one plane flying one mission A 10 plane raid resulted in 10 sorties This became a delusional world A sortie counted in the total Even if our bombers were forced to dump their payloads

payloads short of the target, which often happened when Miggs appeared. Facing pressure to generate sordies, the carriers were worn and ragged. Aircraft handling crews worked 12 hours on, 12 hours off, spotting and respotting the decks, launching strikes, recovering aircraft, arming and refueling the birds, racing to meet the sortie rate required of them. Each pilot flew twice a day, with each mission taking several hours to brief and debrief. We flew to the edge of fatigue. and beyond. Aviators who were shot down and recovered were back in action in a few short days. While the tempo took a heavy toll, it also led to the needless tragedies, including major fires aboard our carriers, the results of exhausted crews making mistakes. Scores of sailors and

aviators died in those accidents, and the fires on two carriers were serious enough to risk the loss of the ship. We were losing good men needlessly in the push to maintain the sortie rate. Why competition between services? With the Air Force and Navy battling furiously for appropriations, both were determined to outdo the sorties, the other flu. And, you know, to put it in perspective for your audience, I want to tell you a story. The skank that's in there in the story was up during the rescue of the Pueblo.

And Skank, Remsen, is, was a squarting commander. It's a front row guy. Never took a mission that he wouldn't lead, and if they were tough, he was always there. That's why we were out together on that particular. Now, we're back down in Vietnam during that same cruise, and I wasn't with him this day,

but this tells you the quality of the guy in the naval labor. He's in over the beach in North Vietnam, and he's at low altitude, and a rifle shot goes through the cockpit and gets a fleshy part of his legs, both legs, went through, come out the other side, lodged in the console on the left side. So he's shot up in two legs. He reaches down, pulls the garters up, the garters hold for the ejections. seat. There's straps that go around your calves. He brings them up. He turnicates both legs above his wounds, flies 140 miles back to the Enterprise, and lands aboard. Okay. This is T.S. Remsen,

Skank Remsen, the squadron commander. He lands aboard, the medics get him out of the cockpit, take him down. The dock saw him up. Two weeks later, Jocko, he was back. combat flying with his squatter, he refused to be medevacked. And there are plenty of them out there like him. And I know in your world,

both of you that you come out of, there are plenty of guys like that. The great Americans, but they are poorly officiated up above them in many instances. And when you get into

when you hit the about how Top Gun was put together. We were exposed to guys like this. We knew what the answers needed to be. Some of them intuitively we knew. But some of them came from Gino Valencia, Alex Verashe, Texan O'Neill, Skank Remsen, mentoring.

We knew what the goddamn answers were. And they sure weren't sitting in the E-ring in the Pentagon or in Congress. You know, in this section here, you kind of detail the chapter title is Yankee Station Education. And it gives a good overview. And again, I'm jumping ahead of some of the information you cover. But you say, day after day, we flew missions from Yankee Station to hammer targets of questionable value. We bombed truck convoys when we could find them on search and destroy mission.

They move mostly at night in total darkness. We bombed supply depots and occasionally went after power plants as well as, military barracks long flattened by the squadrons who have deployed before us. We went after bridges and samsites. Very occasionally we received permission from Washington to hit MIG airfields around Hanoi. The F4 was designed from the ground up to be a Mach Plus interceptor. It was supposed to be the bane of all Soviet-built strategic bombers.

Over Vietnam, the Phantom became perhaps the most versatile multi-role aircraft America has ever produced. Still, with its interceptor heart, it functioned as an escort fighter, a utility strike bomber, And south of the demilitarized zone, a close air support aircraft. We were doing it all, learning on the job how to best carry out our missions. They were never the same. But the two a days over the north, usually one at night, left us worn out. The lack of quality sleep also put our nerves on edge of time.

We grew easily frustrated. Some people started to withdraw under the pressure. The exhaustion, the grief over losing so many friends. This didn't happen in my squadron. Skank and the other senior pilots set the example by flying almost all the difficult missions with the junior crews while never griping about the targets or the rules of engagement. They were great pilots as well as tremendous inspirations to all of us. Skank kept us focused and working as a team taking care of each of us as we flew daily into harm's way. In our air wing, all the squadrons were led by example.

It wasn't always that way as some other outfits experienced. We were losing guys to Sam's, Flack, and even MIG. whose pilots well directed by radar would launch slashing attacks into our formations. At the end of January, the North Vietnamese Army launched a major attack against a series of special forces outposts and the Marine firebase at Kaysan, which sat up on top of a flat, topped hill with all sides exposed. We launched late that afternoon and flew 200 miles to our marshaling station above Kaysan, with the battle filling the surrounding valleys with gray-black sand.

We had only glimpses of what was happening below. The airfield was a scene of carnage. Burnt out aircraft laid pushed to his side of the runway, victims of mortar barrages. The base itself looked like a lunar landscape, with thousands of shell craters overlapping in the reddish soft soil. I checked in with the Marine forward air controller whose job it was to guide us on to target. He was down there right amongst those young American kids and during the artillery barrages and night assaults alongside them.

With his radios and expertise, he was their fist of God. He was probably a marine aviator as well, so he spoke our language and understood our perspective. The forward air controller heard my check-in radio call and responded immediately. The situation sounded dire from his description. North Vietnamese troops were massing just beyond the wire for another night assault, and he wanted me to hit thing with everything under my wings before darkness gave them the opportunity to attack again. The late day offered a rare cloudless sky, the blue sea. stretching above me contrasted with the ugly coils of smoke and flame filling the valley under my

phantom's nose after receiving my instructions i started down to begin my run keep your speed up 500 knots 400 feet they'll be shooting at you called the forward air controller drop all your snakes on my signal remember there are marines on the wire just off your left wing i leveled off at 400 feet going 500 knots. The phantom sped through the clouds of smoke. From the hills to our right, small arms fire erupted. In my backseater, Dennis Duffy and I could see the muzzle flashes. Moments later, red-orange tracers lace the sky ahead of us and level with us. With my high speed, I wasn't so concerned with taking hits from the North Vietnamese troops on the right of us whose tracers were horizontal, but I was terrified of blowing the run and dropping my snakes on the Marines near the wire by accident. earlier an inexperienced Navy pilot did just that by accident and wounded some of our men. The idea of killing Americans with a misplaced bomb, well, I knew I would never get over that if it happened. I listened carefully to every word that forward air controller said. If I wasn't exactly level, the bombs might fall right or left of the target area depending on where my wings were to the horizon.

Holding steady while every bad guy with an AK-47 seemed to be shooting at me was no easy feat. In fact, it was the toughest flying I'd ever done. I checked my heading, wings level. A second later, the forward air controller called drop, drop, drop. I pickled the Mark 82s. The F4 lurched upward as 6,000 pounds of bombs came off our hard points and began falling toward the ground. Simultaneously, I pushed the throttle further and lit the burner.

The phantom's twin J79 engines responded, and we pulled with 5Gs back to where we belonged far above the fray. Duff, my backseater said, let's haul ass, Kimosabe. As we climbed, my throat constricted, heart filled with dread while we waited to hear from the forward air controller. Toughest part of the mission is waiting for the results from the big grunt fact. Oh shit, did I just kill a bunch of Marines? No word from the air controller. The altimeter needle spun as we seared through 3,000 feet. The seconds ticked off. No word. Behind me, Dennis was twisted in his ejection seat trying to see where our bombs landed. Oh shit. The radio filled with static. Then the

forward air controller's voice shouted, great run, great run, right on target. The Marines held, and as a joint army navy, as a joint army Marine and South Vietnamese rescue force battled up its way, its way up Highway 9 to break the siege. The Enterprise Air Wing returned to its regularly scheduled programming over North Vietnam. We flew that day and night. We flew day and night in any kind of weather. We flew alpha strikes, which were large unwieldy raids of 30 or more planes. We F4s provided escort against the MIG threat or went to suppress air defenses while A4 Skyhawk attack planes struck targets. We flew two and four-plained, armed rec missions searching for anything worthwhile.

Washington allowed us to bomb. Yeah, I mean, there's not a person that knows anything about the military that hasn't heard about K-Song, the Siege of K-Song. And wow, that's a crazy story from your perspective, hearing it from your end. Well, well, it was so desperate. The siege was so bad by that time. They actually brought us in, you know, the Marines at Tulane, were flying close air support to. And we didn't do that much of it, Navy guys. But it was, I had seen pictures of it.

the wrecky pictures and so forth, reconnaissance, but to see it up close. And then hear some guys down there on the wire with the guys who had endured a night, a major night advance by the North Vietnamese a couple of days before. I mean, it's a serious business. Dave, you got the, you got to experience that. the how good does it feel when you're on the ground and you're talking to somebody and you know you know what to say you speak their language and then when you're in the air and you hear that person's voice and you go all right i got i got you i mean listen to this is just i mean i'm

kind of choked up just hearing you tell the story i got i was i was so lucky in my career to spend so much great time flying but that i got to live with jocco's guys for about six months to see it in Ramadi on the other side and and I remember being told Yank that we would that type one cast was dead I remember being told you'll never do it incident in some of the same institutional things you dealt with and to be down there talking to my old squadron mates doing type one gun runs in in situations that I never thought I'd be in but how good it felt to do something that to be honest I didn't really want to be doing but to be down there and have guys that I knew from my old

squadron coming in doing gun runs. And when those missions were over and go back and think, man, like you said, I mean, the serious business, the fact of the Marine Corps let me do that, there was a lot of me that didn't really want to, but that was the most powerful thing I ever did

in my 23 year career, was use aircraft as a fact to keep soldiers, Marines, and seals alive, which to this day is... How long were you on the ground during... I didn't. I was a fact for one year. I did seven months in Ramadi,

about six of a... It was with Jocko's team. Hey, listen, Yank, don't take for one second that I want you to think that what that story just told was my life. Please don't. And don't think that anything we did was remotely comparable to, you know, what the guys in KSan and what the guys in Vietnam. You know, we, you know, it's just not comparable. It's just not comparable. Dave and I and the rest of the guys at Eschelon Front spend a lot of time talking about the fact.

that our combat experience is it's a real stretch to use the word combat experience when you compare it to a lot of the guys I've had on this podcast and a lot of you know and and obviously hundreds of thousands of service men and women that have done things infinitely harder and and more dangerous and with what much more sacrifice than anything that we did and that's why we just try and, you know, capture some of the lessons. I understand. But I also believe the most humble, the most humble, whether you're flying,

whether you're a seal or a grunt in the core, the most humble are usually the best warriors. I'm really finding that in naval aviation. You know, Remington never would ever. You'd never, even in the bar at night, You'd never hear Rumson tell that story about himself. They're humble guys, but they're great Americans. Indeed.

And that's the same way, you know. You get down, I listen, and I look at a lot of your podcasts. A single event in your life, your Jocko or you, David, a single event can get you killed. Every event that you were involved in in your time and the service, is important. You made it through that single event, and you go on to the next one.

And that's why, well, we get into it, but that's how the brotherhoods, you know why we top gun guys all call each other bro? There were original nine bros. We're coming to that. But out of that grew 600 bros. He's one of them. And that's because they deal in each other's life day after day after year after year, if they're good.

Yeah. Now you've heard my lecture. Well, that was, you know, and I just kind of rattled off all the different types of missions that you guys were doing. And I'm going to fast forward a little bit here. It says the missions continued as did the losses. There were nights I got back to my bunk struggling with despair Seeing friends die is never an easy thing at times you think you grow hard to it other times their deaths open wounds that the heart simply cannot heal On those nights I would crawl under the covers and lay there unable to sleep despite my exhaustion

Mind racing could we have done anything different? Could he have gotten out and we just didn't see the shoot Fortunately none of them were from my squadron I tried not to think about their families back home, but the faces of wives and kids would sometimes elude those efforts and they would come back to me in a rush. I found through my Navy career that some men revel in the challenge and rush of combat. That pace of off Vietnam, it was their hunting ground. Me, I never got to that point. Combat was a responsibility, even a sacred duty. I took it very seriously, of course, but I never liked it. Those men I would never see again those families I would see too soon again They were the cost of all that adrenaline rush others craved That was a burden I couldn't carry and love at the same time the enemy always had a say

And that was the wild card in combat you could do everything right your division could do everything right Your chain of command could make every decision and lead from the front like skank did yet we faced cunning Devoted and frankly courageous enemy who found ways to surprise us with new tricks on those sleepless nights my brain refusing to shut off i would think of those empty wardrobe chairs we lost some excellent pilots all the talent in the world was not enough when fate called your number you close this section out saying in those sleepless nights which most of us out on yankee station had we did our best not to think of home it could make you cautious hesitant in the air get you killed if you were right

wise you never look past the next dawn some combat vets would tell the new guys assume you're never coming back truly believe it and you will make it home it was a psychological paradox of battle yeah there's a there's a weird there's a weird challenge right for a grunt you're there you're there you're sleeping in it in the dirt you're in danger. You're just you just you get a use to it you get numb to it. It's the reality for you guys to be back safe on an aircraft carrier and then load into your aircraft and launch that's a different psych and and frankly thinking about the guys that you lose you you you have less time to do that on the ground. You know you're not you're you're you're actively engaged and even we come back to base we're planning for the next mission and You know you're going out. But for you guys, like, you know, even if you do two missions, even if it takes you 12 hours, you got 12 more hours in that day you've got to deal with.

