American Top Gun fighter pilot academy set up by British ??

[Mossie]

According to a new book called , Phoenix Squadron.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop ... itish.html

[flyingheritage]

Well that NOW is a eye opener isnt chaps!!!!

Now how does a RN pilot do dog fightning better than a USN pilot..???? considering the USN had fought more air to air since 1945 than the RN i am very puzzled!!!!

I must see more information.

[JDK]

Cue nationalist squaking...

Allies, and specifically the British and Americans, have shared techniques and equipment for a long time now, and let-pulls aside, most would recognise good ideas have no nationality.

Capt Eric Brown, RN, one of the greatest test pilots in history served at Pax River on exchange in the late 1940s, IIRC.

[John Dupre]

There is no question that the USN and USAF let air combat skills atrophy when it was thought that air combat would mostly be interceptors launching missiles at relatively staid bombers. This is the first I have heard that British pilots were involved in Top Gun and I just finished reading Scream of Eagles about the beginnings of the program. I would bet that the RAF and FAA were just as atrophied in air combat skills as most forces were in the early 1960s. I don't doubt that the Top Gunners used RAF/FAA experience in setting up the program since some of those guys were reading and researching everyone from Richtofen to Erich Hartmann.

The fact that by 1972 there had been no USN "success" in air combat is largely due to the fact that there hadn't been any air combat in two years due to bombing halts and rules of engagement. That part of the article reminds me of the comment in a Canadian paper when the midget sub was discovered off Pearl Harbor, the Canadians used it as proof that the US started the war!

[Holedigger]

The problem being, they taught them to fly on the wrong side of the sky!