Book Review: Top Gun an America Story by Dan Pedersen
Top Gun an American Story by Dan Pedersen does an excellent job of blending the drama and tribulations of a military man’s life with world events which occurred during the times he lived.
It’s a quick read and can captivate your attention within the first couple of pages. I found the beginning and ending to be the best reading. He does a good job of weaving in sub plots and stories through the book. Part of the book is really dedicated to the love of his life Mary Beth. He goes into detail about her throughout describing exactly what she was wearing and how she looked the day they met. There were definitely times while reading that I didn’t totally know what to think though. It goes back to the concept of your one true love, which he believes. Her story helps keep your attention because you’re often looking for an update about her but at the same time it was odd because she married another man and he was married to another woman with who he had a child. When things were bad in his life however, he would think of Mary Beth.
The author provides a very good history of what happened to Top Gun as an institution. He is the guy that started it so you get to see what triggered its creation during Vietnam when Americans were losing far too many planes, to the first days of top gun, the glory days, and ultimately when they were evicted from Miramar and sent to the desert. If you were a normal person hearing about this on the news while knowing the purpose of Top Gun you couldn’t help but wonder what politicians were thinking back then. Dan also does a good job of describing the politics and terrible decisions made at various time points especially during Vietnam.
If you happen to be a Vietnam history buff he’s got a lot of information on that time period clear down to the first ship battle before America entered the war. He does a great job of talking about the failed policies and the resulting morale for men in the Navy at that time. The ironic thing about the book is that the majority of it takes place long before the heyday of Top Gun or the movie Top Gun even took place while clearly capitalizing on the movie’s name and fame. The book basically starts in the early 1950s. He literally found an abandoned trailer to start Top Gun within but he was basically done or nearly done by the mid 80s.
He touches on the F-35 which I enjoyed. It was curious to see him still point out many deficiencies about the F-35 because the copyright of the book is 2019. I actually went back and looked up the book copyright while I was reading the chapter on the F-35 because I was surprised to see him still criticizing it. I fully agree with him but so many people have begun to tow the line on the F-35. He didn’t directly make the analogy to a BMW but its basically a flying BMW where its purposefully designed to break and keep the manufacture in business by selling spare parts that are also designed to break. On a personal note I watched a video on the design of the F-16 (I know this is a naval book) but the designers of that aircraft had mathematicians create graphs of turn radiuses to design the best flying and fighting plane. Do you think they did that for the F-35?
For the most part the book ends with a happy ending. He did a very good job of making this a theatrical story including his life‘s tribulations while doing a good job of covering history as well.
