It’s not enough that they gave us the English language, the rule of law, accountability in government and a stiff(ish) upper lip. Now the Brits are taking credit for the development of TOPGUN (one word, all caps, don’t ask):
Despite the all-American hero imagery of the film starring Tom Cruise, the US Navy’s expertise was in large part due to their instruction by aviators from the Fleet Air Arm.
When British pilots arrived at Miramar airbase in California in the early 1960s the Americans were losing a large number of dogfights in their multi-million Phantom fighters to the enemy’s relatively “cheap” MiG 21s.
The tuition from the British pilots, all graduates of the intense Air Warfare Instructors school in Lossiemouth, Scotland, led to the Americans dominating the skies, the military historian Rowland White has revealed in Phoenix Squadron.
It was then that the their Naval Warfare Academy became known as Top Gun.
Well. That forms no part of the institutional memory of the institution I was a part of. In fact, the staff in my day paid a great deal more obeisance to the Israeli Air Force than the Brits, who after all, hadn’t fired an aerial shot in anger (or even petulance) since the Battle of Britain.
Not saying it’s not true – can’t know – but I will admit to a sneaking suspicion that amongst a certain class of Englishman, there is the assumption that anything useful to come out of the rebellious colonials has to do with the legacy of empire, while anything less savory owes to our own degraded nature.
I had a buddy did an exchange tour at the British Empire Test Pilot school back in 80s. Had to take a lot of looking-down-their-noses guff from Brits who were quite sure that the Yanks couldn’t tell the front end from the blunt end of a fighter. Who were equally sure that the only way to fight an air-to-ground war was to get right down in the mix with all those anonymous, conscript goobers lying flat on their backs firing AK-47s in the air. On account of the fact that they had this one runway buster that required the crew to overfly a defended airstrip at two hundred feet above ground level. Right smack in the heart of the small arms envelope.
Trolling, like.
Maybe the lessons learned from Vietnam were different for us? But our guys took away a whole other body of knowledge. That it was good to fly above SAM and AAA envelopes, if ever you could. That it made sense to avoid roads and highways. That you never flew just above or just below a cloud deck. That you didn’t re-attack, if your first pass got spoiled. That speed was life, and that more was better.
As a result of which, during Desert Storm, they got shot down a lot less than did their patronizing cousins from the BETPS.
So, yeah: Thanks for all that “learning how to take notes” on your kneeboard thing.
We’d never have figured that out on our own.
Maybe the Brits gave Topgun light blue T-shirts………
Gee, you’d think part of the reason the F-4 guys were struggling with MiG-21s was because the F-4s were being used for a mission for which they weren’t intended.
When you design a plane to act as standoff defense against large bombers, you need to make it fairly big, to carry a big radar, big missiles, and big gas tanks. Not surprisingly, they also trained the first crews quite intensely in how to intercept big bombers.
Funny, SWOs and submariners can stagger through a full mission profile of doing whatever without stooping to take notes on their knees. This brings to mind the recent post of the naval aviator bent over sniffing the roses. It’s learned behavior obviously….Oh well, what can one expect of a class of warrior that does all its fighting comfortably ensconced on its butt?
TFJIC!
Oz RAN FAA had an ex-RN FAA Sea Vixen pilot who was “Spastic” (hence my ‘Spaz’ in deference to this fine chap): “Although the British did their best to fit in their humour prevailed. Rather than call signs of Viper and Maverick they came up with Dogbreath, Alien and Cholmondley .” I would put a smiley here but youse youfs are upset by the Brits in TopGun story already. Sigh. By all accounts Lossimouth was breeding OK hooligans.
Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, the British General who won WW II all by himself (just ask him) lives on in this tale. Montgomery of course had to do all that while dragging Georgie Patton and Dwight Eisenhower and about 85 American Infantry Divisions through Northwest Europe on his back which makes his achievement all the more remarkable.
Some things never change.
Mike,
Did you watch Patton today too?
Don’t even get me started on that most egotistical of Generals. Makes Patton look like a shrinking violet.
What? Monty won the war?!? And here I thought that it was de Gaulle who bested those Nazis all by his lonesome… (at least according to l’histoire Francaise)
Maj — Visible evidence that DeGaulle was the SAC is in the French Army Museum (right next to Nappy’s tomb at Les Invalides). Get to the WWII part, and there is one picture of an American — DeGaulle giving Ike an award.
“hadn’t fired an aerial shot in anger (or even petulance) since the Battle of Britain”
Excluding, of course, the Korean War. And maybe the Malay Emergency and the Suez Crisis as well?