And that's a different, it's a different psychological challenge, I think. And the way you described it, it sounded like a different psychological challenge. And I will say, for me, the hardest part of doing a mission is waiting to go. You know, that's the only time where I'd be like, all right, what, you know, what, that's when my mind would start to race of, did I think of everything, what could go wrong. That's, once you're on the mission, you're in the zone, you know. You're, I'm not, I'm not thinking about anything but getting the job done.

But the hours before, four hours before, and you guys were in the perpetual cycle of waiting to go and not knowing if it was going to be your time or not. Well, well, that's the profession in able aviation. nightcare landing is always are exciting and uh you had an opportunity to get a mig but it didn't work out what happened with that one oh remsen and i and two other guys were vectored in hot ready to shoot and uh i follow my leader at 12 miles were all locked up we got good ready lights ready to fire It was very rare that we weren't bound by the rules of engagement. We were cleared to fire, 12 miles.

Remsen decides we're going to sweeten the pot, so we'll go to 10 miles, 8 miles. And about 10 miles, we're going pretty fast, you know what I mean? We get to call Salvo, Salvo, Salvo, from a red crown, which was the offshore. air controller and salvo means get out of there and they don't specify why so Remsen we crossed turned and turned away and let let these make 21s which were coming down the pipe at us we had to we had to not fire now two things could have happened they could have been friendlies Red Crowns made mistakes on occasion. It's radar interpretation at some distance. So that was the immediate reaction.

And then we hear, honestly God, they heard it. The thunder go over the top. There's a rolling thunder going over the top. And the Long Beach had fired Taylor's missiles. And it shot them right over the top of us. You talk about being angry. got back to the boat and landed and found out what it was. And they shot down one and got a probable on a second Meg 21, which belonged to Remsen and Pedersen. You know, it's a, it's a crapshoot. Yeah.

You know, on a given day, do you get a chance that you train in years for? That wasn't our day, so you go on, get ready for the next day. I can say. Eventually, you get to this point, and again, I'm fast forwarding through stories and details and personnel, just awesome history. You get to this point, we were worn out, beat up, and bitter. Between the end of February and the end of June, our 100-man air wing had lost 13, killed or captured.

Ten bombers, an F4, and a vigilante reconnaissance plan. Something was very, very wrong. If we were going to regain the dominance that was naval aviation's birthright, we would need to make changes. My orders were cut. I had been assigned to the Phantom Fleet Replacement Squadron at Naval Air Station, Miramar, as luck would have it. There, in the bustling enclave of fighter squadron 121,

I would have the chance to help solve our costly, tragic problem. So you get to Miramar. Fall 1968. Fighter Town, USA. That's the long-standing nickname of the Naval Air Station, whose Spanish name Miramar doesn't even seem to suit the place. There's no view of the sea from its location, 15 miles north of San Diego,

five miles in from the coast, at least not until you've gone wheels up and you're flying west on that air controllers, what the air controllers call us. Sea Wolf departure. No, the unofficial nickname painted on Hangar 1 is a much better fit. On the runways, ramps, and taxiways of the sprawling complex, the shriek of jet engines, and the smell of aviation fuel is constant. If my love of flight had been tested by war, I still never shook the habit of lifting my eyes to the sky whenever a jet roared overhead.

Who was it? How was he doing? What's going on? As an instructor, it was my job to keep track of my nuggets. When I parked my sea bag at Miramar again, this time to serve as a tactics instructor at Fighter Squadron 121. I found the pace of daily life clipping along at a fast wartime tempo. The whole West Coast Naval Shore establishment had ramped up to support the war in Vietnam and VF

121 was hauling a heavy load. I was an instructor in the advanced tactics phase of the squadron. A good man, lieutenant commander, Sam Leads was the head of tactics. What kept, and again, I'm jumping through some stuff here.

What kept us from pushing the aerodynamic limits because you talk about what you guys were doing to train and then you kind of have a caveat that you weren't pushing as hard as you wanted to what kept us from pushing the aerodynamic limits was the risk aversion that commonly afflicts training the worst thing we could do as far as our higher headquarters was concerned was lose a plane so twice a so twice a day i took when i took new phantom pilots and their backseaters up to fly we played it safe we did air combat maneuvering or ACM, but always within strict safety parameters. As a result, the program lacked combat realism. The first time rag pilots saw the radical maneuvers that modern jets

were capable of, or sorry, the first time a rag pilot saw the radical maneuvers that modern jets were capable of, tracers were flying. Their eyes had not been opened. That's not how you want to send a young man off to war. So you guys are training within some pretty strict confines. And it's crazy to think that the first time a guy's really going to be able to test to maximize the maneuverability and the capability of the aircraft is going to be in combat. It's ridiculous. Been doing it for five years. Luckily, not long after my arrival in late December,

Sam Leeds called me into his office and showed me a thick document bound in a blue cover. It was a study issued by the Naval Air Systems Command. It's title, Report of the Air to Air Mississom. system capability review hardly sounded like a blockbuster but this study produced by Captain Frank Alt the captain of the Coral Sea was an impressive consequential piece of work about 200 pages long it was a top-to-bottom exploration of the reasons for our failure in air-to-air combat over North Vietnam Captain Oldt's project had been a long time coming it began in the summer of 1968 when he led a team that tackled

the problem of the Sparrow missile building on that and other studies he pulled in more than 200 people to a symposium at the Naval Air Missile Test Center at Point Magoo, north of Los Angeles. There were pilots, commanders, and managers, and technicians from Raytheon, Westinghouse, and McDonald-Douglas, all the major fighter weapons contractors. No one had put together the entire picture of the problem like Altad. It was the first time the whole air combat system, our fighters, their missiles, and fire control systems had been studied holistically from the air.

design and acquisition to operations and logistics. Alt wanted to understand weapon systems from the womb to the tomb, as he liked to say. His conclusions were far-reaching. Sam Leeds called my attention to one particular recommendation in the report. He flipped to page 37 and pointed to the 11th of the 15th items listed in paragraph 6, air crew training. It was there that Alt advised the chief of naval operations and the commander of Naval Air Force Pacific to, established as early as possible and advanced fighter weapons school at NAS Miramar for both the F8 and the F4. These were the words that gave birth to Top Gun.

Sam and I knew that any Miramar-based tactics training program would run through us. He looked at me and said, Dan, why don't you take it? I suppose this was generous of him. He had both experience and seniority over me. He could have led the effort himself, but he had already had a great job waiting for him. He was in the final running to command the first fighter squadron that would fly the new F-14 Tomcat. Sam could have easily taken the assignment to start a new schoolhouse, to start the new schoolhouse, and then he handed off to me when his time came to fly the F-14s.

But he felt the school should have the same leadership from the beginning, for continuity's sake. He said as much and strongly. It was settled then and there. I made a quick, fateful decision. I'd do it. And you're what? A lieutenant commander right now at this point? 31 years old

Lieutenant Commander I was probably going about about 50 years old tired fatigue and that's a great opportunity I mean that is that is the best gift

in the career somebody gave you yeah Frank Al the all report Marvel's document unsolicited he did that on his own

It wasn't asked for. He told us what was wrong in detail, but he never taught. God bless him, he never mandated what to do about it. He just said, I want a graduate school. It's a get-well program in the shortest amount of time. Somebody in endorsing it when it was approved and sent to 121, they put, yeah, and do it in two months. and we don't have any space for you.

We don't have a building. We don't have any airplanes. I don't have any support people. But you got two months to make the school and teach the first class. Now, this is a graduate school, Taco. This is not what we've been teaching for five years. Yeah. Can you imagine the confrontation you're going to get?

from the existing squadron commanders out in the fleet. Yeah, and these are 05, the squadron commanders at this time, were they 05 commanders? Yeah, yeah. So you're junior to all these guys. Oh, yeah. It's beautiful. We all know what that's like. Yeah.

You say soon we started calling the school top gun. We weren't the first to use this nickname. There was an annual weapons competition that used the same name until about 1958. The aircraft carrier ranger, which I would later command, called itself the top gun of the Pacific Fleet. You can't write everyday Navy fighter weapon school. You got to have a nickname. And Top Gun just seemed to work. That's it.

And they liked it. You had to, you know, the goal of Top Gun wasn't just to teach pilots, but to make those pilots kind of into teachers themselves. Oh, that's the answer. So it's like a teacher's college. In other words, you've got to teach people that are going out of the fleet. And the solicitation we did in the initial solicitation to bring in students said send your two best, the two best nuggets or lieutenants or below from your squadron. And, of course, some of the reaction, we don't want to.

put it on tape here. But the idea was those two guys would come back. We'd form a cat. In about six weeks, we'd teach in graduate school, and they'd go back out, and they'd teach their entire squad and the new tactics. So it was colorful. The lore behind this is awesome. You go into selecting the first original eight, you call them.

And I have to at least just kind of run through some of the highlights. The stories you got behind these guys are awesome. Mel Holmes is the first round pick by anybody's book. One time Mel was golfing at Bays and, of course, in Marmar, he had a drive into the weeds. That was bad news for the nest of rattlesnakes he walked into while looking for his ball. When his buddies saw him hacking away with his seven iron slaughtering those search, In the grass Holmes had his nickname Rattler He had one trait in spades that I strongly doubt is teachable a bone deep hardwired electric fire

Sense of aggression I chose John smash Nash for the way his heart and mind work together any suggestion that a mismatch was at hand triggered his competitive his competitive fire his motto I'd rather die than lose bore it out Most combat pilots were are wired that way what matters What made Nash special was the way he combined that fire with hyperattention of detail. Jim Rullifson, is my saying that right? Jim Rolffson probably put out more intellectual wadage than any of us. Jerry Sawatsky, or ski bird, as I called him, had played linebacker for Bear Bryant at Alabama. We appreciated him for being as reliable as gravity. So there's your pilots, and then without a good backseater, you get into the, the,

The Rios. At the head of the pack was J.C. Smith, who I invited right away. He might have been the finest Rio there ever was. You also had Jim Hawkeye. Hawkeye Lang. Is that right? Jimmy Lang. Say, Neil.

A youngster, just 23 years old, so quiet in person, you'd never know he was a tiger in the rear seat. During his two combat tours in Vietnam, flying from the Kitty Hawk, he and his pilot flamed a Meg 17 in a wild fight near Haifong. Harbor. Lang survived two ejections in barely a month. Our other, I don't even know what to say about surviving two of Jackson's in a month. That's just crazy. You'd like to mean him. It'd be a good interview.

Well, he's obviously open invite whenever he wants. I'll be standing by. Our other Smith, Steve, had all the ascensions of a top grade reel that stood apart from everybody for his skills as a salesman organizer and grifter for all seasons. Our junior Rio, lieutenant junior grade, Darryl Gary was the youngest man in our cadre of founders. He had every attribute I wanted instructor, mature beyond his years, confident beneath his years, and very hardworking.

Last find was Chuck Hildebrand, and he was an Intel guy. So you brought him to help you guys with the Intel side of figuring out what other aircraft consisted of what they're capable of the whole nine yards. I wanted to become the central repository. of tactical aviation within Navy. Navy had none of that. They were classified at all. It's over at CIA headquarters up to that point.

So I wanted to build it, and it works that way now. And you guys basically, did you basically steal a trailer for this organization? That's a great story. You love it. You know, we're just busting our hump to get ready in two months. and, you know, there's no op order for this. There's no plan. It's winging it.

You know, whatever is fair, just do it and get it done. The individual guys had, and I've been flying with the Israelis off and on, and I learned from the Israelis when you got a lot done. On a tight schedule, you have to do things. get people that are intellectually or professionally excellent in given technical areas. So these guys, all of them have their expertise to start with. And Steve Smith, who probably should be a felon, he's a wealthy one at that now. But at the time, he'd make a list of things today.

do every day and by he and I work together in the early morning and by evening time and this got it all done is that kind of guy get it done personality

great and one Friday early in the morning I said damn I said we're really moving forward paperwork wise plan wise tacty

really looking good but I said we don't even have a place to start holding, formalize this thing. And I said, but I got an idea. So I sent him down behind base ops at Miramar. And he comes back on Saturday morning with a big 40-foot crane hanging below it. It's a 20 by 40 building,

which is a picture that are in the book of the original, he had stolen this thing. He had bribed the crane operator with a case of scotch, which I ended up buying. But they bring it down. And, you know, the pace of things was such a, I said, you got what? And the guys were all laughing. The whole place was laughing. Go out, and here's the CO's parking spots all along the street.

And here's this crane with this big building. suspended below it. And he said, where do you want to put it? I said, you put it right here by the steps leading up to Fighter Down Hanger, put it right here right above the CO's parking spot, 121, and we got away with it. So Sunday, he says, I got a bunch of flooring. We're going to put new flooring in the building today, so everybody came in, and we hammered, nailed, and glued down.

new flooring in there, and he brings in red paint, and we painted the trim on the building, all red. I said, what in the hell did you do it in red for? He said, who would believe you'd steal a building and painted red? This is the mentality that you're dealing with. And by God, Monday morning, in comes some vans. They had Nevada license plates. And I think he had been up to Nellis and stole him a bunch of salvage furniture from the Air Force. But he brought in desks and chairs and safes. He got a couple safes. This was the kind of guy.

He whipped it out. Three days. We started the classroom then. That's epic. You say here, before we could teach the material, we had to study it and learn it cold ourselves. We created, collated, and corrected the curriculum at a fever pace, working all hours to refine it, hunting and pecking with two fingers on manual typewriters, redlining each other's drafts, rehearsing lectures to each other. This last part was key as we took turns on the podium in the trailer.

