- Now another thing that Hollywood does,
and I don't blame them for this one,
is they take some liberties with
what it's like to start an aircraft.
In reality, there would be 10 minutes of boring film
where the pilot is speaking with the crew chief.
Now, I want you to check your flaps.
Now I want you to check your radars.
Now I want you to check, whatever it is.
There's this warm-up that you have to do.
You have to check that everything's gonna work.
You don't just take it and go,
kick the tires, light the fires.
Hello, my name is Vincent Aiello.
I am a retired United States Navy fighter pilot
and former instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School,
better known as TOPGUN.
Over the course of my 25-year career,
I spent more than three years,
on aircraft carriers over five deployments.
Flying primarily the F/A-18 Hornet and Super Hornet.
Today we are going to explore
air combat scenes in popular movies.
[upbeat music]
[aircraft beeps]
This is The Incredibles.
I remember it being a really fun family movie.
You've got, entertainment for both the kids and the parents.
But this scene just, uh!
It proliferates the stereotypes about
surface-to-air missiles.
These things are traveling at Mach three
and they have, pretty much one chance to down
whatever aircraft they're launched at.
What they don't do is chase it around
like a rabid dog going after an intruder.
Here you have, Elastigirl,
who sees these missiles coming at her
and by the time she sits down and puts on her headset,
it would impact the aircraft.
I love the very first thing she does.
[laughs]
Illuminates the, "Fasten Seat Belt" sign.
Anyway, so she puts out some chaff,
which is always a good idea.
Aircraft are equipped with chaff
and like we saw in Iron Man flares,
and those are to defeat respectively,
both radar guided and infrared guided missiles.
It is usually best to do that with a maneuver of some sort.
Just putting them out in this situation,
might work and she does a little maneuver there.
But those missiles that were coming head on
are suddenly behind her and chasing her down.
Aileron rolls.
Oh my goodness.
Aileron rolls do not help to simply defeat it.
But in this scene,
she breaks out of the clouds and lo and behold,
there's a bunch of ocean, in front of her.
She scoops it out the last second,
which is a great decoy, by the way for the missile.
Anytime you can get close to the ground without hitting it,
anything that's attacking you
is going to have a harder time.
We saw the first missile detonate
in the chaff cloud again, a look-like.
Which, probably not real likely.
And the next one impacts the water and that's great.
Unfortunately, so does, the aircraft.
And yet, we'll just jam
the throttles forward and keep going.
Now aircraft designed to land on water, can do this,
although you still need to land very gently.
A jet like this, I don't think so.
- Disengage repeat, disengage!
- But, the advisor, on this scene
did a wonderful job of providing Holly Hunter
and the script writers of course,
the right terminology to use.
- Disengage friendlies. - Disengage, friendlies?
I assume she thinks that someone who,
doesn't mean to be employing against her
is in fact, "Hey, so don't engage us.
"We are friendlies."
In a little while you here, Buddy spike.
- There's Buddy spike, abort.
- Which is a term for,
"Hey, someone is, putting their radar on someone else."
And, if you know it's a friendly,
that means it's a Buddy spike.
Hey, break your lock.
Don't don't keep illuminating me with your radars.
So you're not as likely to shoot me down.
What I love about it is she gets all these terms right.
What I don't love about it is,
yes, at TOPGUN,
we train to always using the correct terminology.
When we come back from a training mission,
we will sit and painfully debrief
what we said and what we could have said.
But in real life, when someone shooting at you,
you're probably not gonna perfectly
say it like she does here
because, people are really shooting at you.
You're gonna be scared outta your wits.
And so, I thought she was actually too perfect.
Which is kind of funny.
- Zero miles South, South West of your position.
- So now here you have the missiles,
that are flying alongside, almost in formation, here you go.
And I realized we need the climax of this particular scene.
We need the daughter to get upset that she can't do it.
Mom, to get a little more panicky
and she'll save the day.
But I'm pretty sure the missiles don't fly in formation
and then slowly close in,
to attack you, as we have depicted here.
And then you again have this massive detonation.
