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.