We faced withering scrutiny from our fellow instructors in the military. This is known as a murder board. No hiccup in presentation style, no slip of the tongue, no glitch in dress or personal appearance was too small to be seized upon and corrected on the spot. We knew we would be ineffective lecturing our top-notch students if we were anything less than bulletproof. How would they believe us at Top Gun if we couldn't deliver graduate level lessons well? In the meantime, we began reaching out to the fleet squadrons to recruit their students. It's interesting to me. I found that part interesting that you guys went hyper-professional.

You went, hey, we are going to be over the top professional. Because you could see the attitude, hey, we're doing this. We're kind of flying by the seat of our pants. I will teach you kind of haphazard. You guys went hyper professional. That was an awesome move. And in the forward to the book, the eight elements. And then murder boarding has a ninth element.

It took us a while to analyze. Yeah, we winged it. to get it going. But once we got it up and it was successful, you had to set the standards high because nobody believed you. It was the same type of thing that we had been doing for five years. It wasn't going to fly. But you just make it special. And it stuck. It's still that way. Is it not? Dave? A hundred percent. 100 percent. That legacy has sustained from the beginning. And the elements are in the forward of that book. And they're applicable to commercial enterprise.

You'd be amazed who I've lectured on those. I wouldn't be surprised at all. I know that the principles that we learn in the military are extremely applicable to any leadership situation. You're just about to start the first class and you say this. I was cooking along in full afterburner about 100 miles off the California coast approaching San Clement Island when I felt the thump. My warning panel lit up. There was a fire in my right engine.

As I shut it down, my backseater, Lieutenant J.G. Gil Sliny ran through the emergency checklist while Mel eased in close for a visual inspection trying to see through all the smoke. We were about 30 miles from Miramar off La Jolla when the 7-liter liquid oxygen canister mounted it in the tail of my phantom exploded it tore the tail section clean off my bird end over end we tumbled time slowed down we plummeted in my headset i think i heard mel's voice dan you guys eject eject eject gill pulled the handle and we rocketed out of the doom jet we fell toward the ocean strapped into our ejection seats at 21,000 feet it's odd how time passes in a I had been inspired by the flood of adrenaline into my system.

I had time to look down over La Jolla and notice the scenic cove. My helmet visor was gone, but somehow my ray-band sunglasses were still hanging on. I've got to save them, I thought. Those sunglasses had been with me since my Pensacola training days. No way did I want to lose them now? I reached up, shucked them off my face and stuffed them into a zippered pocket on my flight suit. It was then that I realized as I fell through space that I was still attached to my ejection seat. This was a problem.

The heavy apparatus was supposed to separate automatically by action of a powerful spring activated by Barristat at 12,000 feet. Falling toward the sea, I looked around for Gill's shoot and was relieved to see him drifting down behind and above me. Disengaged myself manually from the ejection seat and falling clear, I pulled the D ring to pop my shoot. Nothing happened. I yanked it again harder and the cable broke off in my gloved hand. I was falling at terminal velocity 14 feet per second like a rock Somehow I had to get my hands on the shoot pack Short on time and altitude I pulled myself up the risers and reached my shoot pack

I thought of my wife and kids and home and it was God who gave me the strength. I'm sure Reaching the parachute pack I opened it with my hands and the shoot flew free The beautiful white blossom swelled above me jerking me upright into a lazy but she's short descent. Thank you, my dear Lord. Was that your first ejection? Only. Only ejection. And you had to climb up

the risers of your parachute and yank that thing out? That's very deep. They weren't up here. Oh, okay. You bring you. Okay. So it wasn't that big of a deal to have a malfunctioning parachute after you ejected out of your F4 Phantom with your engine exploded. I was going to be impressed, sir.

The next line gets Even better. Yeah, yeah. Looking down at the cold water, I saw the dark, sleek shadow swimming just below the surface. And there were a lot of them. Yeah, people don't, I mean, you're off the coast of Southern California. Yeah. There's sharks.

Yeah. There are. And actually, people know this now, because, you know, we have drones flying around. And now that they fly drones all over the place, people are all shocked that there's a bunch of sharks out there. Like, I'm a surfer. And people are now realizing, oh, there's sharks right off the coasts. coast of where we surf. And, you know, I said,

sharks have always been there. That's their home, you know? So you caught a visual on some sharks as you were inbound? Well, I looked down, they saw the silhouettes in the dark. And this is about 15 minutes before dark. And the water's cold, 13th of February. And so I hit the water. And then my little raft disinflated.

So I climb in it as quick as I can. It's cold, man. And I think I was motivated by the thought. It was probably sharks. Turns out it was dolphin. Because where my big boots were sitting on the end of the raft, pretty soon, boom, boom. Two snouts turned up,

and these squeaky little devils are sitting there looking at me. You guys would probably swam with those before. I have, yeah. And they're talking, they're charling. They're excited to have somebody new and learned. I got rescued by a hero that night. Yeah. On March 3, 1969, in our stolen trailer at Fighter Town USA, Top Guns, Class 1 convened.

I had to throw this in there. I issued a heartfelt welcome aboard and said we'd been charged with an important purpose. This is you talking to your students for the first time. I introduced my instructor team and told them who we all were. I explained that we would all learn together along the way. The main thing for any skipper to bear in mind is this. The troops need to know he's interested in their welfare. This is true regardless of the leader's personal communication style.

Hard asses can care too. Some leaders give lip service to caring, but what a leader does it does to show it is far more important. I wanted my instructors to challenge them, but always constructively. We would aspire to build their confidence, not destroy it. They were professionals and future mentors in training. So we were going to show them how it was done. I close by saying there is an urgency here beyond anything we've ever done. We hold lives in our hands.

These words still fill me with conviction today. So this was a, like you said, a graduate level school and you're treating these people more as peers than as, you know, people that, weren't worthy of being there and that needed to bow down to you guys. Oh, yeah. No. None of that. It's a brotherhood. Dealing, you guys know that. Dealing in human life every single day. Yours, theirs.

They knew why they were there. They were there to get better so they wouldn't go out and get themselves bagged. And their biggest responsibility, Jocco, I think, is we made it known right from the first time they got there, or the day they arrived, that they were there to become proficient, teacher-owned squadron mates. And boy, that stuck. Their pride, pride in being a top gun instructor, right, David?

It's not an easy way to get there. Sir. The pace of the program accelerated once we began flying a lot After the first week or so, we ran two or three training sorters every day with the instructors playing the role of aggressors. We would put the students in different scenarios flying all the basic permutations. One versus one, two versus one, one versus two, two versus two, four versus two, four versus four versus four. A dogfight is a true physical ordeal. When a fighter aircraft is flown hard, it shakes you like a plummeting roller coaster on the verge of collapse.

You're buffeted from side to side. Helmet hammering the plexiglass canopy, harness digging into your shoulders and hips. G forces cause blood to surge and drain from your extremities, including your head. Our program tested not only a student's body, but his mind. Fast forward a little bit. There were a couple names for the mig killing new tactics we developed in the F4 community. It basically involved flying a phantom like a Saturn V rocket straight up. Sometimes we called it using the vertical envelope.

It was also known as the high yo-yo. But the name we settled on was inspired by the shape of the airspace we used while flying. it. J.C. Smith called it the egg and the moniker stuck. That was the shape our phantom's track rocketing up and coming back down. So you guys are starting to come up with new tactics, new methods. The F. 4 is greatest attribute to magnificent indians and it would go up and no migs ever stay with you. And we learned to fly. I've flown zero air speed. On my back up here. Just one, and two, to a pilot, free fighter, engaged fighter.

One guy's down pushing the Migs. The other guy comes in and goes right to sweet spot to shoot. And we got very good at it. And we flew the airplane way beyond what McDonnell Douglas sold them for. Would, so you're putting, are you putting this thing into a stop? when you reach the apex of the vertical? Are you getting close to it, but you have to back off? She behaves.

Take her up to where you're comfortable and what you see down below. Sometimes you had to get really slow up here. Sometimes you go to zero, and the airplane would behave so well. Use rudders, not a lot of aileron, but rudders. And I've flown the airplane straight in the pierre, vertical to zero airspeed full after burner leave it there and come back down and we did it to make sure what would what the airplane would do in case you got up here and some nugget didn't get it over on its backside to fly it straight up after burner's going and she chugs and she doesn't like it

very much but she comes down just like this to fall through on her belly and goes out the bottom and and ain't a meg driver in the world going to stay with you through that. And we did that. And I made the guys, each one of them, I went up and demoed it, put a student in the back seat and made him get in the front seat,

and I climbed the back. No flight controls in the back seat at airplane. And I ride through that in the back seat. And when that was over, his confidence was way out. It worked great. That's a basic tactic, flying the vertical. You say flying every day, we worked on all this and we worked hard.

We developed the egg in a way that made excellent use of our two-plane loose-duce formation. Yep. Which basically with loose-duce, talk us through the loose-duce formation a little bit. That's just two airplanes. mutual support. That's a key, okay? You've got to be able to, when you're cruising through Indian country, you've got to be able to keep them off your six.

You don't want him to get shot, and he don't want you to get shot. And from this position, they can cross turn, they can clear each other. Learned that in World War II from reading. And so you get in the Indian country, and you've got migs, and you come through the merge, maybe you're offset a little bit but come through the merge

and miggs come down he passed you and one of them becomes a free fighter he goes into vertical the other one comes around and tries to push the miggs and you try and push them into predictability mick drivers are like everybody

they want to stay alive and some of them are various degrees of expertise some of them aren't too good Some of them are excellent. You know, the top meg driver in North Vietnam, got nine victories and serious businesses. So in a free fighter, this guy up here would always try and come down.

It's a, I'm in, two's off. Or, you know, that's where we, that's how we ended up with the call signs that we have. Because you can't relate numbers to each other. You got to have, you know, rattlers in, yanks off. when the second aircraft starts to go up when the first aircraft comes down is in is the other one now taking the up position?

Yeah, yeah. Keep track of the makes. Migs remember don't have the power to get up with the phantom and they're in lines of strength. So you keep pushing them down there. Don't let them get fast. Just push them down.

And eventually one of you, one potato two potato, one of you will get a valid the shot by the sidewalker. And oh, God, if I ever wanted anything in my flying career, I wanted a gun in the phantom.

Never had a gun. I know I could have won every fight with a gun. Gaddling gun. This concept of the loose deuce formation, you know, even when you said mutually supporting, you know,

in ground tactics, right, we have the principle of cover. move which means we're going to work together. When one person's moving, the other person's shooting or, you know, keeping the enemy distracted, allows the other person to move to a better position, a superior position, and they're going to follow up. The other interesting thing you said about how you couldn't use ones and twos, my first

deployment to Iraq, you know, we had the Humvees were numbered, one, two, three, four, five, six. So you go out on target and everyone's assigned what vehicle you're going to get into, one, two, three, four, five, six. Well, because of the arrangement, so you'd go assault to target, and the vehicles would rearrange to, so when you got back in them, we could leave immediately. Well, they wouldn't always rearrange in the right order. And so what you'd end up with, a guy that came in vehicle two, he'd come out of an assault. He'd look and he'd see vehicle number two, and he'd go jump in it because he thought it was, you know, he'd count down. There's number one.

There's number two. I came in vehicle two. Well, that wasn't accurate. And you'd have guys going to the wrong vehicles. And so we ended up, I said, we're going to name the vehicles. And you're going to know what vehicle you're in by name. Because that way, hey, if I came in Big Earn or whatever, you know, Big Earn was the Humvee I came in, cool. I get out.

I'm not looking for a number. I'm looking for Big Earn. And that way my team is going to be together. We can get a quick headcount. That's right. Same idea. Yeah. Loose.

Is that what you guys did too, Dave? It's almost exactly the same. I mean, the terminology is the same. All the things he's talking about, everything that they are talking about, has. sustained to this day, almost the exact same verbiage. Only any changes is the opposition's airplanes, your own airplanes,

the weapon system that they're giving you to fly and that's there in the lies the complexity of being a top gun instructor because it's a constant dynamic they have got to work

to stay ahead of the potential enemies. If it be China, if it be Russia, everybody in the free world is working to keep their intelligence and their tactics revised, if you will. It's a full-time dynamic business, hard work. You say this about the loose-duce. The loose-duce tactic reflected Top Guns culture.

And this is why I called the sell, because it's not just the tactic that you're using in the air, which empowered junior officers to act and speak freely. There was no leader wingman hierarchy in our tactics, which left either fighter free to attack, depending on who cited a bogey first. Loose deuce was versatile and aggressive, certainly was a far cry from the Air Force's tactic, the fluid four,

which in spite of its adjective was quite rigid, giving the initiative and most opportunities to the flight leaders. Yeah. Life at Top Gunn was Fight Club every day. As the instructors flew against the students, it was natural for the students to want to take a scalp now and then. If one of them beat Rattler, Smash, Swatsky, Cobra, or me, it could help his service reputation. They seldom did it. But by the end of the syllabus and its 26 flights, it did happen.

There was plenty of pride to be taken in that. I tried to keep them grounded. Everybody gets beaten now and then I told them if you managed to beat Mel and were smart you understood it was dangerous to pump your ego The lesson there was that if Mel could get beat Anyone good I considered this attitude the heart of professionalism and why and as for my instructors from time to time I had to warn them no egos fellow we're fellows we're here to teach that lesson right there of When you beat the best? And you go, yeah, I just beat the best guy.

