by Dan Pedersen
Whatever the motivation, when the lawsuits were dismissed by both of the federal courts that heard it, and the Navy inquiry concluded that the death was a tragic accident, the senator used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to block my promotion to admiral.
Our CNO fought for me. I’d had a good record from Topgun, with the two deployments with the Ranger, where we went two years without an aircraft accident, something no other carrier in the fleet had done during that period. But I was a political liability. Though the CNO urged me to stay the course, he was forced to pull my name off the admiral’s list for 1983. I loved the Navy. What would I do without it? Yet I came to the conclusion that if I stayed, I wouldn’t be able to win this fight. The senator would be reelected, and his opposition to my promotion would never waver. If the Navy resisted again, there could be fallout that would harm the service I loved. That’s just how Washington worked. I resigned my staff position and retired two weeks later, on March 1, 1983, after twenty-nine years, one month, and one day in uniform.
As the Reagan administration continued boosting defense spending in the early ’80s and I finished my tour as commanding officer of the Ranger, Topgun was in the hands of a terrific CO, Ernie Christensen. He had excellent access to Navy Secretary John F. Lehman, and constantly worked on him to elevate the Navy Fighter Weapons School position in the chain of command so that our rivals within the Pentagon bureaucracy would leave us alone.
The culture of Topgun and its larger Miramar tribe was always its own best critic. In 1982, in fact, the reviews were mixed. The fast pace of fleet operations, which were pushing our carriers to operate ever forward, close to Soviet territory, in line with President Reagan’s aggressive new Maritime Strategy, had cut into training time and limited the availability of our very busy fleet pilots to go to Miramar. While proficiency in air combat maneuvering was high, it seemed that Topgun graduates were no longer having such a dramatic impact on squadron training. Part of the reason was all the new squadrons that were being created to field the F-18 Hornet, which was arriving in Navy inventories in large numbers. With twenty-four squadrons getting equipped with the Hornet from 1982 to 1985, the Navy didn’t have enough graduates to go around.
And yet Topgun’s influence within the Navy grew ever wider. The school sent detachments to the Philippines, Japan, and Saudi Arabia to work directly with forward-deployed air wings. We ran “road shows” for them, organizing lectures, booking simulator time, and conducting battle group defense exercises. Our Mobile Training Teams, meanwhile, visited our NATO allies. Norway and Germany were particularly receptive, and Topgun instructors relished assignments to help them get the most out of their F-5s, F-104s, and F-16s. Our Navy cousins in the surface warfare community, meanwhile, tried to use Topgun-style training to make commanders of frigates, destroyers, and cruisers into better warriors. As I heard it, though, our way of giving a lot of voice to junior officers was a problem for the more tradition-bound parts of the Navy.
With all of this going on, it was only a matter of time before the larger public began to get wind of Topgun. In 1983, California magazine published an article about Topgun, focusing on a single F-14 Tomcat crew. When movie producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson read it, they saw the potential for a movie set in the world of Fightertown USA. The XO of Topgun at the time, Mike “Wizzard” McCabe, hosted the moviemakers at Miramar to explore the idea. After the producers hired screenwriters Jim Cash and Jack Epps to create the script, they approached the Navy about supporting the project.
The CNO, Admiral James Holloway, ended up granting them full cooperation on the condition that the Navy have the right to approve the script. With that agreement in place, two aircraft carriers were made available to the filmmakers, as well as several F-14 Tomcats modified to carry cameras. With the Navy billing the Paramount production team $7,800 per flying hour, Tony Scott began shooting in June 1985.
Though Scott said he wanted originally to make “Apocalypse Now on an aircraft carrier,” the producers thought better of that dark idea. Bruckheimer and Simpson wanted to make “a rock-and-roll movie about fighter pilots.” And that was Top Gun,* released to much fanfare in May 1986.
The plot was built around the rivalry of two Topgun student pilots, Lieutenants Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, played by Tom Cruise, and Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, played by Val Kilmer. Tom Skerritt pretty well nailed the role of their skipper, Mike “Viper” Metcalf, conveying the character of Topgun leadership and the rigor of the training in a way that reflected reality far better than the conflict between the youngsters did. The one character in the film who might have seemed to be a Hollywood fabrication, Charlie Blackwood—the female lead played by Kelly McGillis—was actually inspired by a real person. This was Christine H. Fox, a mathematician who went to Miramar as a field analyst to advise the commander of the Airborne Early Warning Wing. Though she had little direct contact with Topgun, her boss, Rear Admiral Thomas J. Cassidy—who happened to be the Navy’s liaison to the film producers—was so impressed with her that he persuaded the filmmakers to change Tom Cruise’s love interest from an aerobics instructor to a brainy tactical consultant. Christine Fox went on to serve as a deputy secretary of defense, making her the highest-ranking woman in the history of the Pentagon.
