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Top Gun Manoeuvre Used in Vietnam
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Lieutenant Randy “Duke” Cunningham and his Radar Intercept Officer Lieutenant Willie Driscoll are engaged with a MiG-17 over North Vietnam during Operation Linebacker. To gain an advantage over the North Vietnamese, Cunningham pulls off a manoeuvre that he later helped to make famous in the movie Top Gun. Listen to The War Office Podcast, from the creators of The Operations Room, on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or The War Office Podcast YouTube Channel. New episodes will be released every Tuesday morning. If you enjoy the episodes, please help us grow the podcast by subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, and listening to future releases.
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Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
To Cunningham's surprise, the MiG pilot
continues to follow and Cunningham
decides to repeat his earlier maneuver
of executing a vertical climb.
This time, Cunningham throttles back to
idle and selects his air brakes.
If you've ever seen Top Gun, you
remember the famous line, "I'm going to
hit the brakes and he'll fly right by."
Cunningham was an advisor on the movie
Top Gun and this is literally where that
comes from. The Phantom decelerates
rapidly and the MiG-17 screams ahead.
Its pilot surprised at the maneuver.
With Cunningham now on his tail, the
VPAF pilot makes his first mistake and
rolls into a dive to escape the dog
fight.
When Cunningham and Driscoll follow,
they find themselves in a perfect firing
position on the enemy's 6:00.
A Sidewinder smashes into the MiG-17's
tail and sends it hurtling into the
ground.
With their third kill of the day,
Cunningham and Driscoll have become the
US Navy's first flying aces of the
Vietnam War.