What the real lesson is, you can get beat too. That's a powerful thing to think about. That's turning your ego right on its head. But you got to train to take on the best there is every time. Your whole goal in training is to beat the very best. If he comes out someday, you better be ready. Yeah. And when I was in charge of training seals for deployment, the people that they fought against in training for deployment was other seals that knew their tactics, that had the same conditioning, that had the same weapons that actually knew what their plan was.

There's no one that would ever face a tougher enemy than you're going to face going through seal pre-deployment training. A tougher enemy does not exist. That's really interesting. It's the same exact attitude that you guys had. You know, and I talked to Dave on the phone yesterday. I said, this is the exact same attitude that we had in the SEAL teams is how do we push ourselves against the hardest possible situation we can be in? So when we go into combat, it seems easy.

That's our goal. Make combat seem easy. Yeah. Well, you can't lead. You can't lead in good conscience if you don't train that way. Absolutely not. You can't be the leader. No.

There's a, the next section you start talking about, you kind of mentioned it earlier, was, was Paradise Ranch, Groom Lake, Dreamland, all the same names for something that probably most people have heard the name Area 51. And out there, well, you talked about it. You fly out there and these guys had a couple captured migs. Well, there's a lot of things going on out there, and we won't go into it. But I went out there and flew. I went out and flew a couple tests. I flew five, six times. I flew the Migs because I wanted the experience.

Mel Holmes and I did that. And that was the first trip out. And then later on, when the first class graduated, I surprised them. I briefed the mission. and we put them in. I think I led and probably male led. And we took them to Dreamland, unknown. And we go smoking in the Dreamland,

a nice easy 500 knots in the Dreamland. Where are we going? What are we going to do, you know? Radio silence, right? Here comes some makes. The guy's got. to fight the migs for a graduation present and unknown and it's a surprise to hell out of that is epic and you know they did they really got it on and they were good and they flew the tactics

we had taught them and they and they held their own and man what a party we had at miramar that night Yeah, that's completely epic. I didn't catch that or I didn't recall it. I probably just didn't catch it. The first time you did that day was a surprise to them, and they were just looking at all this and they positively identify a mig. I just briefed them in those days and said, we get off in section, section takeoffs.

And I had three of them with me, I think. I said, just follow me. And I said, be ready. We're going to Indian country. That's all I told them. And so they speculate all the way up there. Speculate where in the hell. What's the crazy man doing now?

So it was fun. We get into this. And there's a lot of connections here. Top Gun couldn't avoid a rivalry with the U.S. Air Force. It wasn't about politics to us. It was about flying and ideas. Sure, it bothered us to hear the Air Force. claim it had created the first fighter weapon school.

It's bad ideas that lose wars and get people killed. The most vocal advocate of the Air Force thinking at that time was Major John Boyd. In 1969, he was making a lot of speeches promoting his energy maneuverability theory of air-to-air warfare. Simply put, it's a mathematical formula that tries to reduce fighter aircraft performance to a single value based on the plane's speed, thrust, aerodynamic drag, and weight. First put forward in 1964, it had reportedly been used by the Air Force to design new fighters, such as the F-15 Eagle and the F-16 Fighting Falcon, outstanding planes, as we all know.

In 1969, Mel and Ski gave a talk at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. John Boyd followed them pitching his theory. There was some good debate, and Mel remembers Air Force officers starting to challenge their catechism. In the Q&A, Major Boyd made an infamous remark. He said that no U.S. pilot should ever dogfight a mig because his theory proved mathematically that since the enemy plane performed better throughout the flight envelope than the F4, taking on a mig was a good way to end up hanging from a parachute or a whole lot worse. The problem with any theory is the baggage of its assumptions.

We thought Major Boyd was making some rather large ones, and considered his analysis suspect as a result. In the base auditorium at Tyndall that day, Ski poked Mel in the ribs. Why don't you say something, Rattler? Mel stood up and proposed to the Air Force officer that he was underrating a few things, namely people.

Mel said that while weapons might have parameters in airplanes' theoretical values, no algorithm could predict much if it excluded the most important fact. of all the skill heart and drive of the pilot in the cockpit the moment of truth was the merge it was then that you had your chance to take the measure of a man sir Mel said I just don't think you know anything you can know anything about another pilot before the first turn and if you don't know that then you can't say that a Meg 17 will win every time

that needed saying the best I can recall Major Boyd didn't really engage. He replied by restating his claim, thank you for that view, Lieutenant, but you can't fight a mig and an F4. We'll lose wars that way. We would see about that. John Boyd was an intelligent, patriotic,

and good at a great many things. From this exchange, we concluded that one of them was deriving big ideas that aspired to universality, but did not reckon with the human heart. In aerial combat, technical factors were important. some of them could be modeled but no model could tell the whole story major boyd was not wrong his theory was simply incomplete he also completely misjudged the f4 there were no slouches at science either we were no slouches at science either with cobra ruffleson's technical acuity and hard work we had fused

hard data with equally hard experience it ended up showing exactly how a phantom could smoke a mig almost every time the energy maneuverability theory had little to say about tactics or the people who made them work the pilot is a key part of the equation though it as a though as a variable it cannot be quantified out at Miramar students and instructors bent the jet and flew beyond the limits we were trying to turn the man in the cockpit into a weapon as adversary pilots Mel Ski Cobra Nash and I were enjoying the role flying debriefing and adjusting from the enemy point of view day after day flight after

flight, we were helping our students meet the challenge. We were making them part of the equation. And I got to say one last thing. Adherence to strict rules and restrictions meant almost certain defeat against well-trained pilots fighting under no such restrictions. And this is why we at Top Gun never existed before. We at Top Gun never existed before the Navy set it up at Miramar. No schoolhouse that required adherence to fixed ideas, reduced air, air, plans to numbers or considered its instructors as priests could ever be Top Gun in our book. From the final tallyes over in Vietnam, we would eventually learn to tell the tale. You know what we ended up? From the day Top Gun started in the first class graduated to the end

of the Vietnam War, kill ratio went from 2 to 1 to 24 to 1. It works. There's the key elements. Youth. Age is no criteria for knowledge. The young ones are as good if not better

because of the energy level they possess. If they're willing to study and learn, the young ones are the reason I look at this youngster here. It's hard to believe you. You've been that route and look at

young as you do, man. But we broke with tradition. The only reason the Air Force, until after Top Gunn got up and going, they had had Air Force fighter weapons school at Nellas for years, gunnery and a few things, but never anything like Top Gun. Now they have a red flag, and the reason was the three star that they had running things during in Vietnam retired. One guy held him back.

He mandated the flying wing thing. Spent time with Robin Oles, you know, the great general. There's a guy I, there's a guy that I, Lice. Talked to

link with Robin Oles and the football games with him and brought him down to fly with us at Miramar on a Friday. had a super happy hour that night with him. And I watched his career end because of the mandated things, the Air Force wouldn't change.

We never criticized them. We didn't do anything. They had a, well, I learned a lot about them at Dreamland. When we were flying in Dreamland with the Air Force guys, there were four or five guys up there. were good as anybody I had, but they were under the restriction of an old-timer. Old-timer, probably out of Washington,

who had come out. And when he retired, the Air Force jumped on Red Flag, and they are good now, let me tell you. They're as good as anybody. So, you know, as you were just kind of alluding to, we get into what you title in the book, proof of concept, which is the guys are going to war. And you say here, top gun students became crisp, smart, quick, deadly, and confident.

They knew the performance envelopes of their airplanes and missiles, maneuvered quickly to exploit them and handled all the switch interfaces in the cockpit efficiently. They demonstrated their ability to fly the egg tactics to perfection and use the high, yo-yo out of a two-plane loose-duce formation to fillet and fry aggressor pilots almost every time out. Their final exam was a special treat, an unrestricted sparrow and sidewinder shoot against live maneuvering targets. Yeah. That was Steve Smith.

We took them up to Pacific Missile Range and took a BQM-34, which, you know, the good old American way, would straighten level like shooting down an airliner. And we found out that this damn BQM would outge the airplanes, particularly when it's controlled on the ground. So I put Steve Smith, one of my originals, put him down on the ground controlling it. And that damn missile would come at him and dogfight him. And Jerry Brier, the first student grad, shot it down. first time out.

Give us a little history on the patch, the top gun patch. I don't, you know, we critique every night before and after we started working students at the club. We just go and sometimes have a beer too and critique today's effort. So the patch was designed at the old club by two of the guys. Steve Smith could do anything. I mean, these guys are, you should see where they are today in business. But Steve and Mel Holmes signed a patch.

And we submitted it. Incidentally, I never asked for permission ever. in the front end of what we were doing. No permission, no letters of approval. Everything is, you know, if they don't like it, they'll tell us. Never had to get anything asked above me. And it wasn't me, it was nine of us. The key elements of what I talked about.

Each guy bringing something special table, there would not, she doesn't like this, but I do. there would not have been a top gun, had any of the nine guys not been available. Now, maybe I don't know what your religion is or what you believe, but Mel and I and a few of the guys who sat down and tried to analyze this

and how we all got it together, how all nine of them had ended up in a group pretty much has to do with some higher power help. higher ranking and it worked and being young you know you could always say me a coppa man i don't know i don't know that he did nobody ever got us go ahead yeah that's that's that's uh and that the fact that uh the top gun patch is a mig in the sites yeah yeah it started kind of offensive right to if you're if you're if you're a if you're a russian it was and to make 21 it's And somebody in Washington said

When we submitted it The guys were wearing it on their floor He said Steve had them made Somewhere in the PI They made them for us quick So we're all wearing these patches You know top gun man Mooh, look at that

And somebody in Washington called out And said We're going to have some problems The State Department And I called my I called my my bulletproof jacket. It was a three-star Admiral at Airpack, Bush Bringle.

Nice to have. Light's Admiral Bush-Bringle. And when I took the job, and this is kind of off the record, I took the job I'd talk to him because I'd work for him. And I liked him and he liked me. And I just said, God, man, you talk about loading the thing up in a hurry. And he said, I'll make you bulletproof. I had a great career.

I got promoted commander early, made captain two years early. And, you know, I ended up, but shit, you know, the only reason I didn't get torpedoed along the way was Bringle. Bringle was tough, boy. Gentle, quiet old man, but he protected me. In the patch, he made one phone call. And, oh, we like our patch. So there's your answer.

You know, one thing I want to jump through real quick, because you've mentioned it a couple times, the traits that you guys were, you know, putting forward as what a good pilot consists of. You say a passion for the mission necessary to sustain the individual in an extreme environment. Leadership by personal example. A compassionate, inspirational person

willing to take responsibility. Extraordinary airmanship. required to operate in so unforgiving an environment. Humility derived from a sense of being part of something much greater than oneself. Subject matter expertise that is beyond reproach. A work ethic that will drive the person to do whatever it takes for however long it takes to ensure success. Personal discipline to endure the rigorous training and attention to detail required to constantly perform

at an optimum level. Integrity, adaptability, innovation, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. And last, credibility established through demonstrated performance sustained over time. Now, the only thing I don't like about those is it took me, I think, four or five books that I've written that are thousands of word each

to explain what you just did in a few sentences. It took me. It took me. three years with the help of two other guys to define and we were we were in a long time ago those were written but we never put them in a legacy book document like this for the 50th anniversary but it took us three years to find and the reason being this top gun was so successful after the first half dozen classes, we weren't going to get torpedoed anywhere.

There were guys begging to get in. And we had to have selection criteria. And you got one of them. And they still use those criteria in the selection of the instructors. I'm not sure the guys know what they're getting into because the workload is crazy. How hard they work them now. Yeah, well, obviously it's a high standard, and there's a reason for it, like you said earlier.

You got people's lives in your hands. That's right. And you're right. And besides that right now, and I don't know how you feel, David, but they're still, even in the beginning, they were the best and the best. And they've kept that alive for 50 years. That's why the book was written. It's celebrating the legacy and putting it in writing. There's nothing like this.

50 years of trying to live by those criteria in a selection of guys like this. And it's worked, and they're proud of it. 42 COs and about 600 instructors. Small group. At a time, 50 years. Go ahead, please. Again, we're getting into a section now that's talking about the proof of concept because now the guys are at war, as I was saying. And we get to hear on Saturday, March 28th, Jerry, and as Rio, Steve Barkley were idling their F4Js standing on the catapult in alert five status ready for quick launch.

When the radar control ship reported four bandits inbound toward the carrier that hour, afternoon. Boliere and his air wing commander Paul Spear were launched off the Constellations deck. As the radar calls kept coming and the range closed, they saw no sign of the Migs. The phantom pair pressed ahead. It was Boliere who first cited the enemy fighters ahead and above him at about 25,000 feet. Following the loose-duce doctrine, Jerry alerted Spear and took lead, stoking his afterburners and accelerating into a climbing turn to intercept. The two Migs spotting the Americans and separated the leader climbing and his wingman Blake breaking into a right turn. Bollier took the enemy wingman while Speer went after the leader.

