The Story Behind The Real Top Gun

One of today’s most recognizable elite military institutions was born from the crucible of the Vietnam War, when American aviators quickly realized the advantages they’d enjoyed during World War II and the Korean War no longer applied. Worse, during the early days of the Vietnam War, hundreds of American airmen, like U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. John S. McCain and Cmdr. James Stockdale, had been shot down by enemy MiG fighter jets, surface‑to‑air missiles, or ground artillery fire. Because they went on to return home, they were the relatively lucky ones; many others were killed immediately or died in captivity. U.S. Navy pilots, who had grown accustomed to owning the skies during World War II and the Korean War, found themselves at a significant disadvantage this time around.

Something was wrong. Based on their performance during prior conflicts, Navy pilots should have excelled in air‑to‑air battles. World War II had seen kill ratios of ten to one: ten enemy planes shot down for every American plane. The Korean War demonstrated similar levels of success.

In Vietnam, this number had dropped to less than two to one. Compounding the problem was the Navy’s prioritization of newly developed air‑to‑air missiles and their use with its latest fighter jets, primarily F‑4 Phantoms. From June 1965 to September 1968, American pilots fired nearly six hundred missiles at enemy aircraft, with only sixty or so finding their way to the target, a paltry success rate. Aviators worried that an insufficient amount of aircrew training, repeated missile failures, and the Phantom’s lack of a machine gun— omitted because the U.S. Navy was convinced dogfighting was a thing of the past— explained why the kill ratio had plummeted.

How many more Americans might suffer the same fate as John McCain and the hundreds of other airmen who had fallen from the sky? To help reverse this tragic turn of events, the Navy turned to Capt. Frank W. Ault, a senior officer in the Pentagon tasked with holistically reviewing what was broken with dogfighting in Vietnam— and, more importantly, devising a plan to fix it. For five months, he and other naval professionals pored over reports to determine how best to restore the U.S. Navy’s anemic kill ratio. In January 1969, Captain Ault and his team published the 480-​page Air‑to‑Air Missile System Capability Review, later popularly and more succinctly known as the Ault Report.

The report dissected every aspect of the problem and offered concrete solutions for Navy brass to consider. One recommendation stood out: the proposal to create an advanced fighter weapons school at Naval Air Station Miramar, in San Diego, California, designed to teach aircrew how to not just survive in dogfighting—but to win.

Usually, governments and big institutions move like glaciers, but just two months later, on March 3, 1969, the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School opened its doors. You may know the school by a shorter name, correctly written in capitals and all one word: “TOPGUN.”

Originally operating out of a ramshackle trailer, instructors begged, borrowed, and stole what they needed to get the school up and running. Short on funds and equipment, they had no other choice, but that first cadre made it work. It didn’t take long to achieve results.

A TOPGUN-​trained aircrew notched its first kill a little over a year later when, on March 28, 1970, Lt. Jerome Beaulier and Lt. (junior grade) Stephen Barkley, flying a U.S. Navy F‑4 fighter jet, pumped a missile into a North Vietnamese MiG-​21’s tailpipe.

Then, in April 1972, North Vietnamese tanks and artillery boldly smashed across the demilitarized zone into South Vietnam. Aiming to disrupt Hanoi’s supply lines, the United States responded with Operation Linebacker. In that operation, the U.S. Air Force compiled a meager 1.78-​to‑1 kill ratio. But aviators from the Navy’s Seventh Fleet recorded a thirteen‑to‑one kill ratio, shooting down twenty-​six planes and losing only two.

TOPGUN worked.

But the TOPGUN story didn’t end with the pullout of U.S. forces from Vietnam in 1973— that was only the beginning. The school grew in stature with each passing decade. The remainder of the 1970s validated the school’s impact, and students and instructors began to train against more capable adversary aircraft, including enemy MiGs brought to America from overseas.

The school went relatively unnoticed by the American public until 1986, when Tom Cruise starred in the original Top Gun movie. (He also stars in the 2022 sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, which is currently back in theaters.) Critics weren’t sure what to make of the first movie, but the public loved it from the start— and still does. Top Gun proved to be 1986’s top-​grossing film, packing theaters for a full six months and making it easier for the military to attract new recruits for years.

Tens of millions around the world who saw the movie were now TOPGUN fans.

In 1996, the school moved from Miramar—nicknamed “Fightertown USA”— to Naval Air Station Fallon, located in the Nevada desert seventy miles east of Reno. The changing threat— shifting from overwater engagements against Soviet aircraft during the height of the Cold War to combating Middle Eastern terrorism—made desert training crucial. Although dogfighting and air‑to‑air combat remained the school’s primary missions, more emphasis was placed on the air‑to‑ground combat skills aviators would need over Iraq and Afghanistan.

More than fifty years after its founding, TOPGUN still provides select aviators with a graduate-​level course designed to produce the world’s finest combat aviators. TOPGUN alumni form the cadre of teachers who instruct, influence, and cultivate talent across the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps (as both services are included within the Department of the Navy).

To succeed in this unrelenting training course, students— typically junior officers in their mid-​twenties and fresh off their very first tour of duty—must possess three key attributes: talent, passion, and personality.

Mastering each is crucial. Throughout the twelve-​week course, the knowledge, skills, and aerial tactics needed to fight and win our nation’s wars are drilled into the men and women who will one day comprise the top one percent of military fighter pilots. Those asked to remain as TOPGUN instructors, typically only two or three students from a class of fifteen or more, must uphold an even higher—and more unrelenting—standard.

Despite its emphasis on peerless flight training in fighter jets, TOPGUN develops one critical trait above all others: leadership. And it starts from day one.

In 2006, I had the honor of becoming a TOPGUN graduate and then spending three years as an instructor—an awe-inspiring and humbling experience.

Monday through Saturday, incredibly talented sailors and marines arrived at the U.S. Fighter Weapons School ready to push their personal boundaries to achieve their fullest potential. While we recognized that perfection is impossible to attain, we also subscribed to the idea that getting better every day was the goal.

Be better today than yesterday.

Do the same tomorrow.

This excerpt is from TOPGUN’s Top 10: Leadership Lessons from the Cockpit. Commander Guy M. Snodgrass, U.S. Navy(retired) served as a TOPGUN Instructor before leading Strike fighter Squadron 195, a Japan-based F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter squadron.