You make a good point, Micah but save me the research time: What kind of fighter aircraft did the Malay rebels employ? And how many air-to-air engagements did the Fleet Air Arm have in Korea/Suez?
An RN Sea Fury managed to knock down a MiG-15 over Korea operating from HMS Ocean with 802 Sqdn (sometimes erroneously reported on the web as 805 Sqdn): http://www.royalnavyhistoricflight.org.uk/aircraft/seafury.htm
Meanwhile a ‘hornet’s nest’ of cranky RAN/RN FAA AWIs (Air Warfare Instructors) can attest to the ‘Lord Dick’ TOPGUN story. I’ll send an e-mail rather that regale this throng with 3rd hand accounts.
They might have had a couple, I’d have to check, didn’t Sea Furies get a couple of kills?
The FAA did have extensive air-combat experience in the Falklands, however. I’d say that is the most relevant recent experience.
I do not believe the Brits had anything to do with starting up TOPGUN, making it run, or making it as successful as it has been. They are lucky to participate in it from time to time.
EDIT: Spaz beat me to the post by 1 minute. He, as usual, has better details than I do.
During the first Gulf War I had the pleasure of serving on the staff of Commander Seventh Fleet, who had become COMUSNAVCENT after Saddam invaded Kuwait. When the air war kicked off, the Brits were going in very low and very fast, partly because that was the way one did things, don’t you know, but also, to put in just a word in their defense, because they didn’t have much in the way of organic electronic warfare capability to deal with the SAMs.
From memory, I think their aircraft losses were around 3-4 percent on the first day, while US losses were around one tenth of one percent that day. Within a day or two we were sending EA-6Bs to accompany the British strikes, now at higher altitude, and their losses reduced dramatically. Still, you can’t question their bravery–those guys had some major cojones.
The first CAG5/CV41 (Midway) strike was A-6’s down low (first from the Persian Gulf I believe), just like our British friends. We came back humbled and hitless. CAG and the A-6 Squadron CO’s were brave enough to go, but left dash 4 for a JO! Reggie, you’re still my hero. They were also smart enough to change tactics (Hornets were new back then), so all ended well and everyone from CAG5 made it home.
It is amazing how after all these years one “military historian” has uncovered a fact that no one even knew existed! If he can find this, maybe he can find Noonan and Erhardt, the Reich’s buried treasure, the Holy Grail, and French honor. ok – 3 outta 4 ain’t bad.
Maybe some fact finding by Lex’s Legions might be able to shoot this myth to shreds.
IIRC,
‘Scream of Eagles’ lays out pretty well the hows, whys and wherefores that NFWS came to being. Don’t recall any muddling from the other side of the Atlantic either…
- SJS
God bless the Brits – I have enjoyed operating with their military men and women during my time in OSW/OEF/OIF. Bravery has never been lacking on their part and they were always looking for a fight. Several times an extra British L1011 tanker with plenty of ‘give ’saved our bacon back in the early days of OEF when diverts and safe areas were non-existent and the C3 was a joke.
However, reinventing history is also one of their specialties. Just take a look at how the RAF claims they defended the British Fleet 24 hours a day during the Falklands war, when it in fact never happened. That, in addition to claiming their Vulcan Bomber runs singlehandily brought the war to an end… again, not doubting the heroics, just the historical fact…
No sure why they do it, but if that is the price of having them on ourside, it is a small price indeed. Not to mention regardless of the rules of the host nation, the Brits are always able to find a ‘pint’ for some hapless Naval Officers traped in an Air Force world…
re- “while anything less savory owes to our own degraded nature.”
Of course, as a nation, our dental health is much, much better. Especially amongst the Irish-American sector. “Snarl”- limeys! LOL.
Re- Air-to-Air and “topgun”, I agree with the sentiment they are F.O.S.
Re- attack and low altitude tactics, I will remind all that during the 70’s and 80’s low altitude ingress/egress for the “attack” mission was the main tactic, especially those first days of a campaign. Flying into the ground is the cost of doing that, even w/out ground fire. Seems to me doing the same up high is only enabled in today’s tactics because we can gain air superiority rather fast with our wide array of stand off weaponeery ala Tomahawk, etc. Plus, not that it couldn’t be mitigated w/tanking, our main attack aircraft (non-stealth) of today don’t have the fuel/range to do those 70-80’s tactics.