As he closed with the number two mig, Bollier realized, I suspect in the space of those first 20 seconds that his excitement had led him to stray from the proper technique. He was fighting in the horizontal. In climbing to engage his enemy directly, he had lost too much airspeed to attack effectively. He dove again to regain it, pulling seven Gs at the bottom. him he found the mig descending with him looking to avoid a turning fight he returned to what we had taught him he pulled up sharply to initiate the egg maneuver rocketing vertically the mig had no chance to keep up meanwhile down below commander Speer had

seemed to unnerve his own mig its pilot turned wide and left the fight spear was turning back toward Bollier to clear Jerry's tail when Jerry when Jerry's Meg saw Spear the North Vietnamese pilot fired a heat seeking a toll missile at the approaching Phantom. The head shot, the head-on shot missed. Up and up, Bollier's Phantom went, with Rio Barkley keeping him oriented, telling him that the MIG shooting at Spear was no threat. Jerry focused on setting up his shot. Arking over the top, he saw that their opponent was vulnerable.

The MIG had lost sight of him. The enemy pilot banked right and then reversed sharply left, as if looking for his pursuer. This last maneuver was a fatal mistake. It gave Jerry a clean shot up the enemy's tailpipe. With the tone of a sidewinder lock buzzing in his helmet earphones, he pressed the trigger and his missile left the rail. It tracked true and exploded underneath the mig, a shower of steel fragments sliced into the enemy plane and set it on fire.

Trailing flames like a torch, the mig sailed along, rocking its wings. Bollier pulled up sharply to avoid running. past him, slid him behind him again, and fired another missile. This one finished him, just like he had done in the drone shoot at Top Gun. Back on the deck of the constellation, the celebration started immediately. Paul Spear, a large man, gave diminutive Jerry a bare hug and lifted him off the top of his feet. Champagne strictly forbidden flowed. Later that day, a Hanoi radio broadcast confirmed the mig loss. In Washington, the politics and peace talks forced the Pentagon to make smoke. Other than a brief announcement of a

mig being downed, the kill was said to have been scored by phantoms that were escorting a photo reconnaissance aircraft. The Navy kept a lid on the story. Back at Miramar, we wondered who the mig killer was. When it was finally confirmed that the mig killers were Bollier and Barclay, we were ecstatic. It validated not only what we taught, but our school's very existence. Pretty awesome. Did you guys have any beverages when you found out that? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of work getting to that point, and there are a lot of people who use. You have no idea, Jocco, what the opposition was like. But it was the same. We're young. We're doing the best we can.

let's wait and see. And man, when the kill started having the words started to, we went from having to work hard to get people to come to the school like we did before we initiated to where Steve Smith had loved. Same guys, he'd say, I'm sorry, we're full up for six months, but I'll put you in the waiting list for next year. East Coast. East Coast guys, you know, they're too close to Washington.

They gave us a fit in the beginning. Fast forward. In January 1972, Captain Smith cut the order. Top Gun became a permanent detachment appearing in the rag organizational chart with a solid line instead of a dotted line connecting it to Chick Smith's headquarters. That little tweak to the org chart, made all the difference. Suddenly, we were assured of adequate staffing, equipment, fuel, and operating funds. Our program is free of its former parent organization.

And then it goes, Top Gun goes to war. Yankee Station, 1972 on March 30,000 North Vietnamese Army soldiers supported by 100 tanks acquired from Red China invaded South Vietnam. A few days later, another 20,000 troops also supported by tanks struck South Vietnam from Laos. They were the vanguard of a communist army that would ultimately field 300,000 troops and 600 armored vehicles. On May 10th, President Nixon ordered the mining of Haifong Harbor and other North Vietnamese ports, putting a stop to Soviet deliveries of Migs and surfaced air missiles. Meanwhile, Air Force Marine Corps and Navy planes hammered North Vietnamese supply lines. Bridges collapsed under a barrage of first-generation smart weapons, including laser-guided bombs.

delivered by Navy Grumman A6 intruders and A7 Corsair 2s. Air Force B-52s strato fortresses struck MIG airfields around Hanoi. The enemy tried to defend these important targets. Flying Meg 21 and MIG-19 interceptors, the North Vietnamese pilots found themselves in wild dogfights with U.S. Air Force Phantoms. On May 10th, three MIG-19s went down to air-to-air missiles, but the North Vietnamese pilots scored two kills. the Air Force continued to use old-style World War II era tactics that we found so limiting. The Navy was on a different path. The North Vietnamese Migs encountered a new Navy.

The Alpha Strikes included electronic countermeasure aircraft that jammed the radio frequencies of the North Vietnamese pilots. They ran into top gun trained pilots. The tactics we developed at Miramar changed the game altogether. And look, there's a section of the book that I'm not going to read right now because people just need to get the book and read it. But you go into some of these incredible dog fights. The tactics are being used. They're being executed. And victory after victory is being chalked up.

And you get to hear, by mid-June, the Navy's kill ratio during linebacker stood at almost 12 to 1, a 600% increase over what we had. managed during rolling thunder. The Navy's high command was ecstatic. The North Vietnamese Air Force was clearly demoralized. That spring, a MIG-17 pilot encountered a Navy F-4 and ejected on the spot before he even came under fire. They had no answer for our new tactics and teamwork. By the summer of 1972, the Migs focused on attacking the Air Force while avoiding U.S. flights originating from Yankee Station. Our MIG hungry, top-gun grads didn't like it, but the tactical switch provided stark testimony to which service they thought they could score against. Sadly, the Air Force fought the 1972 Air Campaign, essentially as it had rolling thunder.

Adherence to the fluid four formation cost them air crews. Of the 51 aircraft that the Air Force lost during Operation Linebacker, 22 went down to guns and missiles of North Vietnamese Migs. During the same time, the Navy lost just four birds to Miggs. the Marines lost an F4 Phantom to a mig and scored one in return. From the start date of the Top Gun program to the end of the war, the Navy's overall kill ratio was 24 to 1. I mean, that's just transformational,

transformational efforts on your part, the rest of the top gun team, the Navy, Captain Olt for putting that report together, the chain of command for actually listening and enacting these things, It's incredible history. Yeah, it was a good start. And the big thing is the book represents 50 years. We wanted in writing, never been written before. We wanted in writing the legacy of how it got started.

And we're really as powerful. It's probably other volumes that are other volumes, could be written from this goes out into the 70s, 85, probably is the last. In this book, you guys, Dick's, Red Butler, all these guys over 50 years, they run into, they run into opposition, and they fought their way through it. We gave all the airplanes. Mugge's been queuing, who was the COO number four, he ended up giving the Israelis all the adversary airplanes during one of their fiascos over in Israel.

All the airplanes were given away, and they stole some new airplanes that got their hands on some. It's never been, and the only downside was the move to Fallon at the time wasn't very well. received. I mean, you imagine owning your home in beautiful San Diego having your kids go to school here, taking your college graduate wives and say, let's unload it all. We're going up to the moon to live. And honest to God, it's really a sad story. They get up there and they found some some bad things up there.

And then the other thing was the opposition within the Navy, and I'm speaking personally now, has always been apparent that used to be fighter pilots and attack pilots. And attack pilots after the movie came out, after Tom Cruise's first movie,

shit boy, they were all over it. They didn't like that. one bit and the guys guys fought their way through it 42 CEOs in order anyhow that's another well obviously you got more books in you got to write some more books I got one good got one work meanwhile this isn't over yet you know you you say here home with the my family for a rear Friday night. This is 1973. I was barbecuing steaks thinking about taking an after-dinner swim with the kids

when the phone rang. I went to pick it up sensing something was wrong as it turned out I was right. The executive officer of fighter squadron in 143, the pukin dogs, was missing in action in South Vietnam. That pilot, Harley Hall, was a friend of mine. The squadron was in a state of shock.

It also needed a new XO, which accounted for my emergency orders to pack up within 20 hours and begin the long journey out to the enterprise. You've been there You guys have seen that, I'm sure Yeah, I mean It's what we sign up for

But it doesn't make it easy It's harder on the family than anybody You know, you show up 24 hours later A Navy C2 took me aboard At QB Point flew me out to the carrier The squadron CEO Gordon Cornell Met me on the flight deck

Gordo was a warrior's warrior A man who'd flown everything from FN 9 F. Panthers to F8 Crusaders and F4 Phantams. Wounded in action over North Vietnam in 1966, he went on to earn two distinguished flying crosses and 17 air medals. Really glad to see you, Yank. Sorry it had to be under such terrible circumstances. I shook his hand and asked how the dogs were doing.

They're dogs, Dan. They'll always be okay. They're a tough bunch, bonded, as Harley would have wanted. Still clutching my hand, he seemed to reconsider this. He added, they're hurting badly. Some of the guys can't wait to get home and help out Mary Lou and the kids. There was sadness in his eyes.

The shooting war was over, but we all had wounds to heal. There's 20 minutes before the armances became effective of the whole Vietnam War. Every fighter pilot wants a command of his own squadron. I learned I was to become the skipper of the puking dogs. And again, I'm fastboarding. At this point, I'm going to jump to a part where you're heading to Las Vegas.

At the end of August for an enormous reunion of American aviators of all services who had flown in Vietnam, we would unofficially welcome back the 166 men taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese. Some 3,000 of us and our wives gathered at the Hilton. There were many spontaneous, many reunions that night as old friends saw each other for the first time in years. The happiness touched everyone. The war over the years of hardship and rearview mirror at last our former POWs were ready to pick up their lives and careers What an enormous challenge Some came home knowing nothing of the summer of love the Watts riots the Kent State shootings or the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F Kennedy

Their last experience of America predated acid rock and woodstock Fitting into the here and now and getting to know their families again tested the former POWs all over again And you and I were talking about Charlie Plum, who's been on this a few times and just an unbelievable guy in every possible way. That's right. And Colonel William Reeder, who's been on here too as well, also, you know, an Army pilot. But, you know, both those guys captured, suffered immeasurably and came home and carried on with their lives. you end up doing a deployment to the med on the America battle group. And, you know, it was...

Turn around, turn that fighter squadron. You know, Harley Hall was killed, the ex-leader of the Blue Angels. And on the way home, we had just left Pearl. On the way home, it was stopping Pearl. I get a message. We need both of your fighter squadrons on Enterprise. We're going to turn you around 51 days.

We're going to turn you around, send you to East Coast, and deploy you on America for seven months. Now, there's a leadership problem, Chuck. Indeed. Jesus. These guys have just lost the best leader. Actually, Blue Angel leader.

And he could have been, I'm telling you personally. I knew him well. He could have been chief naval operations. had he lived. He was that kind of, and he was a great Eardale.

I don't know whether you knew him. But, and turn around of 51 days, but I got even with him, and I'll tell you about it, when you get to it. Well, go ahead.

No. A guy named Vice Admiral Bob Baldwin was come to have our pack at North Island when we got home. And he had sent the message came out of Washington of course and he sent me the message so when I got home I went

and saw him and I said we can turn them around but I want to keep all the airplanes that I have on enterprise I don't want to have to do acceptance tests on a whole bunch of new airplanes my maintenance guys were good we just smoked the the home arrival in inspection, you know, for corrosion. The airplanes were a beautiful paint job on them. I said, we're going to keep the same airplanes. He said, you can do that. That's fine with me. And I said, you know, I said, this is tough on the family. The current thing that was being pushed in Washington was retention. I said, you want to keep the people? You want us to keep all these pilots after the end of the war and the way it ended.

I said, halfway through the cruise, and Tommy Rapal was CEO of America, I knew him. So I made a call and got approval, and I said, halfway through the cruise, can you get us into Athens for two weeks at anchor? He said, yeah, I said, Admiral, I said, charter is 747, and bring over our wives and kids,

families for that two weeks while the carrier's import right in the middle of the cruise and he went and being the man he is or was he's dead now but he did so halfway through that America cruise

in comes a 740 United 747 and it's got all these kids it's the greatest homecoming you can imagine here they are in Europe for two weeks of holiday all paid for awesome that's leadership yeah that's leadership on the vice admiral's part indeed yeah that's awesome uh i was laughing this is a laughable comment but i got to say

it you know we have back in the back in the day in the seal teams we would deploy with our maritime equipment some of that maritime equipment is 55 horsepower and engines and we were an ARG platoon so we were deploying on a ship and when I was reading what you were writing about the aircraft you like they got their own personalities and you you what you and the exact same thing happened we came home from one deployment and they said hey we're going to take in your old ones we're going to take your old engines we're going to send them in for maintenance you were giving you guys some new ones and my my first lieutenant rep who was in charge of the engines the guy named Z the Zulu cat we used to call him

He says, well, I'm not giving them up. And he had names for all the engines. He had one called Frankenstein and one called Big Cat. They all had names. And he knew them. He knew them. And rather than get brand new engines, he said, no, I want these engines. I want the same engines.

Commanding officers like, okay. You want these old engines? He's like, yes, I do. These are the ones that work. These are the ones that I know. The devil's the devil you know is better than the one you don't know, right? Same with the airplane. Yeah.

Tell us a little bit about Gunner King. Oh, God. Bob King, Warren Arthur Gunner, had been with, I first heard about him with the seals, the seals, many years ago. And they said, the fighter squad, and they said, we're going to send you a, we're going to send you a

warrant officer seal he's going to be your air gunner and I said what what does that mean what does an air gunner he'd do? Everything to do with ordnance and missiles on the airplane and he

hell he knew it all standing on his head he was that good but big tall good looking guy personality Christy everybody in the squadron loved him And one night in Qube Point at the old cubb I got him. The only time I ever got him, tell me any seal stories.

