Well at least you didn’t mention the Eric Estrada cameo. :-)

No! God, no! The movie is watchable, but it doesn’t belong on any list of the good movies. Great cast, great production, but it is a horrible mess of stock footage, previous movies and some new stuff. For anyone who knows anything about aviation or history, or has seen Tora Tora Tora and Battle of Britain, that movie…

An interesting historical fact: During the Indonesian Confrontation, RAF had dusted off some late-model Spitfires in order to train Lightning pilots on how to deal with the Indonesian Mustangs.

The power-off stall speed of the F-14 is around 110 knots; the A6M2's stall speed was around 55 knots. But there’s no reason why they can’t merge on each other; one of the things to remember is that, with the HUD on a Tomcat, the engagement range with the 20mm cannon is far beyond what a Zeke pilot is going to believe…

Another good choice would be Midway for its use of vintage air combat films in its scenes. It could also be argued that it is the spiritual successor to Tora Tora Tora.

Ok so obviously realism is the wrong nit to pick here, but that scene where the F-14s slowly overhaul the Zeros... Zero’s top speed was 330mph, what is the stall speed of an F-14A?

WTF, Tyler?!?! No love for the absolute bad-ass A-7!?!? I am disappoint...

I know a few Floggers that totally agree with that:

The Blue Max by a mile, especially near the end when they peel off one by one to go dogfighting against orders.

That’s the secondary reason (Gas Mask Fitting) behind everyone needs to look similar. If you got BAD razor burns due to shaving, you could obtain a “No Shave Chit” from Medical, and then all you had to do was keep it trimmed and neat.

If you want to include Hot Shots then we need to start including stuff like Iron Eagle. I don’t want to include Iron Eagle.

Tomcats are all fine and well, but Chevaliers Du Ciel has this:

Let’s not forget the Tora Tora Tora; I would lists it as the second best after the Battle of Britain (as an aviation movie), only because the latter has some actual famous actors, and more stories revolving around them. Both of them are not movies that would seriously engage your brain like some other, more dramatic…

I entertained myself with a hypothetical play of what would have happened in The Final Countdown if the Nimitz never got the recall order through the storm’s interference: the ship returns to the future alone and the air wing was stranded in 1941.

History will remember the Tomcat as absolutely one of the best aircraft of its age.

That’s the VF Jolly Rogers isn’t it?

I walked around an F14 at the Pima museum.......good lord is that thing large.

I dare you to watch Final Countdown and tell me we don’t need to bring back beards in the Navy.

As far as I know they were the same planes yes. At least they weren’t F-5s posing as ‘MIG 28s’. :|

Fun fact: The scene with the Tomcats fighting the (replica) zeros, one of the tomcats (2:39 in the second clip, wasn’t the zero’s ‘acting’ like they were surprised. Instead the wash of the Tomcat’s flyby wrenched the controls out of the hands of both zeros pilots.