Now, maybe we'll give them the benefit of the doubt
that the missile set off the fuel remaining in the aircraft.
But, it's generally not this, nuclear looking explosion
with just this massive fireball,
and little bits and pieces everywhere.
That might be a little over dramaticized.
And then we have, everybody falling,
but we have superhuman powers here.
So, mom can turn herself into,
a parachute that you might see, in an ejection scenario.
And what I love about it, is they got it right.
It's a round parachute.
- Brace yourselves.
- They will gently fall down to the ground,
as well, all the wreckage.
But, here we have some humans, that are falling
then they are being retarded
by the parachute and they fall gently,
but, what happens?
They land in the water
and this massive hulk of aircraft that's remaining,
comes screaming down to them.
[loud bang]
[laughs]
All right, well,
maybe the fuselage, ended up with some sort of
upward vector at the explosion and it took a little longer
but, even with the parachute, I'm not so sure.
- Both of you will get a grip
or so help me, I will ground you for a month.
Understand? - Well, apart from,
yelling at your family if they're there with you,
the first thing aircrew wanna do when they land in the water
is get out of the water.
So, in tactical fighter aircraft, we have a raft
as part of the ejection seat survival equipment.
And, it will deploy,
on your way down before you hit the water
and it will be tethered to you with a lanyard.
And you will want to board that raft,
not only for anti exposure of cold water,
but also to get yourself, frankly, out of the food chain.
Then you want to assess your situation.
Are you injured?
Do you have any immediate first aid requirements
that you need to administer to stop the bleeding?
Reset a sprain, do something along those lines.
The next thing you wanna do, is to establish communication.
So, if you were, in a situation where there are two aircraft
and one goes down, well, the F-22 that remained airborne.
The Whiplash 2, I believe it was.
He would want to assume the on-scene commander role
and say, "Hey everybody, my wingman is down.
"I can see him in the water.
"I'm going to stay here as long as I can, fuel permitting
until either a rescue helicopter approaches
or a ship or some other relief happens
so that we can retrieve that person.
You want to take stock of what you have available.
All you'll have is whatever you brought with you.
So we do have survival vests, equipped with different tools
and different things that might be useful to you
as well as signaling devices
like mirrors, smoke, pencil flares.
You might have a shroud knife
to cut the parachute shrouds
so that they're not tangling you up.
You might have a little extra water.
You, might have,
whatever you've carried in your g-suit.
And then again, the harness
that you've strapped into the ejection seat with.
It will have something in the seat pan.
Maybe a little extra water, maybe even some food.
You wanna take stock of all that,
depending on your situation.
In this case, they're out in the open ocean.
So, they want to make sure,
they are ready for, an extended survival situation.
[aircraft engine roars]
- Daddy come back!
- 20 Century of Fox brought us True Lies.
Top Gun, was good for the Navy.
Iron Eagle was, not quite as good for the Air Force.
And the Marine Corps of course has The Great Santini.
And now thankfully, True Lies.
So, our character here, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
he does it all,
including flying the venerable AV-8B Harrier.
And in fact, he needs it to go,
rescue his daughter who has been captured
by these evil terrorists
and held in a skyscraper in Miami under construction.
So the AV-8B Harrier depicted here
is an aircraft found,
in the United States Marine Corps only.
It's based on the Sea Harrier design,
that was originally in service in the United Kingdom.
It actually has a very long and storied, service life
from the '80s on and, is still in service
with the United States Marine Corps today.
Even though it's been seven years,
you can pick right back up
and fly this thing, with no trouble.
[upbeat music]
So you've got the henchmen here,
that are gonna fire at him.
[gunshots firing]
A couple of things, number one,
with a canopy blown to bits like this
and the engine at significant power
or sufficient power, to hover,
isn't that, big fan right behind you
going to be pretty loud?
It's probably going to suck everything down
including all those broken shards of glass.
Maybe even the pilot, if you're not strapped in well.
When you are flying,
a Harrier in hover mode,
it's a lot like taking a bowling ball
and balancing it on a BB.
