In my opinion, this was the best movie of 2022. With that said, there were glaring oversights in this movie. Above, Pete Michell is performing maintenance on this P-51 Mustang. Aircraft owners may change oil, replace tires, and perform simple tasks on their aircraft. However, all other complex tasks have to be performed by federally licensed aviation mechanics.
P-51s are priced at two million dollars and upward. How did Pete Mitchell afford this plane on the Navy’s pay for his rank of captain? Furthermore, maintaining this aircraft in airworthy condition takes vast sums of money. Pete Mitchell does not hail from a wealthy family. Assuming Mitchell is at the top of his pay range, $162,918 yearly before taxes, even this salary wouldn’t support the purchase, maintenance, and housing of this plane.
Here we see Pete Mitchell departing the huge hanger that is housing his P-51 along with his other vehicles. I just looked up the cost of a hanger of this size to rent. The yearly cost is about 1.5 million dollars. Note that Pete Mitchell is riding his motorcycle without a helmet as he did in 1976. It’s California State law that a DOT-approved helmet shall be worn when operating a motorized two-wheel vehicle. Additionally, the military requires its servicepersons to wear helmets now and back in 1976. Those who violate this military mandate are subject to Article-15s which is a step below a court-martial offence in severity.
This is depicted as a Navy base. As Pete Mitchell passes the guard house without stopping at 40 mph, the camera pans to a sign on the fence that authorizes deadly force against intruders. Every service member knows what Pete Mitchell is depicting doing isn’t done, ever, without serious consequences.
I am so disappointed to see these lights in Pete Mitchell’s helmet. I know it’s a Hollywood device to see the actors’ faces. These lights would emit glare on the helmet’s face shield.
We see more of Hollywood’s absurdity in this screenshot above. Pete Mitchell has just passed in the Dark Star. The gust from the Dark Star was so great that the roof of the guard house becomes detached, and yet, the Admiral standing broad ways to the wind wake, standing stiff-legged, managed to remain standing without even the slightest of a stumble backward. Moreover, Pete Mitchell must have violated military regulations by passing so low and fast to cause this damage to the guard house.
The Dark Star is being tracked by a high-power camera. During the entire flight, Pete Mitchell had the Dark Star’s afterburners activated. Afterburners double the thrust at the cost of tripling the fuel consumption. When the SR-71 was service, soon after takeoff, the crew would top off the SR-71’s fuel stores. Yes, the SR-71 was designed to leak at low temperatures because at Mach 3 the plane’s skin panel grew from the high temperatures. Fun fact; the fuel was circulated as a coolant to prevent the plane’s skin from losing its cohesion. By contrast, the Dark Star’s fuel load appeared to be infinite even at Mach 10. Pete Mitchell never fueled in flight
Dark Star’s design is similar to the SR-71’s outward configuration. I took this screenshot of the control room’s video screen. I draw your attention to the red boxes. In the red boxes, we have an impossible view of Pete Mitchell through the side window. It is as if Pete Mitchell is using a camera selfie stick. Tom Cruise produced this movie. How did Cruise miss this detail of an impossibility?
This might be the best scene in the movie. Spoiler alert!
The Dark Star breaks up at Mach 10.1. Next, we see Pete Mitchell walking into a small town as a logging truck passes him. We see Pete Mitchell in his pressurized flight suit, holding his helmet entering a small restaurant at breakfast time. Pete Mitchell looks disheveled. Pete Mitchell approaches the front counter, sticks out his hand, and says, “Water.” After Pete Mitchell drinks most of the water in the glass, Pete Mitchell says, “Where am I? The little red-headed boy says, “Earth.” I teared up while I laughed.
This scene made no sense. The Dark Star is shown in an arching turn at Mach 10. This turn is so big that from a view from space, the Dark Star covers a quarter of the globe before the breakup. Thus the restaurant scene wasn’t supported by the facts that were portrayed. The scene’s inference is that Pete Mitchell ejected by the base according to the time of day and the mode of transportation.
Here we see Pete Mitchell riding on the taxiway on the base in San Diego with no helmet! Pete Mitchell is above the laws of our country just like Hunter Biden.
At Top Gun, Pete Mitchell is told of a mission to destroy a uranium enrichment plant in a hostile country. Pete Mitchell is told the Navy has picked the best of the best of the graduates from Top Gun for this mission. Years ago, the Navy invited females to qualify for landing on carriers while flying the F-18. All of the women failed to qualify and thus, washed out. Let’s say in the future some women were able to qualify.
So few women join the Navy to become fighter pilots that it makes it statistically impossible that these women were sent to Top Gun because they were better than any of the males in their squadron and they were better than any of the males in their class in Top Gun. As a team-building exercise, Pete Mitchell takes these 12 Navy aviators to the beach to play full-contact football. These women are tiny, maybe at the most 115 pounds, and yet, they are depicted as able to be competitive against the 200+ pounds males.
This was the biggest glaring failure of the movie. Pete Mitchell is shown a depiction of the target to be destroyed. Pete Mitchell is told the enrichment facility is at the bottom of this mountain crater and the top rim of the crater is lined with GPS jammers. Additionally, the surrounding area has Surface to air missile [ SAM ] coverage. Pete Mitchell says the use of the Navy’s F-35s is out because of GPS jammers. That’s not true. I don’t know if GPS jamming is real, but if it were a thing, I know for sure there are ordinances for this contingency.
Way back in the 80s, during the cold war with the Soviet Union, I worked at a military contractor that made missiles and bombs. We made optically guided bombs. Thus, a B-1 bomber would be able to destroy the target from 70 thousand feet of altitude. But then, there wouldn’t be the action and thrills in this movie, sorry if I ruined it for you.