Who would have expected such a film to be a boon to feminism? Because as we all know, the testosterone in that movie ran hot. It portrayed Topgun more as a glorified intramural tournament than as the academically rigorous graduate schoolhouse it really is. But hand it to Tony Scott and his team: The aerial photography was among the finest ever shot. Among the technical advisers was Captain (later Rear Admiral) Pete Pettigrew, a Vietnam MiG killer and Topgun instructor, who also appeared onscreen. Some nitpicking aside, they did very fine work demonstrating the F-14’s capabilities in great shots set up by Mr. Scott and his cinematographer, Jeffrey L. Kimball, with a soundtrack that seemed to pull you into the cockpit for the ride. The film topped the U.S. box office that year, narrowly beating Crocodile Dundee. It eventually earned more than $350 million worldwide and won an Oscar for best original song (“Take My Breath Away” by Giorgio Moroder and Tom Whitlock, performed by Berlin).
Having watched some of the filming, Pete Pettigrew was impressed with Meg Ryan, in the role of the wife of Goose, Maverick’s RIO. He says she cried on cue for twenty-two straight takes. I think Anthony Edwards stole the show as Goose. His son’s experience as a Topgun pilot is the focus of the sequel, Top Gun: Maverick (coming in 2020), which I consider a deserved tribute to the importance of a pilot’s eyes and ears in the rear seat.
Several Topgun instructors got camera time in the publicity campaign. Asked about Maverick’s cocky character, one of them said, “Well, he has the right stuff, but with that attitude we wouldn’t let him in the back door.” That’s how we felt about egos in my day. It makes for good entertainment but isn’t what you want in your ready room. The loner glory seeker—the maverick—doesn’t last. He kills himself trying to impress people. Topgun wants solid, mature professionals, maybe touched by a divine spark of inspiration, but intelligent warriors who fight with the head, heart, and hands.
However, Navy Secretary Lehman wrote just recently that the bravado was meant with a particular audience in mind: the Russians. “The swashbuckling, confidently professional naval aviators kicking their ass was exactly the message we had intended to project, but it was not quite the nuanced approach conducive to diplomacy.” No, it wasn’t. But who knows? The movie as a psychological warfare operation might have helped push the Soviet Union to collapse just five years later.
It’s easy to take shots at a film, because realism is seldom its primary goal. No Topgun pilot would ever invert himself and fly upside down, canopy to canopy, with an enemy pilot. And the maneuver where Maverick bagged his instructor by pulling up and reducing power to idle, causing the instructor to overshoot, is nothing more than what Jerry Beaulier has called a “kill self” maneuver. But there was no disputing th
e movie’s value to naval aviation. It attracted hordes of new potential aviators and sailors to recruiting offices, which was definitely the Navy’s goal. Admiral Holloway said that when applications from qualified candidates to go to Pensacola surged past the training quotas by 300 percent, he got Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger to approve “banking” the applications, spreading them over the next three years to assure the supply of candidates. The Air Force tried to keep pace. Reports circulated of their recruiters setting up in lobbies of theaters showing the film.
Few people outside the aviation community remember that a real tragedy marred the shooting of the film. In September 1985, the famed aerobatics champion and air-show favorite Art Scholl was killed while filming an aerial sequence in a camera-equipped biplane. Unable to recover from an inverted spin, he went into the water with his two-seater Pitts Special about five miles off Encinitas. The film was dedicated to his memory.
While the movie provided a shot in the arm for the Reagan-era Navy and its recruitment goals, there were unintended consequences within naval aviation that affected Topgun for years to come. The other communities, especially our attack crews, felt slighted by the movie. It stirred old resentments, and as the 1980s came to a close, the school faced another series of bureaucratic assaults that I believe were designed to cripple it.
Of course, I was a civilian by then, for the first time since I was selling shoes in downtown Whittier. I had challenges of my own. I went from commanding a supercarrier off the Persian Gulf to being another casually dressed California businessman. My entire social circle was gone. When I returned to California that spring, I felt like a refugee in my own hometown. I was almost fifty years old, starting over from scratch. I needed to find a new sense of normal.
For me, normal was waking up in my cabin to the smell of salt air coming through a brass porthole. It was the heavy jolt of a catapult launch, and 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, and the honor of leading Topgun, alongside some of the finest young men America 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, there 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. The best part of our time together was the birth of my third child, a daughter. For beautiful Candice, I will always be grateful.
I could have gone into the defense industry like so many other retired military officers do—great salaries, great benefits. I refused to do that. I’d long since concluded that many of the problems we faced originated in the procurement system and the defense industry’s influence in Washington and the Pentagon. I didn’t want to use the military-corporate revolving door that makes the influence possible.
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. So did a great businessman named Joe Sinay, who took me under his wing and mentored me. We became close friends over the years, and I owed him a tremendous debt of gratitude.
My folks passed, Dad first, then Mom a few years later. Even so, whenever I had business in the Los Angeles area, I’d make a point of getting back to Whittier to see my mom’s oldest and closest friend, Louise Seacrest. She was ninety-four, sharp as ever, and the only family I had left there.