So you're sitting there holding the bowling ball
and you're trying to keep it exactly right.
The last thing you're gonna do is let go of those controls
because wherever you ended up last
is where that aircraft is going to fall off
if you're not constantly putting more inputs in.
So, we have some liberties taken here,
but it's a great scene.
I think the Harrier scene here,
treated the Marine Corps well.
We have a fully loaded Harrier here.
We've got rocket pods, 2.75 inch.
We've got the AIM-9 Sidewinder and we have gun pods.
This is really a configuration for the Harrier.
It's the GAU-12 25mm Cannon.
Unlike the F-22 we saw in Iron Eagle,
this one is going to fire, about 3,600 rounds a minute.
So about 60 rounds a second.
The gun will be on the left.
The rounds will be on the right.
Now curiously, because the flame out of this GAU 12 Cannon
is so long and it could get sucked back up into the intake,
you actually have as a Harrier pilot,
a 150 knot minimum speed, to fire that
and here he is firing at, basically zero.
But again, we're not gonna worry about that.
This aircraft is obviously, significantly damaged already.
I do love though that the short firing.
I dunno know how they filmed that scene
with the, water, flaring up in the background,
but I thought that was pretty cool
and then it hits the side of the building.
Again you've got that independent,
sound of bullets coming out,
like that Ra-Ta-Ta-Tat machine gun.
I think it's gonna be a bit more,
even though it's not a hundred rounds a second.
I think it's gonna be more of a
[buzzes]
kind of continual sound, for 60 rounds a second.
That's still a lot of rounds.
So his, poor distressed daughter
who only today also found out
that her dad is this super secret Omega spy,
is now hanging from this crane
and, she's going to, jump onto the nose of his Harrier,
while he's flying it?
I dunno, maybe it's a a hundred pound,
center of gravity change suddenly up at the front.
I think we're gonna have to,
wave the flag on that one, as well as this one.
[suspenseful music]
He's got the balance with this aircraft, to do it?
I dunno.
I don't know why maybe, Arnold didn't just land
on top of the building and let her down.
But, of course this is a bit more dramatic.
So as she's out of the cockpit there,
he's definitely not using his legs.
He's not using his left hand.
Looks like maybe Arnold's using his right
to fly the aircraft,
but, that might be, a little bit of a stretch.
As if the rest of this was fully real.
[aircraft engine roaring]
I feel for this poor janitor.
He's working so hard to get this office nice and clean.
He's got his music.
He's vacuuming.
He's making it look good
and these careless heroes and villains,
are just out there wrestling around
and next thing you know, busting up the joint.
I mean, come on.
[window panes shattering]
[groans]
That looks painful.
I think the aircraft could keep flying.
Glass and structure of a building, it's fairly strong
but, maybe not as strong as a Harrier.
You know, in the tail,
you do have different little exhaust ports
that keep it with the right yard,
as well as at the wingtips and everywhere else.
That's what keeps the aircraft
in balance when it's hovering.
So if those weren't damaged,
yeah, maybe it could keep hovering here.
[aircraft engine roaring]
Hey, better lucky than good.
Lo and behold the AK 47 is right there waiting.
[aircraft engine roaring]
So I've seen, the launchers that we use
for our AIM-9 Sidewinders,
and they're not all that strong.
Now the missile itself weighs about 200 pounds.
Let's assume this gentleman in his combat boots,
vest and weapon weigh about 200 pounds.
Plus he's falling,
so he's got little inertia and momentum.
I'm pretty sure he's gonna
rip that weapon right off that launcher.
Even if he doesn't,
I'm thinking as soon as this weapon fires,
I don't know that it's going to travel quite that well.
It does have a strong rocket,
but,
[suspenseful music]
- You're fired.
- That's just a little glorious
and there's that huge fireball again.
Can't go without those.
I don't know, I'm gonna wave
the brown flag on that whole sequence, I'm sorry.
Great movie, Marines.
You served well and we're represented well
but, I'm not so sure.
[mellow music]
1986 not only brought us Top Gun,
but it also earlier in that year brought us, Iron Eagle.