Tom Cruise is 60 years old. Cruise has kept himself up well. His diet and exercise regimen must be brutal. I don’t recall him being ever charged with a DUI or making the news for substance abuse problems. Cruise may live to be 100 years old at the rate of his slow rate of aging. I looked closely at his whisker stubble, it is still black!
More of Hollywood’s b.s. Pete Mitchell is tone locked on the plane below in an attempt to wake the pilot from a high g pass-out known as g-locked. Since the mid-90s, our fighter aircraft have had terrain avoidance systems. The plane first issues a warning to pull up. If there is no override made by the pilot, the plane will pull up to fly straight and level. This system is part of the pilot’s preflight checks.
Pete and Penny are riding to her home. More violating the laws of California and the military’s rules. The movie should have had the Highway Patrol stopping Pete Mitchell and having Pete Mitchell standing tall before the man during an Article 15 hearing for his flagrant disregard for breaking the military’s rules.
I rode motorcycles for about 30 years. I can tell you that sunglasses don’t work above 48 mph. Above that speed, the rider’s eyes tear up so much that the rider can’t see where to steer the motorcycle. Additionally, there is the hazard of hitting bugs at high speeds
Pete is accompanying Penny to the shipyard to repair the boat’s engine. This sailing craft costs at least $700,000. Penny is a business owner, so maybe she can afford this craft. A funny exchange takes place. Penny questions why Pete, a Captain in the Navy, doesn’t know how to sail. Pete quips back, you’ll have to watch the movie to hear his funny come back.
I always thought that the F-14 Tom Cat is the prettiest plane that the Navy has ever operated. While I was in college, the Navy still had these planes. Our professor was explaining how turbo jet engines work to drive the airplane forward. Most people believe the plane moves forward from the gases exiting the engine rearward. I knew that wasn’t true because rockets move forward in the vacuum of space. But I didn’t know why planes and rockets move forward. There was some force that I was unaware of.
As it turns out, it is the engine’s internal pressure within the defuser that drives the plane forward. To be exact, it’s the difference between the low pressure at the exit nozzle and the high pressure within the defuser. Our professor insisted that a plane had to have its afterburner[s] running for the plane to travel at Mach speeds. I said that could not be true if the defuser pressure was high enough.
The professor couldn’t explain why I was wrong. I thought the only limitation was our metallurgy. I went to the library to see if I was right. The F-14 was the first plane type to attain a super cruise of Mach 1.1 without the use of its afterburners. I printed out the article for the next class day. An afterburner only lowers the pressure at the nozzle by increasing the velocity of the exiting gas, thereby, increasing the pressure ratio between the defuser and the exit nozzle.
I have worked on carrier-based aircraft after they were converted for civilian use. Pete Mitchell and his wingman were shot down by SAMs. Pete Mitchell gets the idea to steal this F-14 to make it back to the carrier. The red arrow is pointing to the bridle bar that is connected to a carrier’s catapult’s shuttle. This bridle would have been removed along with the F-14’s tailhook.
Call sign, Hangman, was waiting on the ready-to-launch to defend the returning planes of the four sent to destroy the enrichment plant. Firstly, a carrier has planes aloft for its defense, especially near hostel countries. Second, why wasn’t Hangman in an F-35, the best plane-type fighter the Navy has on its carriers?
Pete Mitchell is at it again! But it is so much worse. The P-51 is a complex plane type. How would Pete Mitchell know if his wingman was doing it right or wrong? I went to school for two years five days a week to acquire the needed to work on aircraft. I had to learn to do the following; sheet metal repair, plumbing repair, wielding, electrical design-troubleshooting, AC and DC theory, aircraft fabric repair, how to make control cables, engine repair, airframe repair, and much more.
Here’s a account of mine that drives home the sheer folly of what Pete Mitchell is doing above. It always bothers me that when I was deployed for months every year out in the field, I had no one qualified to check my work before releasing the plane for service. It is the industry standard to have your work checked by a fellow mechanic. At Cal Fire in Sacramento, the following is done, I repair something, I ask a mechanic to check it, a Lead mechanic checks it, and finally, a quality assurance mechanic checks the work.
I had finished an engine repair on a S-2A Tracker, a retired cold war plane the Navy used to find the Soviet’s submarines. I decided to conduct a quality control experiment to add a layer of protection to my pilots. Until this point, after I completed a repair, I went inside the Airbase building to take a 15-minute break. I returned to the plane and I pretended to be someone else that was qualified to inspect my work. This method served me well.
On this day after my break, I disconnected the cannon plug to the oil pressure sensor and left it dangling. I called to the pilot, Wayne Crebbs, to look over the engine area where I had worked, Wayne said, “It all looks good.” I thank him for looking. I then got the Base Captain, Captain Smith to look over the area. I got the same result. If the dangling cannon plug had been a snake, both of them would have been bitten on their faces. I knew then and there, it was all on me.
Penny and her daughter have come to Pete Mitchell’s hangar. That is a 1973 Porsche 911. The high retail is $302,900. Penny’s bar can’t be that profitable so she can afford that sailboat and this car. I looked closely at the car’s front under magnification. The car hasn’t a front license plate which is in violation of California vehicle law. It must be that Southern California is devoid of law enforcement officials, which explains why they are free to not wear helmets. This also explains why Southern California is a hellscape. It’s no wonder why people are fleeing Southern California in the tens of thousands.
Written by Mark Pullen. Published by Editor, Sammy Campbell.