Top Gun Maverick — a Meditation on Aviation!
I watched this movie yesterday in a rapt attention at the IMAX theatre and returned home spell-bound. It was truly an extraordinary experience — heart-thumping, adrenaline fueled and visually stunning, to say the least.
Top Gun could very well be the finest cinematic action movie without conjuring an artificial world or one inhabited by super-heroes with other worldly powers. Instead it’s a tale of ordinary men and women who train with grit and determination to become the finest fighter pilots and go on to accomplish extraordinary missions, dancing on the edge of life and death.
The movie opens with Cruise taking a latest craft to the heights of stratosphere and pushes the speed beyond Mach 10, as a test pilot for US forces. We all could only imagine what it would feel like racing beyond 7,500+ mph !
The daredevilry is not just about the high speed, during several of the acrobatic maneuvers, the gravitational forces experienced by the pilots are compounded by manifold. I did some reading after the movie on what it would feel like to experience the extraordinary G forces that these fighter pilots must endure in order to be successful in their missions. The below figures are the ballpark for some of the adventurous stunts -
Skydiving — 2 to 3 G
Astronaut / Space shuttle — 3 G
F1 Driver while cornering / braking — 4 to 5G
Fighter Pilot — 6 to 9 G (Going beyond 7G requires lot of training)
It must be noted that high G forces pushes the blood down the lower limbs which starts to feel super-heavy and the heart begins to have a hard time pushing the blood up the head, making it feel lighter and pilot runs the risk of passing out if G forces are sustained over several seconds. They don especially designed Anti G suite to mitigate some of these effects, despite that it’s truly superhuman effort to withstand these effects and remain nimble enough to maneuver the jet successfully. Add the stress of combat during real war scenario !
Top Gun has been called as a ‘love letter to aviation’, but it’s also an epic saga of friendship, sacrifice and about following one’s passion. As Cruise puts it about his love for flying in one of the scenes, “It’s not what I do, it’s who I am.” The movie is truly beyond any ordinary adventures. If only I could experience what’s it like to maneuver a fighter plane through a narrow canyon !