I reckon the 30,000 ft attack community of today looks back on those years and the tactics as being ignorant of the obvious but it made perfect sense for the times. Trust me. Painting operators of the past as stupid or ignorant prevails though. That’s how they teach all history it seems.
b2
b2
I’ve always been partial to the previously used older term “tgt penetration” as opposed to the made up word “ingress”–dunno why, maybe just the male hormones in me……
On serious note–low, on the deck penetration/ingress was the name of the game when I was over in NATO
68-71–at least for planning/tng purposes. We didn’t have the stand-off wpns and everyone (meaning NATO allies) REALLY feared the massively-tiered SU/WP air defenses–especially the mobile radar-controlled ZSU-4-23s. (Although almost everyone of us just arrived in-theater direct from SEA thought otherwise about the all-low, pop-up attack profiles even then–went directly against everything we had just experienced)
All of these claims are well and good, veracity aside.
As far as I’m concerned, until they provide a suitable counterpart to Meg Ryan or Kelly McGillis, who cares what the Brits say regarding TOPGUN?
So who was it in 1996 who taught Topgun instructors they did not have to be a part of NSAWC? Guess that was an acquired behavior rather than a learned one.
Maybe they’re compensating for the memory of that whole night time bombing thing in WWII?
Here is an excerpt from a first hand account (not mine) by a former RAN FAA AWI (Air Warfare Instructor from the Royal Australian Navy Fleet Air Arm): “The Senior AWI of the AWI training squadron at Lossie(mouth) was Lieutenant Commander Dick Lord RN. He was indeed a South African. In 1969 he was fairly fresh back from a tour of duty (2 years I think) with the USN at NAS Miramar flying F4s. He spoke of his experiences quite often. He was a softly spoken, very pleasant sort of gentleman who was not at all “stuffy”. He was certainly a very accomplished instructor. We occasionally had four plane strike plus escort bounced by up to four fighters. As you can imagine things could get fairly chaotic. His ability to pick out the most salient points for debrief was legendary.”
SJS, I read “Scream of Eagles” several times, and not once did the Brits show up. Just some damned fine Naval Aviators who took a big chance and won big.
Fings wot make you go MMmm: “Lessons not learned: the U.S. Navy’s status quo culture – By Roger Thompson – Edition: illustrated – Published by Naval Institute Press, 2007 – ISBN 1591148650, 9781591148654 – 252 pages”
http://books.google.com/books?id=Tqj9ZP8FsJEC
“p.137: Maj. Gregory Stroud, Arizona Air National Guard, a former Navy pilot, “jumped ship” to fly F-1 6s in the Air National Guard in 1988, and he too was less than exuberant about naval aviation. Major Stroud has the great distinction of graduating from both the Navy Top Gun (sic) course and the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, and his comparison of the two courses is not flattering to the Navy. “The F-16A School (Air Force) was a much more comprehensive and difficult school which takes five months to complete and covers every tactic and mission the F-16 is capable of…. Top Gun (sicK) was fun and easy in comparison.” A fighter pilot, Commander “Sharkey” Ward also points out that the legendary Royal Navy Air Warfare Instructor School was so tough as to make “Top Gun (sik) look like a holiday.”
Furthermore, in 2004, Captain Pedersen, a former fighter pilot, (wherefrom?) opined that Top Gun (OK!?) had been seriously devalued and possibly watered down….”
SPAZ/
EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO READS THIS BLOG SHOULD READ THOMPSON’S BOOK!
(File under heading of: “God protects fools, drunks, and the United States of America”)
If it’s Dan Pedersen, he was very first officer in charge of TOPGUN. In that case credible source. Too bad if all is true.
They should have a gander at “Sharkey” Ward’s excellent Falklands War SHAR saga ‘Sea Harrier over the Falklands’ also: http://www.amazon.com/Harrier-Falklands-Cassell-Military-Paperbacks/dp/0304355429
One can see why no one will call ‘Sharkey’ “Nigel”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Ward
If interested please see “Happy birthday TOPGUN” here: http://blog.projectwhitehorse.com/2009/02/22/scream-of-eagles-happy-birthday-topgun/
and here:
http://blog.projectwhitehorse.com/2009/02/23/rc30/
I was young dumb and stashed at Naval Missile Center flying F-8s and having the time of my life flying wing for some of the VX-4 stuff mentioned in “Scream.” Knew some but not all then of what was happening over in the desert. Almost got in the F-86 part. Good days. Fly Navy, the BEST always have. Boris sends
VX,
Roger. Use of low altitude and terrain was the only form of stealth we had in those days- hence the stupid appearing tactics. Standoff weps were all on the drawing board for the most part..even Maverick.