One night, after I’d taken her to dinner, she turned to me and said, “Dan, I’ve known you almost all your life. I have never seen you so miserable.”
I thought I’d been doing a good job hiding it.
“Yeah, I’m pretty unhappy.”
“I have the answer for you.”
She pulled out a notepad and pen, scrawled on it, then tore the sheet off and handed it to me. I looked down at a phone number.
“Call it. Do it now. You should have done it thirty years ago.”
I had no idea what she was talking about.
“Dan, Mary Beth is single. Call the number.”
I was speechless. I’d lost touch with our mutual friends long ago. With my mom gone, I had no conduit to information about Mary Beth. I had no idea her marriage had ended too.
I had a car phone that I used for work, and after I saw my mom’s friend to her door, I returned to my sedan and called the number. Mary Beth’s mom answered the phone. I introduced myself, unsure if she would remember me. She was happy to hear from me, and we talked for several minutes, catching up. Then she gave me Mary Beth’s number. I made the call.
Her voice sounded exactly the same, and for an instant I was back under the nose of that T-33 at El Toro, home for Christmas with her rushing into my arms.
“Beth, this is Dan Pedersen.”
Dead silence on the phone.
I said my name again.
Thinking this was a prank call from her brother, pretending to be me, she scolded me. This was not how I expected it to go.
I promised her I was not her brother. We started laughing with an effortlessness I hadn’t felt in years.
“Are you in town? Where are you?” she asked.
“Put a pot of coffee on, I’ll be right over.”
She gave me her address and I began breaking speed limits.
I stepped out of the car in front of a well-kept condominium, dressed in a polo shirt, slacks, and good loafers. (Always wear a good pair of shoes, just in case you have the luck to run into the love of your life.)
The front door opened, and there she was, Mary Beth, looking as breathtakingly beautiful thirty years later as she’d been in every thought and memory that I had carried across the oceans. It seemed almost surreal. Thirty years. I never thought I would see her again. I realized I had felt her absence every day. It lessened with time, but never left me.
Who was I really thinking about on the day I ejected from my crippled F-4, chute opening late, swinging once, twice, before slamming into the water off La Jolla? It was the woman in front of me, dressed fabulously as always, looking at me with so much happiness and excitement.
I stepped toward her as she smiled and opened her arms. I reached her and went in for a hug. She had something more in mind. A gentle kiss, warm and open. Connecting. Not the kind you give an old friend; the kind you give your long-lost love.
I felt a strange sensation right then. The hole inside me disappeared. Time and distance held no meaning in the moment. When our lips parted, all I could see were her brown eyes looking into mine.
In them, I saw at last I was home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SAVING TOPGUN
As I write this, I’m eighty-three years old. I still look up whenever a plane passes overhead. Now you know why. Flying was one great love of my life. For thirty years, it consumed everything, gave me everything I ever felt was valuable and valued. It gave me a home, both in the air and on sea or land. In the end, though, Mary Beth came along and showed me what I had been missing. More and better family moments. Love and connection between my kids that I never got to share while searching for targets south of Haiphong.
It is past midnight now. The moon is rising, and the airliners are still passing by as we sit beside the pool here. Truth is, I have only one regret: I should have found a way to spend more time with Dana, Chris, and Candice, who was born in 1980. In retrospect, there was no way either of my first marriages was going to survive the constant deployments, the politics, and the press coverage. They were fine women; I will always care about them, and I hope they will forgive me for my priorities and pursuits when we were together.
In time of war, our country needed us. I couldn’t walk away when my friends were fighting for their lives against those flaming telephone
poles and MiG-17s. When you take the oath and don the uniform, it changes you. It changes your priorities.
Take a look right there. See that light moving in the sky? I bet she’s a 737 outbound from LAX. I see her every night around this time. Right on schedule; no delays at the gate or surly passengers, I guess.
God, how I loved flying. On a night like this, you could see for hundreds of miles at forty thousand feet. Crystal black sky overhead, lit with an infinite number of galaxies and their stars, the glittering cities below, like diamonds reflecting sunlight. Earth and life in all their beauty. Until you see it for yourself and feel how it opens you up and then hooks you like an addict, you’ll never know what a transformative experience flying can be.
There aren’t many military aircraft in this part of the sky at night anymore. With the budget cuts and the spare parts crisis, the crews just don’t get much flight time. If I dwell on it, I worry about where we’re going and what will happen to Topgun.
In 1993, the end of our rivalry with the Soviet Union triggered massive budget cuts and base closures. The peace dividend forced the Marines to move from El Toro to Miramar, which crowded Topgun out of the picture. Those running the show decided to move us to Fallon, Nevada, where it would fall under the Naval Strike Air Warfare Center, or “Strike U.” Just like that, the plot of land with the dubious “view of the sea” where we had first parked our stolen trailer was no longer home. The attack aviators in the chain of command scored a decisive victory by forcing this move, one that ultimately imperiled our legacy.