Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 273

Tom cruising with co-star Kelly McGillis, and right dourly studying the controls of a Jet fighterf Much of the filming takes place "upstairs" with navy pilots. In the peacetime Navy, the best Top Gun pilots stayed on at the school as instructors, both on land and in the air, perfecting their skills and passing on what they knew. The skies above San Diego became a kind of training camp for the real thing, as instructors flying bogeys, F-Ss painted to look like enemy MiGs, would swoop from the heavens like a band of sophisticated "Space Invaders" toward the F-14s of their pupils, engaging in dogfights and electronic "kills." "It's sort of like a football team that practices and practices," says Lt. Jim Ray, a Top Gun instructor, "but never gets to play the final game." S'all, the games they do play in $36 million planes at twice -V I if A f-TV the speed of sound above the Southern California coast seem real enough. In May, 1983, California Magazine published a piece about the school and the pilots who go through it: about the mock dog-fights; about the ability of these pilots to withstandand function in gravitational forces that suck the blood from their brains and roll their eyeballs inward; about the swagger in their strides and the confidence on their faces; about ego and drive and rivalry; about men constantly in pursuit of their own stratified corner of the Right Stuff.

By the time the article appeared, Jerry Bruckheimer and partner Don Simpson had Hgh-frving on the Top Gun" set: The mileau, look and ethos of Miramar naval base stand out as much as any of the principal performers. Continued on following page.