Embark on an exhilarating journey with, Dave 'Bio' Baranek, as he shares the highs and lows, the thrills and spills, of his formative years in the Navy, aiming for the skies and earning his stripes as a radar intercept operator in the sleek F-14 Tomcat, and finally, achieving his dream of becoming a Top Gun instructor!
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The Blackbird on display outside the hangar - finally
. (image via Dave Bio Baranek)
In a follow-up to our first article from F-14 Tomcat RIO and TOPGUN instructor Dave “Bio” Baranek this past May, we thought our readers might enjoy this story about his experiences on a TOPGUN training detachment to NAS Key West in Florida, where he came across a stray SR-71 Blackbird in one of the hangars. As you will know from our first article, “Bio” Baranek also worked as an adviser on the 1986 film,
Top Gun, and that film makes an appearance in this article too…
Naval Air Station (NAS) Key West, Florida April 1986.
A VF-24 F-14A with its wings fully swept shot from another Tomcat of the same fleet squadron. (All images credit: Dave Bio Baranek)
We celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the legendary F-14 Tomcat with an intense story from the cockpit of a 2 vs UNKNOWN engagement during Week Two at “Topgun”, the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School.
On Dec. 21, 1970, 50 years ago today, the first Full Scale Development (FSD) Grumman F-14A Tomcat (BuNo 157980) took off for its very first flight from Grumman’s flight test centre at Calverton, on Long Island.
Although the poor weather conditions forced the two test pilots flying the first “Turkey” (as the aircraft would be later nicknamed), Grumman chief test pilot Robert K. Smyth and project test pilot William Miller, to cut the maiden flight short, that date marks the beginning of the amazing career of one of the aviation most iconic fighters ever. A career that has seen the U.S. Navy’s premier air superiority aircraft become a Hollywood