You know, Airdale's all wonder about you guys. You know, we were depressed and everything. And I got Gunner talking to me. And I said, Gunner, how did you end up here? And he said, I was inserted in North Vietnam. And I think a guy with him was killed. And there were two of them in there, and they were going to put it. I think they had a mission to take care of something in there.

Nicely said, okay. And he said, I lost my partner, and I got in a river, and I'm floating out, floating out. The river ran to the ocean. And he said, I was floating down this river with looking for him along the banks and here and there and people yelling. And he said, the only thing I'm going to tell you is he says, I felt this warm thing wrap around me. You know what it was. Some goddamn big sea snake wrapped around him.

You know what that's like. I read about him. And he said he took out his knife, and he cut the snakes head off. And he said, I floated out. And he said, when I got out and they picked me up, he said, I never could quit dreaming about that damn snake. And so anyhow, I said, he said, well, he said, They didn't want me back in Vietnam anymore.

They wanted to give them a risk, I think. Yeah, after Vietnam, there's a whole group of seals. When they downsize the SEAL teams, there was a whole group of seals that they sent to the fleet. And also, it might have been because he was a warrant officer, because I don't know what they knew what to do with warrant officers back then inside the SEAL teams. And they might have said, oh, you made a warrant officer? Congratulations. You're going to go be a warrant officer in the fleet.

Could have been either one of those things. If any of your listeners should know the whereabouts, a warrant officer, Bob King, call him Bobby. And he was remarkable in his capacity as Mike Gunner for two cruises. And I wrote to him for a couple years and lost track of him. I think he may be still alive, but I'd love it if somebody would hold him and let you know so you could tell me. Certainly if somebody knows and there's a lot of guys that listen to this,

so they'll get the word out and try and find a warrant officer Bobby King and find out where he's at. Yeah, the, the, um, you go into a great kind of detailed account of, of the Israeli war and how, you know, you already mentioned how, uh, how we were. were able to help out, how Top Gun specifically was able to help out. And also the efforts of the guys in the Israeli Air Force. Is that what is the Israeli Air Force? Oh, yeah. Those two gentlemen that I speak of in the book, both went on to be commanding

generals, the Israeli Air Force. One of them went on to be the Secretary of Defense in Israel. And I can't tell you everything I've done with them, but they are remarkable. And, you know, for years, I think we'd started out maybe living in their shadow a little bit, whether tactically we were as good. Once a stop gun came out, then we're equal.

But when they'd come in the United States on business, I'd get a phone call, totally illegally, get a phone call. said, Daniel? Eton. He said, I'm in Washington. If I come out, can I fly with you? Come on. So I fly with him, and the good story is,

I got my squadron or airwain. I can't remember. But he calls me, and he flies into Yuma. How he got to Yuma, I don't know. But he ends up in Yuma. And he said, you put me on the flight schedule tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. So daylight, we rolled down the runway to a wingman. I got a wingman with me, and he's got the second section.

We break the ground, do the left turnout to go over to the range. And you got to hear this guy in the air. He's so cool. He said, Daniel, I said, yeah, three. He said, I got a fire. and I said, is it bad? No, it's not bad. He said, I just shut the engine down. He unloads fuel out over the range, makes one perfect turn around, lands, rolls out on the runway,

and by the time the fire trucks got to him, he jumped on the first little tractor that was there. Nobody ever knew who the pilot was at that airplane. It's just a smooth mother. And boy, could he fly. God, they're pretty good, pretty good. And we did give them a top gun at one time with Mugs McHugh and gave them all our airplanes in order for their survival during that war.

I promised to take Beth to Israel. Here, as soon as we get rid of this lovely nightmare, we're in right now, guys. Hopefully won't be too long. Going back to the book, 40 miles off South Vietnam, April 29, 1975, for naval aviation, the problem of Vietnam never seemed to go away. Lieutenant Daryl Condor, Gary stood before the assembled pilots and Rios of VF51 in Daryl's short career. He'd been thrown into the air war over North Vietnam before completing his rag training back in the late 1960s

as an F-4 backseater. Two tours there, and he came home in time for me to pull him into Top Gunn as one of our instructors. He subsequently went back to flight school, became an F-4 pilot, and went through Top Gun as a student before heading out to the carrier USS Coral Sea and his first overseas deployment as a fighter pilot. In 1975, he was a young lieutenant tasked with delivering one of the most painful brief, the squadron would ever receive. It fell to Condor

to bring them the news that we were abandoning our allies once and for all. That's the only time I've ever seen him sad. I was at Kagg, the airwing commander about that time. God, what a... He actually went in, flew,

cover over the helicopters, and helicopters and watch the exit. of people going out, boat loots of people trying to get on the carriers. And he came back and he just, he couldn't, he just, so upset him. He's a prince of a man. You know, a lot of times I read books. Well, in fact, I only read books from people's first person's account of war.

Because, you know, I want people to understand what it's like to be there. And one thing that you do in this book that you do very well is the way you connect the guys that are there with the overall picture. And that's exactly what you did right here. So you've got Condor briefing the guys that we're leaving. And then you go into this. With the last flight to the midway from the embassy grounds, 1,373 Americans and 5,595 Vietnamese were helicoptered to the Naval Task Force. Another 65,000 fled by boat later to be picked up by one of the 40 ships offshore. The fixed wing aircraft airlift from Tansan Nut pulled out another 50,493, including almost 2,700 orphans.

They were the lucky ones. In the immediate aftermath of South Vietnam's collapse, more than 150,000 civilians vanished. Most either executed outright or thrown into concentration camps. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City a memorial to the unknown masses of dead. Somewhere between 1 and 4 million Vietnamese perished from 1955 to 1975. In Cambodia, another 300,000 were killed. Laos lost between 20 and 60,000. In the years ahead, the killing would continue as communist insurgents toppled the governments of Laos and Cambodia.

From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge, a regime that swept to power in the wake of America's exit from the region, murdered or starved to death about 2.5 million people out of a population of 8 million. More than 30% of the entire nation. When Americans look back at Vietnam, we remember the domestic unrest. We think two of the 58,000 names memorialized on that long black marble wall in Washington. Those are important to remember, but few want to discuss the other consequences of America's lost war. You know, there's a lot of connections with a lot of different things, and I've been recently talking to a guy who's connected to some people that were on this operation

when the ship named the the mygu, my gaze, how do you say it? Mygiz. The Maeges was captured by the Cambodians. And I'm looking to get one of these Marines on the podcast to kind of recount what happened. So it was very interesting to me when I read that you were involved in this. So the Cambodians had seized an American flagged

and owned cargo container ship. Now the ship was in Camer Rouge hands. And I'm jumping through just to hit some of these highlights. On the afternoon of the 14th President Gerald Ford ordered the 7th Air Force to execute a helicopter assault on Kotang Island and the Mayuages. The forces landing on the island were to find the crew, if there were any, while another team helicoptered onto the Mayaguez and steamed it out in international waters. Just before the rescue went in, Admiral Coogan received a direct call from President Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. I was with him in the Coral Sea's flag headquarters and listened with great interest. President Ford ordered the carrier to strike targets on Cambodian mainland,

including port facilities and a nearby naval base. Naval base. Admiral, the president said, go get our ship and crew back. It's your show. Use all available means, but no nukes. I wondered how many times our commanders on Yankee Station had heard such a command, not even Nixon ever expressed such a clear and explicit willingness to let us fight.

And so you, you know, I skipped through this part, but you were actually there to take over this squadron? No, air wing. And the guy that was running it said, you're going to have to wait a little bit until this is over. Nobody passes up good combat. Excuse me, that's poor choice of words. Yeah.

Leadership right right combat the CIA believed that contang Kotang was lightly defended if at all in fact more than a hundred Khmer Rouge troops held the island to deter their communist brothers from North Vietnam who had laid claim to these patches off the Indo-Chinese coast our Marines rolled into hot landing zones laced with machine gun and rocket propelled grenade fire from the ship Darrell watched as several CH 53 heavy transatl transport helicopters took hits one crashed offshore after receiving two RG B RG RGs the survivors were in the water for hours until a gig from one of our escorts pulled them to safety included in those survivors was the Marine forward air controller who somehow found an Air Force survival radio that he used to call targets for the A7 Corsair's overhead clinging to wreckage the radio's battery slowly failing he gave everything he had to try and secure help for the embattled Marines pinned down in the landing zone three CH 53 Jolly Green giant

went down during the rescue operation 15 Marines were killed on Kotang and 50 more wounded during the fighting that raged throughout the day Meanwhile our attack aircraft saturated the Maeguiz with tear gas and American warship raced into the anchorage with a company of Marines aboard An hour later the assault after the assault in the island began the Marines clad in gas masks swarmed the cargo of the ship and found it abandoned We had our ship back but where was the crew the Khmer had released them sending them back back out to see where a Navy patrol plane spotted them. Another American warship steamed to the vessel and pulled the crew aboard just before the lunch hour. The final act played out through the afternoon as the Air Force tried to extract the Marines from the landing zones.

Heavy fire repeatedly drove them off and won battle damage. Jolly Green Giant force landed on the Coral Sea's deck. Our maintainers swiftly patched it up a few hours later. It went back into action. The fighting raged and our frustration level grew. The birds kept taking hits, and the Marines were reporting heavy casualties. By dinner, the Air Force brought an AC-130 gunship in five C-130s, carrying 15,000-pound bombs known as Blue 82's, nicknamed Daisy Cutters. They were the biggest, most destructive conventional weapons in the American arsenal.

The first one detonated as Darrell and others watched from our deck. Darrell saw the enormous explosion, followed by a shockwave. The blast unleashed. It was obscured by the island It obscured the island and swept right across the coral sea Causing the huge carrier to shudder from its impact As darkness fell another jolly green staggered out of the moonless night The massive helicopter carried a crew of five and managed to pull aboard

34 Marines before suffering engine trouble The crew set down on the carrier's deck And when its ramp dropped almost three dozen wounded Marines tumbled out onto the flight deck The 15 Marines killed on Kotang Island became the final men whose names were etched into the wall in Washington a decade later. Three more Marines declared missing in action on the island were captured by the Khmer Rouge and later beaten to death. After we took our wounded Marines to Subic Bay, we steamed south to Perth for a 10-day port call.

The Aussies welcomed us with great hospitality. We were treated like family everywhere we went. The crew drank and laughed with our friends from down under and put the scars of the war in our rearview mirrors. By the end of it, I was so exhausted from all the free drinks and parties that I crawled into my bunk and slept the sleep of a free man. The world was at peace for the first time

in 10 years. Rough way to close it out. Rough way to close out the war. Never, never let them insert Marines unless they're in marine helicopters. That's the number one lesson we learned

during that. Those were Air Force, Jolly Green, Sarr, Air Force. airplanes, but they never had inserted and they weren't ready. And we hurried that Air Force General, he hurried that operation. Oh, you know, I got to fly. I took, I think 12 or maybe 16, I can't remember. But I went downtown, the capital city. I went downtown to 500 knots at 500 feet

right through town, shocking up, looking for see if any migs came out or whether there were migs there. But when it was over, we were just glad. The corpsmen and the doctors on the carrier did surgery on those 30 Marines

and every one of them lived. That's awesome. Yeah. But the big, big lesson in that is we had a president who said, Admiral is your show, don't use nukes, but anything else goes. Yeah. And he did. That's decentralized command.

Let the front line leaders make the decisions to win. That's the key. Decision to win and tell your people, let them do it. Mm-hmm. They know how. This section here is about the Tomcat. The F-14 Tomcat almost never made it into the world. Thanks to Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, who loved to think he knew people's business better than they did.

In 1968, he tried to force the Navy to adopt the hulking F-11 fighter bomber for use on aircraft carriers. Imagine SecDef's chagrin when a means. mere three-star admiral, the head of naval aviation at the Pentagon, decided to stand in his way. That truth-telling sailor, Tom Connolly, testified to Congress, quote, there isn't enough thrust in Christendom to make that airplane into a fighter, end quote. And he won. The Navy avoided being saddled with the flying etzel, so named by its unhappy Air Force pilots because its chief advocate, Secretary McNamara had been President of Ford Motorcom.

company. McNamara took his revenge denying Vice Admiral Connolly a deserved promotion to a fourth star, but the last word belonged to the Navy. It paid tribute to the great man by naming its new world-beating fighter aircraft after him. The legendary Tomcat was born. Though it fell right in line with other grummin felines in history, Wildcat, Hellcat, Bearcat, and Tiger Cat, the name was the artful final act in a Pentagon dogfight. That is totally legit. The crazy thing is, you know, this is McNamara again, you know, with the giant ego, thinking he knows more than people that are actually doing little things like landing the aircraft on aircraft carriers in the middle of the night.

Fast forward a little bit. Through the post-war years, I was at sea more often than not, commanding an air wing that included 4F4 Phantom squadrons as well as attack. aircraft bombers, tankers, early warning planes and helicopters was one of the most challenging and fun jobs I ever had. In some ways, it is also a naval aviators last hurrah with the fleet. Once you get promoted out of air wing command, your flying days are limited. Until that day comes, however, air wing commanders are expected to fly every type of plane in their inventory.

It was a hair-on-fire experience. In the space of a few days, I might fly an F4, Phantom, an A-6 intruder, and a helicopter. In battle, I would have been leading strikes and coordinating the attacks of my individual squadrons. The job is a culmination of everything I had learned in a naval, in a naval aviator's career. All the lessons, all the mentoring by other officers comes in the way an air wing commander chooses to lead his men, creating a culture of excellence, of openness, and of self-evaluation, so that your crews can improve and grow is an essential element to success.