This movie hasn't really aged, too well.
When I was young, I loved it because it had flying scenes
and those were hard to get.
We didn't have the internet back then,
but now, it's kind of painful to watch.
So, in the very first scene here
that we're gonna look at, today,
we have our hero, Doug,
taking Chappy, who he's gotta convince,
out for a ride in this F-16B.
The first thing we notice is the, seatbelts,
out of my 1965 Chevy Impala
or what is holding, Doug here to, the ejection seat.
It's awful.
Come on folks, where were we at on that one TriStar?
Help us out.
This fitting has to be able to do two things,
at least for us in the Navy, the second thing.
But for everyone, it has to be strong enough
to attach you and your 200 pounds roughly
with everything you're wearing
and that ejection seat, it straps you as we said earlier
into the head box where the parachute is.
So, if you have to eject
and when that seat-man separation occurs,
those two points are all
that is holding you to that parachute and I don't think,
a '60s-era-muscle-car seatbelt is gonna hack it.
But the second thing it does at least for Navy fliers
and I assume the Air Force aircraft have the same thing,
is they actually have
salt water detection capability built into them.
So if you eject in or knock unconscious,
let's think of Goose in Top Gun.
Well, when you hit the water, those are gonna pop
and you are going to be hopefully free, of that parachute,
which if it collects enough water,
could drag you down and drown you.
They'll make their way over to the runway
and they'll take off.
Another thing that I've felt
kinda slipped through the editing cracks here a little bit,
is we have this footage of F-16s flying.
Sometimes the wings are clean, meaning nothing on them.
Sometimes they are loaded with weapons
and I just felt like they should have been
a little more consistent, but that's okay.
So of course, the first thing that Doug has to do
is convince Chappy Sinclair
that he is in fact, a fighter pilot.
Even a hot-dog fighter pilot,
I guess if you do some aileron rolls.
You can tell, I hate aileron rolls.
I never knew I did before today.
But that makes you a hot-dog.
- Thought you was a pilot, not an astronaut.
- Then if you fly vertically, I guess you're an astronaut.
Generally we would have a dark visor on,
as well as the mask.
The mask is supposed to be on from startup to shut down.
Now, admittedly, I flown in my mask off plenty,
but, in this case, Hollywood needs us to see, the anguish,
the exhilaration, the different facial expressions,
so that we can, be more in tune with our actions.
[aircraft engine roaring]
[upbeat music] Here we have an F-16.
The wings are, clean in this case.
In the very next scene, we've got bombs.
I mean, come on, you could've at least
spaced it out a little bit
but, we'll forgive them.
It was fine scenes and in the '80s,
that was hard to find.
[upbeat music] - Head over to the range.
- Yes, sir, Colonel sir.
- Now the F/A-18 that I flew for most of my career
as the name implies is both fighter and attack.
I have attacked a lot of rangers in my day
or target complexes, whatever you wanna call them.
But I have never seen,
targets quite like what they have depicted here.
Great big blue squares with red X's.
I imagine that that is necessary for,
something visually significant for the audience.
Just never seen anything, quite like this.
[aircraft engine roaring] - You gotta feel your way.
[upbeat music] I want you, to concentrate.
- You just gotta feel your way.
I want you to concentrate.
Now this might've been something
one of my instructors said to me in flight school.
These days, aircraft don't tell anyone
because they probably passed too much as easy as it is
but, it's almost foolproof.
It will correct if you're at the wrong speed.
It will correct for you,
if you're at the wrong altitude or dive angle.
Now you might dud the bomb if you're too low
or it might not hit with the right, parameters at impact,
but, it is pretty easy now to attack targets
certainly with an F/A-18.
I never did it in the F-16
that was only air to air.
But from what I understand, it's not that complex.
[upbeat music] - Cut off that stuff.
- You'll screw up my rhythm.
- If you don't cut it off, I'll screw up something else.
- Okay. - Now,
while Chappy is yelling at poor Doug here
for his music taste
and I don't blame him, nowadays, especially.
What you see in the background in what I presume
is a studio setting with the green screen.
