Top Gun 2011

This week my flight commander who is a prior U.S Navy Top Gun graduate invited us to take four jets out to Fallon Nevada to fight against the newest Top Gun class.

There were all kinds of different jets out there and it was awesome. There were F-18's, F-18 Super Hornets, Eagles, Vipers, Navy f-16's , F-5's, T-45's, and even raptors were supposed to show up but currently they are grounded for some oxygen problems.
The Top Gun school likes to bring out other units to fly against their students to get some real world dissimilar aircraft training. They way it works is we all show up to a mass brief and go over some admin items then we were handed envelopes with a letter that gave us a Lat/Long coordinate, and a time to be ready to fight. We take off as single ships and go to our point and hold, and at a certain time we would be met by our adversary and fight till the death. I had no idea who I was fighting, an F-16? A F-18? A F-15? An F-5? A T-45? It could have been anyone. No one knows who they are fighting until you merge with that dude at a 1000 kts. I was extremely nervous!

My first fight I merged with a F-18C model which is a legacy hornet (older Hornet), but it was a Top Gun instructor in the cockpit. Our first pass was at 1000 kts and 500 ft apart, and I took the F-16 to its limits, rolled my socks down and pulled 8.4 G's. His jet cant turn like mine so I had an advantage after the first turn. I gave him hell for about 2 circles, then he kicked my ass all over the place. You could say I ate a piece of humble pie. This Hornet driver was truly a gifted aviator, and my respect for the Navy and their training program went through the roof.
We fought a few more sets till we ran out of gas and he brought back to the base and we pitched out to do a carrier style landing pattern, 800 ft and 400 kts. It was very cool to see how those dudes fly around the boat.


After I landed I met my instructor and after some high fives we went into a Top Gun briefing room and debriefed the sortie. I was so excited to have a Top Gun instructor take time out of his busy schedule to take some time to talk BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers = Dogfighting) techniques. I don't remember the dudes name, but thank you to whoever kicked my ass at the NSAWC EW South point at 1300 on Friday.

My second sortie of the day I met a Super Hornet at the merge. The Super Hornet is the Navy newest fighter and it is impressive. The guy in the pit was a Top Gun student. After we merged I did exactly what the instructor I previously flew with told me to do, and this time I kicked his ass. It was by far the most difficult fight I have ever been in. We went round and round for what seemed like an eternity, pulling sustained 7.5 G's just staring at each other as we jocked for position to take a shot. I got three shots on him and he shot none. Victory for OGRE!


I have never felt so proud to burn some dead dinosaurs with such great dudes and great pilots. I am so thankful to have had this opportunity to fly with the most elite pilots in the world. I found a new sense of motivation and learned a ton about flying and what it means to be a fighter pilot after spending a day with the bro's from my unit and drinking whiskey with our Navy buds, I had a great time and cant wait to go back.