Watching Top Gun over the weekend this question occurred to me. I suppose I should put *SPOILER ALERT here but it’s an old enough movie I imagine most anyone who ever wanted to see it already has.
Early in the movie Maverick is flying on the wing of another pilot and see an ‘enemy’ plane off in the distance that he really wants to get. Rather than following procedure and staying on the wing of his wingman he hightails it after the other plane. The end result is that both ‘friendly’ planes get ‘shot’ down. Maverick says he knows better than to leave his wingman and it will NEVER happen again.
Move to the end of the movie and Maverick is again flying on the wing of another pilot. This time an enemy plane is swinging around to fire on Maverick but he REFUSES to leave his wingman at any cost.
What is the point of that? What is a wingman supposed to accomplish? Why should Maverick stay on the other pilot’s wing when it means allowing an easy shot for your enemy?
I knwo this is Hollywood so take it all with a block of salt but what is a wingman’s job anyway?
Two aircraft flying closely together, if they cooperate, can make targeting more difficult for an enemy launching a rocket. If they turn and break, which way should the MIG turn? which target should the MIG shoot at? The enemy pilot would have to choose. Any hesitation and the radar or heat seeking lock might be lost. I think that example in the movie is a little bit confusing. Wingman work together, as a team with a common strategy to protect each other as well as offensively. When Maverick says he will never leave his wingman, it seems to me that he simply means he will not fly off as a hotshot on his own. Remember the scene where the MIG is on Iceman - Maverick tells him to turn on his count and gets the Commie. That’s an example of working together. He might have still gotten some bad guys if he did go off on his own, but by working with Iceman as a wingman he not only protected him but got the bad guy as well.
That’s just it! Maverick seems intent on staying at his wingman’s side while the enemy plane slides in behind him for an easy shot. Shouldn’t Maverick choose that time to go after the Mig angling for a shot? In this case he isn’t hotdogging it. He is going to handle a threat to both him and his wingman. The enemy pilot now has to choose which plane to chase and worry that if he continues the attack on the lead plane that he will get shot down as Maverick’s plane swings in behind him.
I am a bit of a WWII buff and I don’t think the way top gun did wingman was clear.
In WWII, most kills came from a sudden attack coming fast rather than a dogfight. A group would see the enemy and dive on them and fly away. A lone pilot had to scan the whole skies by himself. Wingmen, and there can be more than one, could scan the skies more efficiently and see the enemy coming sooner or someone to attack.
Also, they can work together. IN the Pacific, the Japanese fighter outclassed the American fighter plane at the beginning of the war. Someone named Thatcher I believe, came up with the ‘Thatch weave’.
What happened in the Thatch Weave, was that a zero would get behind a plane and the wingman would cover him by having a shot on that Japanese by working with his wingman by knowing which way to weave. I’m not sure on the details but it allowed weaker planes to have a better chance against a superior fighter plane.
I assume it is reasons above that wingmen are needed. I’ve heard air combat vets say “If your alone, you’re dead”.
