One of Top Gun’s best stunts sees Maverick buzz the tower, and the scene caused panic in San Diego during the filming of the cult classic. Released in 1986, Top Gun was a star-making hit for Tom Cruise and one of legendary action cinema director Tony Scott’s most enduringly popular movies. The fast-paced action drama centers on Maverick, a reckless test pilot whose desire to be the best and fastest to ever fly comes at a high cost to him and his loved ones.
As serious as that summary sounds, Top Gun found time for plenty of high-octane stunts in between Maverick’s bouts of soul-searching. After all, the movie is about the test pilot’s time in the titular flight school and, as such, there are plenty of opportunities for Maverick to flex his impressive flying abilities during Top Gun’s runtime. One of these displays, however, was so impressively risky that real-life civilians called the local authorities to report the Top Gun stunt.
The famous scene where Maverick buzzes the tower at Miramar was the first time it had ever been done. As aviation expert Dave “Bio” Baranek explained to the AviationGeekClub, the stunt was pulled off by pilots Lloyd “Bozo” Abel and Mark “Slick” Schlichter, under the supervision of a former F-14 pilot, John H “Smegs” Semcken. These real-life Navy pilots keeping their speed relatively slow for a fighter jet but, despite this careful approach, local civilians in the communities surrounding the base called the local news stations and the military base to report “a berserk F-14 pilot.”
The risky stunt could have gone a lot worse, but fortunately, Scott’s initial vision was tempered by the veteran pilots who knew better than to attempt the “supersonic pass” that the director wanted at such a low altitude. Scott’s movie fudged a lot of detail about the real-life Navy, adding fictional trophies and pilot rankings to Top Gun to make the story feel more like a triumphant sports movie than a war film. However, Scott’s ambitious plans did have to be occasionally curtailed in the name of safety.
That said, the scene still ended up very over-the-top in its finished form—as the reactions of onlookers imply, a real-life Navy pilot who “buzzed the tower” would be immediately discharged due to the maneuver’s extremely risky nature. This made working on Top Gun an appealing job for many former and current Navy pilots who, in Bio’s words, saw the movie’s filming as a “kid-in-a-candy-store opportunity” to pull off wildly ambitious stunts that would have landed them in serious trouble during active service. Unlike its competitor Iron Eagle, Top Gun was made with the blessing of the US military and access to many of its resources. However, while the Pentagon demanded script approval on the finished film, they allowed Scott and company to pull off plenty of wild Top Gun stunts that would earn a real-life Navy pilot more than mere surprised splutters from his superiors.
Key Release Dates
- Top Gun: Maverick/Top Gun 2 (2021)Release date: Nov 19, 2021
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