Now earlier it looked normal but here,
it looks like there's almost
individual rocks or sagebrush.
They would be at like 10 feet for it to look like that
and that is not normal.
Now the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels, they can get down
and do certain things at that low altitude.
For the rest of us, that just looked a little too close
and I wish they would have, done a slightly better job
making it look like these guys were higher.
[aircraft engine roaring]
You have a switch to arm up your weapons
and it's either in the safe switch or the arm switch.
It's foolproof, you don't have to worry about it,
a display that could fail.
But I really love this display when it comes back later,
because, it's gonna show us some feedback
that's a little bit, enlightening, shall I say?
But it's believable.
You have a wing form, like a top down view of the F-16.
You have the fuel up here, 5,703, that's pounds.
That's about right.
346 rounds for the 20mm Cannon.
Then, I don't know what WE is.
SW could be Sidewinder.
MA could be Maverick.
NSO, not quite sure.
But here we have some rockets that are firing,
[bombs exploding] of some sort.
- Shit. - Of course they missed.
- This time, I want you to drop
one of those Mark 82s. [aircraft engine roaring]
- Now a Mark 82,
is a 500 pound class warhead, that is,
like a projectile of a bullet if you think about it.
It's got the pointy front end and the flat back end.
But what you do is you can accessorize it.
You can put a guidance kit on the front,
maybe laser or GPS guided.
You can put, different fins on the back.
You can have, maybe a fin that opens to retard the bomb
or you can have conical fins that just help it fall
and it will spin and fall.
But what you don't have,
is forward firing Mark 82s.
I don't know what they were hoping here for
but, all of a sudden, holy cow!
We just lost 3000 pounds of fuel and that went quickly.
So we might have a fuel leak
and hey, look, we have more bullets.
[bombs exploding] - Shit.
- This ain't gon, cut it.
We can't go in there with you shooting like this.
- No, you're right.
We can't go in there with you shooting like this, Doug,
but Chappy, you know what solves everything?
'80s rock. [upbeat music]
Now, what also is interesting here
is those '80s video games we all used to play.
You remember what happened
when you expended all your ordinance?
You push a button.
You don't have to land.
You don't have to quit.
You don't have to go get a sandwich out of the kitchen.
Just push a button and you keep playing for hours.
Well, hey look at this,
a whole new plane for him full of weapons
and I love it. [upbeat music]
Weapons armed, yeah, you betcha.
Weapons firing, sure.
Now I liked that they got the stick correct here.
I mean, this is the coolie hat
that helps you trim the aircraft.
This is the pickle switch.
It's used for air-to-ground ordinance.
I think they got that part right.
[upbeat music]
[bombs exploding]
So this is where I have just a little bone to pick.
First off, we have these massive explosions like this
enormous Mark 77 napalm fuel air explosion.
Folks, get on one of the different video services online
and, look up a 500 pound Mark 80 series weapon.
It's a little bit of fire.
It's a lot of black
and it's not very exciting.
Of course, that's why TriStar gives us this.
'Cause this is far more compelling.
Target destroyed.
This is the one I love.
Like you have some, awesome sensor that's out there,
sampling the environment and can tell that
these big blue, squares with the red X's
are somehow destroyed with your weapons.
That alone, is reason to celebrate.
I love it.
But hey, it's exciting.
It's a good movie and it's got, great flying footage.
The F-16 can pull up the nine G's.
So if you weigh 200 pounds normally,
that is like a force of 1800 pounds
pushing down on your body
which is why, many fighter pilots, myself included
have stiff necks as they get older,
because you're also wearing that helmet
on your eight pound head
and you have to look around in a dogfight
and that can get very painful and difficult.
Pulling G's, flying a fighter is like a full contact sport.
It's very important to be
in good physical conditioning and shape.
You can come back from a flight and be sweaty.
You are maneuvering.
You're pulling down.
You're bearing against that G-force
because, what you're trying to do is you're trying to keep
the blood up in your head where you need it,
not down in your feet, where it's doing you no good
because your noggin, if it's out of blood, guess what?