That's something every leader should just get out there. notebook and write down. Creating a culture of excellence, of openness, and of self-evaluation so that your crews can improve and grow is an essential element to success. Abboard the Coral Sea, I use the leadership techniques. We developed the Top Gun to set that framework, and I let my squadron commanders run their own shows without micromanaging them. So that is your life's work of leadership building into that attitude and keeping that attitude, you know, that you use the top gun to lead in this other situation, still works. If it works, why change it?

In 1976, I stepped out of the cockpit for one last time as a full-time aviator and said, farewell to my airway. The Navy promoted me to captain and now as a senior officer at last. While I'd still get to fly from time to time, the truth was that my days as a combat aviator were over. I suppose it would have been harder to take had there been nothing but desk jobs on the horizon for me thank God that was not the case Ronald Wilson Reagan was my commander-in-chief the prestige of naval aviation and the military

generally was set for resurgence after many years in the doldrums following the withdrawal from Vietnam it was a fine time for a newly minted captain take take command I was going to be I was going to see as the skipper of my own ship talk about a wake-up call from flying fighters at Mach 2 I found myself navigating the Pacific at 12 knots on the bridge of a 40,000 ton, 660-foot-long behemoth, crewed by 22 officers and 400 men. While we had two Boeing H-46 C-night helicopters to help run vertical replenishment admissions between our ship and those we service for the first time in my career,

I had virtually no connection to flying fixed-wing aircraft. It was a big transition for me personally. So you took over a ship, and this ship is a resupply ship. I was on board a ship, a Navy ship. So I had probably been in the Navy for four years before I actually went on a ship for any length of time. I was on board a, I was on board an LPD, an amphib. And we were out and we were doing, for the first time,

it was an unrepped with a vert rep. What do they call when they combine them together? What's it called? Is there a name for it? Same. Okay. So it's a, it's an underway replenishment. and a vertical replenishment,

and then they were doing two ships at the same time. One on each side. When I saw this, and like I said, I'd been in the SEAL teams for four years or three years in the SEAL teams and plus, you know, going through SEAL training, I could not believe what I was watching.

This is an insane operation. There's a ship, which is the one that you drove, is the ship in the middle, and it's got fuel on it, and it's got food on it. and they pull these things alongside each other. They're probably 15 yards apart, something like that. A little more.

A little more than that? 120, 140 feet. Okay. So maybe I'm a little bit, you know, I'm maybe not remembering. I'll tell you what it looked like to my young eyes. It looked like we were about to crash. That's what it looked like. And these, they're going whatever, seven or eight, 10 knots.

What's the 12 knots? you're steaming through the sea these ships are within so what is it we're talking 30 yards apart they're 30 yards apart from each other massive vessels they're connected by by giant hoses

that are pumping oil and gas on board so there's flammable liquid flowing through these hoses and then on top of that you have helicopters that are landing and taking off bringing gear and food from one ship to another it's insane

that's a verdrum man some really good helo pilots oh yeah yeah we always you know you were talking about the you know Air Force helicopter pilots or

or for me the Navy pilots were the best pilots we could get when I first got in the Navy because those guys hovered out over they hovered over these ships all the time that's what they did for a living so they'd come in to drop us on a fast rope they would hold station like it was a joke

they'd be like no problem we're sitting here we'll stay here is right where you're you want us as long as we can. But the purpose of you being in command of this ship is so that you can understand the logistics of the Navy and how to... Oh, sure. How to drive a ship in the hopes that you can do a good enough job that they go, okay, this guy can manage an aircraft carrier.

Yeah. And that's what they did. It's a prerequisite. Prequisite to get you what you wanted or I guess maybe the ultimate goal of someone in your shoes. to be in command of an aircraft carrier. And you got it. You got, you say this, the Ranger, which was your aircraft carrier, was my ship now, perched on the bridge,

seated in a barber chair with skipper stencil on its back. I watched the bustle of the flight deck from the best seat in the house. I was 46 years old, still wearing the Ray bands I bought in Pensacola and the Star of David chain around my neck. That was given to you by your Israeli friends. My little mouse from North Island was tucked away in the captain's cabin a few years. yards after my chair these three towels men served every day as a reminder of who I was and where I came from since I first climbed in the cockpit in Pensacola as you start talking about so what year is this is this this is like 81 82 on the carrier 80 80 80 80 80 you start talking about the fact that there's a there's like drug problem in the Navy that's a number one

in my entire Tymoon ships was drugs and you're dealing with this you have guys getting in trouble you have guys trying to kill themselves I mean you detail this again from a leadership perspective

this is a great part of the book and then there's something else that happens and I'm going to go into it here my ship's company suffered a terrible tragedy a young airman named Paul how do you say his last Tarrus

Tarrus. Tarrus. Tarrus collapsed and died while we were at Subic Bay about three weeks after we rescued some refugees, which you go into. Tarrus was a sad story, a 20-year-old from Michigan whose time in uniform was a case study in the devastation wrought by drugs in our Navy. Having served for three years, he had never been promoted. In fact, he was in frequent trouble and tried to desert twice. His squadron commander disciplined him repeatedly. He was no stranger to our correctional custody training unit or CCU. nothing seemed to work.

He remained an often belligerent, hard case who frustrated his squadron commander. I never met this sailor, but his death changed my life forever. The ship had just returned from a five-day visit to Hong Kong where he was an unauthorized absentee. He was next in the CCU that April of 1981. My understanding from the Navy investigation that followed his death is that combative as always, he fought with a couple of our senior peddye. officers who then took him up on the flight deck and ordered him to start jogging.

It was routine exercise in the sweltering Subic Bay heat. Chiris had previously been restricted to bread and water as a result of his combativeness. As he was running, he collapsed. Taken below, he began to have seizures. 30 minutes later, medical personnel arrived to treat him, but sadly he died soon after. The Navy determined he had gone into cardiac arrest as a result of heat exhaustion. So this is, you know, just a horrible situation. And, you know, there's an investigation.

They get done with the investigation. You get, what, a punitive letter or non-punitive letter? So you get a letter that says, hey, this shouldn't happen. because as we know, a commanding officer is responsible for everything that happens. That's key right there. 5,400 guys, and one of them happens to be on drugs. My guys, the medical department, made a couple of mistakes. Number one, their response time was unacceptable.

That young fellow, his discipline on the carrier, I let the squadron commanders. run their own discipline cases. They work a long time to become a commander of a squadron. No doubt. So I let them do it. And his squadron commander, that young man's, was a patsy. Too easy.

That guy had been to mass about four or five times. He should have thrown his ass out of the military. But he just kept going. back to his drugs and ultimately died. And his parents were very successful people in Michigan. And through the Washington bureaucracy, Sudney for $8 million. Navy went through grand jury in Washington.

They found, you know, I wasn't liable for anything, except that you become a political liability in Washington as a senior naval officer. And that's what happened. And I don't think we need to put any of this in. I'm going to, I've addressed it in a new book. But what happened was I got a great job out of the carrier tour. They sent me to sink back flea. and I got the current officer job.

Which you do cover that in this book. I'll let you. I'll let you. Well, no, it's all right. I'll let you. But I got a phone call from C&O. Is that in there? Yeah, that's in there.

Go ahead then. You're going to cover it. I just want to make sure that the three of you understand that. I got a call from C&O invited me back to Washington. I flew back. It's been a whole morning with Admiral Jim Watkins, a nuke. Submariner I'd worked for before. He knew me well. And he says shit, and he says I just Spent the whole morning drink coffee and smoke a cigarette with him and and he said I did everything I could do and I know it's true because I got

cooperation for Miss what he said and he said But politically it's just he said stay in the Navy and And I'll see you're selected. I've been selected for flag. And I looked at who the opposition was a senator from Michigan. And you can tell it's a tough thing to talk about. And he was going to be chairman of the Armed Services Committee. The senator from Michigan was going to be chairman.

Carl Levin. And so. So I was never, he's the one that sponsored the lawsuit, and the I have of the family. He controls five federal judges. And I thought, shit, it's over. So I went back and talked to home and talk to my wife and got out of the Navy two weeks later.

And I've just had a great time since. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, Strange things for civilians may not realize this when you become, when you get selected for admiral, it has to be approved by Congress. And or yeah, and it's like you said, it's a very political thing and I've seen it. I've seen some guys get ripped apart by it. Something will come up and people will protest and it's a political thing. And as you say here, that's just how Washington worked. I resigned my staff position and retired two weeks later on March 1st, 1983 after 29 years, one month.

and one day in uniform. That's a, it's a, it's a, you know, you talked earlier about how in combat, you can make the right decisions, you can do the right thing, you can have the right plan,

and you can still, something can still go wrong. That's right. And it's a very risky thing when you get to those high ranks in the Navy, you can do the right thing, you can know the right people, and you can still get tripped.

ripped up at the last the last hurdle by by the smallest thing that's yeah yeah and so transition when I returned to California that spring I felt like a refugee in my own hometown I was almost 50 years old starting over from scratch I needed to find a new sense of normal for me normal is waking up in my cabin to the smell of salt air coming through a brass porthole It was the heavy jolt of a catapult launched, the euphoria of breaking Mach 1 in a vertical climb. It was long, beautiful night flights across our country and the sense of purpose I felt when we saved lives at sea. It was the fear of flying strikes into North Vietnam, the honor of leading top gun alongside some of the finest young man America had ever produced.

It was welcoming old friends back from the Hanoi Hilton and holding membership in a brotherhood that defined my entire adult life. In civilian life, it was no normal for me. I struggled. My first marriage did not survive the many deployments of the 1970s. Being gone so much, finally drove a wedge between us that could not be removed. I married a second time while serving in surface ships. Ever the optimist, I guess, it wasn't meant to be. I could have gone on into the defense industry like so many other retired military offers do.

Great salaries, great benefits. I refused to do that. Instead, I went into business for myself in Southern California. The leadership principles I learned in the Navy played a large role in my success. What business did you get into? I worked in the entertainment industry for a while, and then I built.

I can build anything. She visualized that I can build it. We did a lot of beautiful homes and stuff like that. You know, you detail the, I guess I'm going to use the word. I don't know if this word's been used on this podcast before. Brace yourself. You detail the romantic aspect of the way this unfolds in the book,

and it's just a beautiful story about, you know, Mary Beth. You guys, you know, connect again during all this turmoil, and you end up with a girl that you originally fell in love with. So, again, that's another. aspect that you got to you got you got to read the book to to understand um you also go into the f 35 and and what that program consists of and what the shortfalls are and and what the shortfalls of the training program can be and what they have to watch out for and like you talked about earlier the struggles of the top gun program and you know it when you when you get to a we got

to a point in the end of the book here where you start talking about what a winning team. If you were going to build a winning team, what it would look like. I'm just going to surmise some of the things you say. You say, because the basic truth of fighter combat remains the same, it is not the aircraft that wins a fight. It's the man in the cockpit. Flying is a perishable skill. It has to be practiced constantly and maintained on a consistent basis. My boys will all be dog fighters. With enough planes, in inventory, we can return to the days when any pilot who's who's in good with the senior chief in maintenance control can check out a bird and go find a fight club somewhere off the coast. That's how we'll sharpen our edge in dog fighting again.

I run through this mental exercise often. I always come back to our top gun maxim. What matters is the man, not the machine. So let's talk about what a good fighter pilot candidate looks like. Over the years and thousands of aviators I've known, I've noticed the best share some common traits. A good pilot would have a patriotic mindset and a self-starting work ethic. He should believe in something greater than himself while remaining self-reliant and confident without being overbearing.

Some ego is necessary. I wouldn't want a soul filled with doubt flying in my wing. An athletic background helps because when properly coached at the right age, youngsters learn trust, teamwork, and goal setting. They'll need all those things in the air. I'll pass on anybody who displays his participation trophies. Self-esteem without real accomplishment will make anyone crash and burn. Give me a committed B student with a boiling will to win over an A-plus scholar with a careerist agenda and will be on our way.

Finally, it's important to have a sincere interest in the history and lore of your calling. Good pilots strive constantly for self-improvement. In my first years in the Navy, I had the opportunity to meet the World War II generation and hear their stories and lessons. I read every combat memoir I could and gleaned a lot of little things from them that helped me in my journey. We lived on the edge of life and death, and the margin between them was narrow. I think Jimmy Doolittle bought me a scotch, and that's a story you tell earlier, because he saw that we had shared. residency there. History is a wellspring of life-saving lessons. No one really invents anything. Successful leaders recognize those traits and encourage them, even at the risk of bending a

rule or a jet once in a while. And you close out the book with this. Well, that's what naval aviation would look like if I were king of everything. Since I'm not, I think I ought to call it a Come on inside. I have one last thing to show you. I kept my 1950s raybans until just a few years ago when I replaced the lenses and gave them to my granddaughter at her request as a Christmas gift. At 50 years, I figured it was time for a new pair. My youngest daughter, Candice, ended up with my Star of David and Gold Chain. But I still have my little mouse. After all the sea duty he endured, he enjoys a cushy retirement on my bookshelf. From time to time, I look at him and say,

it was a hell of a ride, wasn't it, little fella? He is surrounded by books and other treasured items from my career. But what I value most was my time at Miramar with the bros. Their enduring friendship are my real treasures, not any physical things in my library. Top Gun will always be the centerpiece of my career. and my life's most important accomplishment. None of it would have happened without the bros

or the ever-present hands of God. Thank you. Yeah. You do. You're really, my compliments. And, you know, it didn't end well. I didn't stay on. in the Navy, but I got out.

