ok nobody has commented on Flight of the Intruder yet... realistic, cheesy, did it mention "keeping the faith" too much?
I thought it was a great book (NYT best seller list) and movie…even if it was written by an A-6 driver
. Although it was fiction, many of the scenes in the book and movie were based in part on recognizable, actual events. For example, the opening scene where they take a hit and Jake's BN is killed, actually happened in our airwing (and not the author's) at the start of the cruise. (And our actual event was unfortunately far more chilling and tragic than was repeated in the book/movie.)
Although it was fiction and some events were exaggerated or implausible, it was much more accurate in its presentation than
Top Gun.
At least it showed an actual Mig 17 in there instead of a black F-5 ...
The movie studio wanted to get some MiG's for the
Top Gun movie but couldn't. (Of course the fact that the U.S. had captured MiG's, were flying them, and this was still
highly classified at the time might have had something to do with it.
)
Flight of the Intruder came out later, when the MiG's were available and declassified.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-11/24/content_5372004.htm
While the real MiG's remainded under guarded wraps over in the desert, at Miramar, NFWS used camouflaged F-5E's to simulate the MiG-21 in their DACM training. They were a tremendous challange. (F-5's were also flown by nearly 30 other countries.)
Therefore, although the movie has taken a lot of grief for its imposter black F-5's, at the time the F-5D Tiger II seemed a reasonable if not excellent MiG stand-in replacement for the movie.
I actually had to get used to my real first name again when I got down to SD.