It's not gonna work and that is your vision.
That is your decision making.
That is your very consciousness.
It can be, very difficult to,
perform these maneuvers and stay with it.
Now your body builds a tolerance,
just like it does for most other things.
If you were a young person
and you used to not like roller coasters,
you write enough of them, you find your body gets used
to spending in twirling
and it's the same thing, in fighter jets,
but it is a lot of effort to keep that blood
where it needs to be and that is up in the top of your body.
[upbeat music]
20th Century Fox's Independence Day
came out at a pivotal time for me.
It was in the mid '90s.
I had just received my Navy Wings of Gold
and started flying the F-18.
It was just so much fun,
to see the airplane that I was going to fly in.
To climax, where the aliens are attacking area 51,
sees this hodgepodge of,
old washed up pilots that are available
because we have plenty of aircraft
but not enough pilots.
I don't know that I've ever seen anything quite like that.
But, hey, let's make it work out
because we've got
the character here who needs to redeem himself.
One of the first scenes you see here is,
what we would call a DDI.
It's a display in the cockpit.
We have two, one on each side.
Ours are normally green-hued or white-hued, frankly.
It's actually otherwise pretty close.
In fact, all of these indications right here
are all cautions we could theoretically have in an F-18.
Your left AMAD pressure, your canopy's on locked.
That's bad.
We're gonna want that fixed.
Hydraulic system 1A.
The battery switch is not on, that's bad.
Anyway so, they get some of it right,
they get some of it not quite as right, but that's okay.
- Let's give Mr. Casse some cover.
[aircraft engine roaring]
The president, who's out there flying,
former Gulf War fighter pilot.
He's gonna escort, the last chance
and what do they do?
They take their 578 rounds of 20mm
that we have in an F-18 Legacy Hornet,
and they're just gonna hose it out there in space
at a hundred rounds a second.
So you get, what?
Less than six seconds
but, we'll just shoot it out there
in front of you to, pave the way
and lo and behold who knows,
maybe we'll hit an alien spaceship.
Plus when the firing is happening,
it sounds like an alien gun.
It sounds like a laser gun.
I love it.
[suspenseful music] - I got tone.
- I've got tone.
- Eagle 20. - Eagle 20.
- Fox two. - Fox two.
Now one thing the instructors got right in El Toro was,
a lot of the terminology that's used in this movie.
In other clips, you hear Will Smith's character saying,
"Blow through, blow through."
You hear all these different terminology,
calls that, we really do use.
In this case, with that 1500 Hertz tone,
then you have him call, his call sign,
"Eagle 20, Fox two."
Fox two is the comradery term for,
I am launching an IR guided weapon.
Fox three would be an autonomous weapon
and a Fox one, would be like
a radar guided weapon, like a Sparrow.
So, I thought they did that well.
They've got the stick right here.
The only bummer is, they use the wrong button.
Now in an F-16, only the trigger fires the gun.
But in an F-18,
the trigger fires both the guns and the missiles
and the pickle button up here,
is for anything air-to-surface.
This enormous weapon, looks like a Harpoon.
I'm not quite sure, you've got these sparks,
showing like, Oh dear, something's wrong.
Then this display I've never seen before
showing a malfunction.
Scrub it now, I guess.
It's an ARM4 not an AIM-9.
Okay, I stand corrected.
Anyway, of course, you've got the obligatory family picture
just like Cougar showed us in Top Gun.
But now because we have this malfunction
and it was our last hope
and they're going to destroy that family on the ground.
Russell knows what he needs to do.
[upbeat music]
- All right you alien assholes.
[aircraft engine roaring]
- Now, this last scene is heroic
and don't get me wrong,
I don't wanna take anything from Russell.
He redeems himself.
My problem is with physics.
So, when an F-18 flies vertically,
it slows down immediately and instantly.
The ability to sustain vertical flight,
at least in an F-18 is not going to last very long
because you have all of gravity pulling directly behind
and pulling on you
and you are going to run out of speed.
