TOPGUN, 1969

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Navy Fighter Weapons School, an advanced training program better known as Topgun, which dramatically increased the shootdowns by Navy aviators during the Vietnam War.

U.S. pilots flying missions over North Vietnam faced dangers from anti-aircraft guns, surface-to-air missiles and enemy pilots in Soviet- or Chinese-made MiG fighters. Weapons malfunctions were also a constant fear. When U.S. Navy and Air Force pilots first entered Vietnam combat in March 1965—following stellar performances in World War II and Korea—they ventured forth with a certain cockiness. But American aircrews took unexpectedly serious hits from North Vietnamese pilots who studied U.S. tactics and learned to counter them. Directed by ground radar, enemy pilots launched effective hit-and-run slashing attacks on large U.S. aircraft formations and became even bigger threats with Soviet training and improved MiGs.

Navy pilots “had gone into the war thinking we were the best pilots in the world flying the best aircraft armed with the best weapons,” writes Dan Pedersen in Topgun: An American Story. “The North Vietnamese showed us otherwise. We were ready to do whatever it took to win.”

From February to July 1968, Pedersen flew missions in an F-4 Phantom II fighter-bomber catapulted from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, off the coast of North Vietnam. He was then assigned to a Phantom squadron at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego, where he was put in charge of the group that created the Topgun training program.

at Miramar in the fall of 1968 to serve as a tactics instructor at Fighter Squadron 121, the fleet replacement squadron for all F-4 Phantom squadrons based on the West Coast. Anytime a carrier in the Pacific lost a Phantom, V-121 produced a replacement plane and a two-man crew. Our fighter squadron was the largest in the Navy when I was there. It had an average of about 70 F-4Bs and F-4Js assigned to it,