Someday they may have to go back to low altitude again..’Course, all them ‘robots’ will fill the skys then!
b2
From Darrel (Condor) Gary, who was on the ground floor of the nascent TOPGUN.
‘Rowland White’s interpretation of history is disingenuous, erroneous and certainly self promotional. All of the Royal Navy exchange pilots at that time (Dick Lord, Dick Moody and Peter Jago) were excellent pilots. What we learned from them was how to play mess Rugby in our whites, how to pass out in your plate at a Dining In and how to leave your breakfast on the ramp and still make your take-off time. They did make a positive contribution to the development of skill sets and tactical training within the training squadron to which we were all assigned. Many of them remain friends today. Peter lives near San Diego and flies eastern bloc aircraft long with us doing many of the same things we did in our youth. To assert that “they taught us how to fly the F-4 or that they wrote the NFWS syllabus is a complete fabrication.
It was widely understood by our pilots (USN and USAF) that we had trained for a different threat and were flying a very versatile and capable aircraft that was designed to establish air superiority in a different environment than the one we found ourselves engaged in. To further compound the problems, our command and control limitations negated our primary advantage, the ability to kill at long range. U.S. forces were routinely required to make a V.I.D. which put us in a turning fight with weapons not ideally suited for close in high “G” high T.C.A. combat. To make it even worse, the Rules of Engagement shifted the initiative to our adversaries. They exploited those R.O.E. Shame on the planners who don’t have to do the fighting. “Fight to Win” anything else is rubbish.
It was the Ault Report that gave voice to the operational forces (Fighter Pilots recently back from combat). The Ault Report cataloged all of the problems facing our forces. The easiest to fix in a short period of time was aircrew training and tactics. Missile performance was next in the line-up and we saw the results before the end of the conflict. Unlike the U.S.A.F. which was ruled by the bomber generals of S.A.C., the U.S. Navy command structure responded appropriately. They told those who experienced the problems and who complained about the situation to “go fix it”.
We studied prior conflicts and all of the prior F-4 vs MIG engagements. Adapting the two aircraft tactical unit, the Rotte/Section/Element established by Werner Molders (Luftwaffe) to the performance capabilities of our aircraft, we developed Loose Deuce maneuvering which emphasized mutual support. Taking advantage of the weapons system capability we developed offensive combat spread techniques and V.I.D tactics to maintain the offensive advantage at the terminal phase of an intercept.
We studied Maj John Boyd’s (U.S.A.F.) theory of energy maneuverability in order to understand relative aircraft performance envelopes and the comparative advantages/disadvantages of the F-4 vs our adversaries. We had the added advantage of being able to fly against captured assets. We were able to fly against the adversary aircraft in the western desert. The learning curve was very steep and resulted in dramatically revised tactics and training. We learned to use the vertical and the lag roll and other maneuvers to exploit our relative advantages. All of this was incorporated into the NFWS syllabus.
This took place against the backdrop of the bombing halt ordered by President Johnson in November of 1968. For the next three years any aerial confrontation was very limited. President Nixon lifted the ban north of the 20th parallel. By this time numerous NFWS trained pilots were assigned to Fighter Squadrons in the theater of operations. When aerial combat resumed, the results were dramatic. All of the U.S. Navy kills except for two were made by NFWS “TOPGUN” graduates. This is now a part of aviation history, legend and lore…..U.S. Naval Aviation history I might add. He who says otherwise was not there and diminishes himself by trying to assume the credit for the accomplishments of others.’
So the Brits *did* have an important role in the improvement of American fighter pilots. They introduced the concept of a full breakfast, since the typical breakfast before then was “a Coke, a smoke and a puke.”
For you glass cockpit flyers, TCA is track crossing angle.
During my short time at The School, instructors such as Huck, Manfred and Hawk spoke in awe about the visiting Israeli pilot who watered their eyes in the F-4J they borrowed from somewhere…probably VF-121. The only Brit mentioned during the course was Roy Brown.
Don’t forget the other key elements taught at Top Gun: Dissimilar tactics (which the Navy frowned on pre-TG) and pushing to find the envelope…and sometimes past. And that F-86 thing? I’ve told war sim fanatics that it’s not simply the aircraft or the missile…it’s the pilot in the loop. Makes you wonder how those UCAVs are gonna work…
Simple. UCAVs plow on bravely and suck up heavy losses. Don’t think of them as strike aircraft, but as reusable Tomahawks.
