United States Navy Fighter Weapons School
The United States Navy Fighter Weapons School , better known as TOPGUN , is the United States Navy's elite fighter flight school and was based at the former Naval Air Station Miramar (now: Marine Corps Air Station Miramar ) in Miramar , California until 1996 .
TOPGUN was founded on March 3, 1969 to teach pilots air tactics and thus counter the relatively poor performance of fighter pilots in the Vietnam War . The so-called dissimilar training was introduced for the first time , in which the American pilots did not fight as usual against an aircraft of the type that they flew themselves, but against smaller aircraft such as the Soviet Union operated. The crews of the F-4 Phantom II fought at TOPGUN against A-4 Skyhawk (which simulated subsonic aircraft ) and the F-5E Tiger II , which simulated supersonic opponents. The first commander of TOPGUN was Ronald Eugen "Mug" McKeown (1939–2015).
In the 1970s and 1980s, the F-4 was replaced by the F-14 Tomcat and the F / A-18 Hornet , so that the opponents were also replaced by modern machines. Among other things, the BAE Hawk and the F-16 Fighting Falcon were used. The F-14 was now also used as an enemy, as it was flown by Iran on the one hand, but was also quite similar to the Su-27 Flanker .
In the 1990s, TOPGUN was also geared towards ground attacks in order to do justice to the multi-mission role of the carrier aircraft. In 1996, TOPGUN was incorporated into the Naval Strike and Air Warfare Center (today: Naval Aviation Warfighting Development Center ) and relocated to Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada .
TOPGUN was best known through the film Top Gun - you fear neither death nor the devil with Tom Cruise .
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Individual evidence
- ↑ Christine Huard: 'Mugs' McKeown, 76, 1st Top Gun commander. In: The San Diego Union Tribune. December 21, 2015, accessed June 16, 2020 .
- ↑ APT McKeown USN Ret Biography HD on YouTube , accessed June 16, 2020.