weapons school as part of the reserve
command’s Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 12 at
NAS Miramar, California, for both the F-8
and the F-4 communities.
As the Ault Report noted: ‘Concepts
and plans for this school have already
been formulated,’ and indeed had been
in place since the early fall of 1968 based
on uno cial drafts of the report that
had been circulated at Miramar. The F-8
community had already graduated its rst
class in December 1968 from its Crusader
Weapons School when the o cial Ault
Report was released.
The F-4 community had been busy as
well, having begun work on what would
become TOPGUN in late September- After developing their syllabus
and training ights, TOPGUN began its
inaugural class on March 3, 1969 (Class
01-69). The goal of TOPGUN at that time
was to train each F-4 squadron’s top
crew in advanced air combat tactics
and to return them to their unit, where
they would serve as training o cers
and share the knowledge they’d gained
during their four weeks of dedicated
training, thereby raising the bar of the
entire squadron. By 1970, every west
coast F-4 squadron had sent at least one
crew through TOPGUN.
As soon as the air war over North
Vietnam heated back up in early 1972,
it became clear that TOPGUN’s training
had worked. From 1972 to 1973, US Navy
Phantoms achieved a 12.5:1 kill ratio, while
the USAF F-4s maintained nearly the same
2:1 ratio they experienced during ‘RollingThunder’. Rather than investing in better
training, the USAF had invested more
heavily in technology. It was not until
the mid-1970s that the USAF decided to
follow the navy lead and re-focus its own
aircrew training.TOPGUN moves forward
The story of the next 50 years charts
an incredible journey of evolution
and adapting to change. Even though
TOPGUN had proven itself in Vietnam, the
end of the war in 1973 brought many calls
for the school to be dissolved. TOPGUN
fought hard for its survival, helped in part
by its award of command status in July- Originally a department within
VF-121 ‘Pacemakers’ — the west coast
F-4 Replacement Air Group (RAG) — and
The F-14 Tomcat
and TOPGUN
are intrinsically
linked, however
the school itself
only operated
a handful of
jets, with most
examples coming
from fl eet units
and fl own
by students.
Ted Carlson/
Fotodynamicshttp://www.combataircraft.net // September 2019 87
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