Mike M/
Exactly, and that’s what I always try to impress on everyone. People talk as if we are going to be turning them out like sausages by the tens of thousands for a couple thou apiece and saturate the skies. (Hell, we don’t even do that with Tomahawks)
The reality is they are damned expensive if used in the numbers that their best utilization tactics would call for–which for that very reason (the cost) they won’t be. And the same tendency to gold-plate every platform that’s come down the pike since WWII and add mission creep to boot (think F-15 from original conception to now) is much in evidence with these things even as we speak. The long-range strike versions only going to get bigger and more expensive. Anyone who doesn’t think so is fooling themselves–like people who enter into second marriages–the triumph of hope over experience.
Virgil Xenophon writes about tendencies to gold plate things; and also about a tendency to not have enough of things.
While I yield to no man in my dislike for Montgomery’s personal pettiness on the march into Northwest Europe, you have to be fair to the fellow. He was fighting with what was essentially England’s last army. He could not sustain casualties. So he sat on his ass and thought a lot. And part of what he thought about was how to take cheap shots at the American generals and how to claim all the credit for himself. Generals sometimes need to do less thinking and more moving.
Now some of you guys will recall campaign statements about how Obama’s uncle or grandfather or some relative “liberated Auschwitz”. I think Obama was making the claim that he understood war and the costs ot it. The division that Obama’s St. Louis native uncle or grandfather went over with was one of the last divisions fed into the European war arriving in mid January 1945.
I make the point because we durn near ran out of riflemen and rifle divisions for the European campaign at the end of 1944. Marshall’s planning for WWII presumed we’d need something like 90 infantry divisions for the European conflict; we finally managed to train and get 88 divisions to Europe–and it wasn’t enough.
Montgomery didn’t dare lose his Army, because it was the last one Britain had–and we darn near chewed up everything we could get together before the end of the European war. Military planning is just that–planning–and sometimes it’s good and sometimes its bad.
Military bragging–or at least Montgomery style military bragging goes on forever.
Mike/
Funny we got on the Monty-Patton thing. Dad was a CO. Cmdr with the 42nd Rainbow in Patch’s 7th Army, which was situated right between Monty and Patton’s 3rd when they wheeled north after the Battle of the Bulge. Dad had occasion to interface with Monty’s troops as their AO overlapped with the 42nd’s at points. Although he was often frustrated in joint ops with the British approach to doing things , Dad, unlike most US soldiers–officers and enlisted–always thought highly of Montgomery–citing the fact that if he hadn’t turned things around at El Alamain, and the Germans had overrun Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Mid-East oil, things might have been vastly different. He used to point out that if that had happened, the Nazis could have gone on to even India and Southern Russia as well with those oil fields.
As for Patton? There was no love lost there–one time when going to a Commander’s Conference
in the 3rd Army AO as the Regimental Rep, his jeep was stopped by a couple of Patton’s MPs who upbraided him and his men for being “out of uniform” by not having their ties on. LOL.(Ties were IN in Patton’s Army–were definitely OUT in Patch’s, who had come from the jungles of New Guinea and Buna to take command and couldn’t have cared less. Patch in his memoirs is quoted as saying the uniform of the day in New Guinea was often Pith helmet, T-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes. LOL again!)
At a talk in 1994, I heard Shelby Foote comparing Patton with “Stonewall” Jackson: Either man, he said, would trade a regiment for a river [crossing] any time, which was uncomfortable knowledge if you were in that lead regiment.
Well, I dunno nuthin about flying jet fighters, except what I read from you folks, but I concur with the snark at B. L. Montgomery. I used to work for a guy who never knew his Dad, a paratrooper killed in that Market-Garden thing before the birth of his son. My boss hated the very thought and memory of BLM for getting his dad unnecessarily and pointlessly killed.
The American forces in Market-Garden achieved all of their objectives, with great skill and courage. The Brits, at the level of General Browning on up, just failed.
If you look at any accounts of that operation on a Brit-run site, you might see some slight acknowledgement that, “Oh, yeah, we had some Americans who came along with us, who assisted us a little bit.
Funny you should mention that, B.t.S.
Patton, Jackson, and Montgomery have all been suspected of being a bit neurally atypical, shall we say.
Patton was dyslexic and maybe ADDy, (his yacht was used to teach learning-disabled kids for a while) and Jackson and Montgomery are suspected to have been Aspies. People like that can be brilliant, but often need normal persons for, uh, “managers.” Jackson had Lee to manage him, the other two had Ike. Ike was able to manage Patton somewhat. Montgomery, not so much.
(Jackson really does remind me of me entirely too much. he was right weird.)