Come over to the desert, let me host you. Come on over, and I'll show you how to live. Come up to Lake Arrowhead. I got a home up there, an apartment adjacent to it. It's full of our son, the doctor, and his girlfriend, who's an oncologist, are there every weekend with us. Life is good. And had I stayed in the Navy,

and you say maybe who to tell what you'd have done. You know what I found right afterwards it's in her. After 32 years, I found total happiness. And between us, we've done it all. We've been all over the world. We've got a home. Everything we've done has just been so enjoyable. Well, you know, sir, as I read this book and just think about the incredible life that you've lived.

And, you know, even when you talk about, you know, what you've done since you left the Navy. And it sounds awesome. But no doubt, I mean, without question, the legacy that you left and your bros left in the Navy, in the aviation community, in the military, to have an attitude, to push the envelope, to take risks, to push back when things don't make sense, that is a legacy that will never die. I know that now. It's been a remarkable day. I've done a lot of interviews, maybe 100, but I've never done anything I enjoyed more than today.

You keep in touch with me. Yes, sir. I admire what you're doing. And, you know, the philosophy in what you're building, the followers, you can make a lot of money on the outside. I know that. We've done fine. But you will never.

I've got a lot of friends, but you'll never have the quality of friendship you have with the brotherhood. The Brotherhood has Seals UDT guys of history. You won't find those out there. The guy quoted in there to Godfather that when I got out, he kept me going. Not financially, but advice and mentoring. Brilliant, brilliant man.

Daryl Gary, if you really want to interview some people, interview Daryl Gary, Condor. I won't get into his personal wealth at Tisbans. But he lives up in Rachel Santa Fe. And that tells you something. I got to be honest with this, Skipper, with you being here, this is not, I kind of had a sense of what this would be like. And I was off a lot. This is really special for me to listen to the conversation between you and Jocko.

I know Jock, and I know you, having never known you, I think the way you describe it is, everybody knows Yank. And look, I was just a bro for three years. And I spent most of my time. I've done so much less than I've been given. It's kind of crazy to sit here and listen to you, tell all these stories about all these places, and I've been to every one of them.

I was a Marine at Miramar because you guys left in Hanger, two South, took over Top Gun spaces as a Marine. I was the training officer at Top Gun. You could probably count on your hands and number of Marines that have ever gotten to do that because I went to an air show at El Toro when I was five. And so now I'm sitting here to listen and talk about all the things you did and it just adds more to the pile of things that have happened to me

beyond my control that let me do all these other cool things that by myself I could have never, ever done. And I have a shred of connection to the legacy to read a book and give it to John going, Hey man, we might want to do this. I could probably set this thing up. And then from the outside, watch the conversation between two other people.

And for the first time in my career, start to recognize how much bigger this thing really is than I ever understood because I lived inside of it. And I was just working. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just working. I just showed up a top gun and I was just working. And then I left and I want to do other things.

And now I'm sitting here, learning more about what I did. than I ever knew while I was doing it. And it's just another reminder of just how much more I have, there's so much how much more I need to learn, how much less I know than I should. This has been the best four hours, man, to sit here and watch this,

the legacy you built and to let someone like me get a little touch of what that's like to be a part of that has been, this has been an awesome, awesome time. You made it happen to you and Jock. You, sir. well sir i've had you locked up in here for four hours uh when you finish the next book a at mary beth's recommendation i volunteer to read it i'll do the audio book and i'll do this one if you want me to i'm here and when you want anytime you want to come back anytime that any one that you know that you

want to have come on and share their stories this this door is open it's an honor to talk to you Thank you for your service and thanks for coming on today. Thank you for the time and thank you on behalf of the boroughs. And with that, Dan Pedersen has left the building. Awesome to have them on. Dave, thanks for coming by. I was suspecting that perhaps that podcast we would touch on a bunch of things but wouldn't dive too deep on certain subjects that got raised in my head.

So we're going to actually have to follow up. We'll do another podcast. Well, actually, the next podcast, Dave, if you don't mind, I want to drill down on some of this stuff because Dan just opens up a whole new world that, you know, you know. And so we'll do some deep dive on that on the next one. Right on now. Awesome to have, awesome to have a guy like that on here. just an honor to be able to talk to guys like that who spent their life trying to get better

something we should all probably be doing trying to get better agree echo since you agree yes how but you give us some recommendations on what we can do better how to stay on the path how to improve on the path all right well jocke Jock fuel is one way to stay on the path. All right. Sometimes we need help. We need help on the path. So we will turn to Jock Fuel.

Okay, what is this? Supplements. Joint warfare, these for your joints. Joint warfare, super cruel oil, discipline, and discipline go. Also, mulk for additional protein. In the form of a dessert, by the way. Worry kid milk as well for the younger ones. Formulated a little bit different more towards, you know, the younger ones.

Also, jaco white tea. This is less of a supplement, by the way. More than everyday, you know. Beverage. Beverage scenario. When it gets warm out, yes, sir. The cold jaco white tea is totally legit.

And it gives you a little, a little psychological boost and a little physiological boost. Take them both, utilize them both. That's what I'm thinking. I'll agree with that one. I know Dave Burke. Good deal, Tim. Yes.

Has been powerful. Founding Cold War every day. It's part of my regimen. You can smell the garlic. It's it's preemptive. Yeah, I don't want to react to the war. I want to get out in front of that war. I'm gonna wage war in advance like Cold War absolutely so I was my Daughter a couple months ago was getting sick and I was like hey you know what? You take these you know take some Cold War and she says I don't like taking she doesn't like taking pills and I go No problem. You know what? I'll put some and I'll break them open put it in the glass stirred up. You can just drink it. Bro.

You cannot do that with Cold War. You cannot do that with Cold War. It is, it was so, it smelled so bad. It was so offensive to drink because I drank it. But it was everything in my power to get it down. My daughter said, I'm, my daughter. This is my 10 year old daughter. You know, she just said, I'm not drinking that.

I said, cool. I go and I've you know tried to keep the normal face after I drank it. It was like I just did a shot of tequila. I was like, you should have just said that it snaps. See? So, you know,

it could have conveyed a more, you know, inspiring message as far as the taste. Oh, yeah. You know, actually I don't think it's it snaps by the way. There's two things I confirmed with my daughters.

You can say either it snapped or it slaps. Slaps. Either way. I, I, so don't try and get on me. I have the individuals that are in the game in that game. Well, I was, someone, you know, educated me on it, said it was probably it slaps.

And I kind of recalled a little bit. I heard someone say it slaps before. It was about a song, though, if I'm not mistaken. So I'm like, okay, it slaps. Jocco heard it wrong. It snaps. I've never heard it snaps. Now to put myself on report, my kids also say, she snapped.

So maybe I did confuse it. Like if you did a good job on the jiu-jitsu mats did a good arm lock Yeah, and be like oh, he snapped okay so that's maybe I mixed it up Yeah, man, I'm 48 years old. Hey, you're doing good. Hey, you're doing great. I'm 48 years old. I'm not Just going to the clubs. No, you're not. Yeah, yeah you can get this stuff at the vitamin shop. You can get this stuff at origin main. Dot com. Yes, very much so also at origin main.com jeans we didn't talk about the jeans that's important to be on the path with American made denim hundred percent made in America denim Delta 68 and the what's

the name of the regular one factory factory boom yes all at origin main dot com also geese rash guards stuff for Jiu Jitsu Because we're doing jiu-jitsu. You know, people are starting to do jiu-jitsu more. I hope so. Yeah, it's a good thing, you know. No jiu-jitsu is way worse than jiu-jitsu. That is affirmative.

Yes. So, anyway, get a Ghee from origin as well because they're American-made like we kind of sort of mentioned. But that is a big deal. And also rash guards, joggers, jeans, like I mentioned, and boots. American-made boots. Boom. Also, we have our own store. It's called Jocko Store.

And this is where you can get more rash guards, shirts, you know, hats and beanie, merchandise. Discipline equals freedom, you know, representative directly of the past. So if you want to represent while you're on the path, that's where you go, jocco store.com. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already.

Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play, you know, Wherever you listen to a podcast, go and subscribe, you know, stand the game. Keep the info flowing. And this is not the only podcast that we have. Now, we have another podcast, first and foremost, that was out for a little while. It was called The Thread. It turns out I just was a little too default aggressive, just made the podcast, got it out there. Turns out there was another podcast named The Thread.

It's not mine. They didn't like that very much. So it has been revoked, but I'm going to rename it and we're going to put it back out there. I apologize for the pause in that podcast with Daryl Cooper. So we'll get it back up as soon as we can. I've got to think of what we're going to call it and then get it up and out there. We also have grounded podcast, which is about jiu-jitsu and the way jihitsu relates to everything that you do in the world. We also have the Warrior Kid podcast for your warrior kids.

And while you're thinking of warrior kids, you can support a warrior kid by going to Irishoaks ranch.com and getting some soap made from goat milk here in California by a young warrior kid making you products so that you can stay clean. Stay clean. That's good too. Also, YouTube, if you're interested in watching this podcast, As well as listening we'd have an official YouTube channel also there's excerpts on there and Enhanced excerpts basically echoes weird experimental Explosion yes yes yes yes Yeah psychological warfare if you need a little help getting through a mental moment

mental weakness go to iTunes Google play mp3 platforms you can get psychological warfare you can also get visual Representations of that from flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer, his company, keeping it awesome. Some books, obviously, first and foremost, we got Dan Pedersen's book, Top Gun. It will be available through jocco podcast.com. It'll take you to the Amazon link. We've got the code, the evaluation of the protocols. Dave Burke, how's your first experience being in the top charts of Amazon?

Dude, it was awesome, man. It was crazy. And the feedback that's coming in, how do you feel about it? I feel good about it. The feedback's been really good, and people are using it the way we hope they would. And it's helping a ton of people stay in the game, which is awesome. When you read through it, do you just nod your head and say, that feels pretty good? Well, yes and no.

So yes, when I read through the evaluation, I think about how am I doing? I think I need to get a lot better. So it's a little dichotomy going there because I'm stoked on what we did. I'm so glad it's gotten out there and I'm so glad people are using this. But it is a reminder for me and I think for a lot of folks

is how much more there is to do. It is so rough. It is so rough on the ego and so helpful for you as a human being. Get the code, the evaluation, it's the protocol. We got leadership strategy and tactics field manual. We got Way the Warrior Kit,

one, two, and three. We got Mikey and the Dragons. Discipline equals freedom field manual. extreme ownership and the economy leadership. I guess we're over here writing some books. That's what it seems like to me, write on. If you want to get a little bit of reading done,

check out some of those books. We also have echelon front, which is our leadership consultancy, where we solve problems through leadership. Whatever problems you're having in your organization, they are leadership problems. And you know what? You might be thinking,

well, how are you getting things done right now? We got EF online. EFonline.com. It is interactive. And you know what? I used to use the word interactive to describe EF Online. It wasn't even close to what compared to what we have now. Because interactive before meant, oh, you were interacting with a video.

And there was responses that you could give that would elicit another video. It was like a choose your own adventure. Right now, your responses are going to me, to Dave Burke, to Laf Babin, to anyone on the echelon front team. In real time. In real time. We're talking to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you have questions, if you have problems, if you want to, if you're moving into a leadership position, if you're in a leadership position, if you are dealing with a bad boss, with a good boss, if you have great support, it's bad support, it's you if you want to help, if you want to focus your mission, any of those things, go to EFonline.com.

We are there to help you lead. We also have the muster. There's going to be one in Phoenix, Arizona, September 16th and 17th, and Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to extreme ownership.com if you want to come. We also have EF. Overwatch and EF. Legion. Listen, if you are a vet, if you're a veteran, go to EF Legion right now and go sign up so that we can get you work. We can put you in companies that need work right now. And if you're looking for an executive position, if you are a senior individual that retired from the military, go to EF.

Overwatch. EF.Oach.com. On either side, companies looking for frontline leaders or senior leaders. Go to eFoverwatch.com or EFlegeon.com. If you want to support a charity organization, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Mama Lee, Mark Lee's mom, helping service members, helping their families and helping Gold Star families around the world. You can donate or you can get involved.

And if you want to hear more of my draconian soliloquies, or you want to hear, you just can't get enough of Echo Charles's fragmented diatribes, or you just want to get a little bit more of good deal, Dave Burke's puritanical paragraphs. You can find us on the interwebs on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to all our service members out there who defend our freedom around the world with a special nod today towards our aviation communities, pilots, crews, maintenance personnel. Anyone else, Dave, that I missed? That's it. That's who keeps the birds in the fly.

Keeps the birds flying. keeps America dominating the air around the world. Obviously, it was an honor to talk to Dan today. We thank all of you for your efforts to preserve our air power. And the same to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service. Thank you all for defending us here at home. And also thanks to the doctors, nurses, and medical personnel who care for us when we need it. most and to everyone out there.

Remember what Dan Pedersen learned in his life. Stay humble. Test yourself. Take care of your people. Work together. Work together with your wingman. And don't be afraid to bend the rules to push the envelope to take risks in order to be the best in order to be.

the top gun and until next time this is dave burke and echo and jaco out