The gravity and the weight of the aircraft
is not going to be matched
by the thrust coming out of the engines,
particularly at higher altitudes.
But even so generally speaking in the F-18,
what happens is, you pull, you come to a stop
and then you fall out of the sky.
What you don't do is,
slowly and gently dock, with this alien space station,
as you're, making your way in this vertical maneuver.
No, you're gonna pull your nose up.
You are going to run out of airspeed
and you're gonna fall off almost immediately.
They have to draw it out.
This is his heroic moment.
Apparently if you simply put your thumb in the dike,
then you have thwarted the alien attack.
Of course, we've got our other heroes that have taken down
their super infective screen, to allow that type of strike.
But, what I wish they would've talked about before is,
Russell just murdered himself for the sake of area 51.
Hey, tell everybody, now we know how to bring them down.
What about all the other fighter pilots
that gave themselves up?
There should be statutes to these folks,
all over the world now
but, no, they don't even, get even a bear mention.
Terrible.
[mellow music]
I thought Dunkirk was a beautifully made movie.
What I really enjoyed about it is,
you have three storylines
and they eventually overlap and interweave.
One of them is a military aviator and his wingman.
So, what's not to love about that.
Now in the climactic scene for the aviator,
we have him with his aircraft damaged
from a previous attack
and he's not sure, [upbeat music]
how much fuel he has. [aircraft engine roaring]
He is flying over the beach
where the troops are being evacuated
and his fuel exhausts.
Of course, they'll use a little,
sound like you would expect,
something when it's dying with a piston motor.
So, what we see here though,
is he's flying along with his,
flaps partly extended already.
Flying up the beach at what looks like, maybe 500 feet.
So he's probably doing,
let's give him the benefit of the doubt, 150 knots.
Well, once you lose your thrust, provided by the engine,
one of two things is going to happen right away,
maybe both things.
One is you're either going to slow down.
The other is you're going to go down.
But, in the world of Dunkirk,
apparently neither of these is true
and you can glide your unpowered Spitfire,
for as long as it takes including, all the way up the beach.
You can turn 180 degrees,
vanquish an enemy about to attack your peers
and then, fly all the way down the beach
until the sun sets and finally land.
That was my one big heartache, with this movie.
As an aviator is, when your engine quits, guess what?
You're going down right away
and you're thinking about ditching.
So our hero went gliding off from right to left.
Look like at that point he was maybe
300 feet off the ground.
Now, we've got this, Stuka dive bomber
attacking the British folks, waiting to go to safety.
A resigned commander, takes his fate.
Like, stoically closing his eyes.
[aircraft engine roaring]
- Now!
[gunshots firing]
[aircraft engine roaring]
- But lo and behold the fighter pilot saves the day.
Of course he does. [soldiers cheering]
He's now down to 150 feet.
He still has all of his knots
and the nice thing about his engine being off
is that he can hear, the accolades and adulation
coming from the thousands and thousands
of troops, on the beach.
Why didn't he ditch his airplane right next to them
and get in line for a ride home?
Instead, he spends all this time
cranking down his landing gear,
so that he can land on the beach and stay dry,
only to then destroy his own airplane and get captured.
Well, you're gonna be much safer ditching,
and you're gonna be much safer ditching with all these ships
and all these troops so,
I kind of thought they missed the mark on that one too
but, maybe they wanted the hero to,
get some sort of, penance.
I don't know for, staying out too long or,
losing his wingman but, I just felt like
they should have had him, do what I would have done,
if it was my tail on the line.
That is, circle around where I feel like
I could probably be plucked out of the water pretty easily
and ditch next to my friendly ships trying to rescue us.
So I certainly wanna thank Vanity Fair
for the opportunity to come and talk
about a subject I'm so passionate about.
I really truly enjoyed my 25 years in service.
Flying fighter jets was just icing on the cake.
I get it and we've beat up some movies today.
They have to be entertaining.
Real life air combat is probably not quite as glamorous
as Hollywood wants it to be.
If they made it like real life, people wouldn't show up so,
I really had a good time talking about these movies today
and I hope you enjoyed watching.