In the summer of 1986, the United States Navy got a recruiting campaign it did not have to pay for. Paramount put Tom Cruise, then 23, in a leather jacket and in the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat, and audiences walked out of theaters wanting to fly. Recruiters noticed. In Phoenix, a Navy spokeswoman told the Associated Press that summer, recruiters were taking twice as many calls as usual about the aviation programme, and about 90 percent of the applicants had seen the film.

The Navy made the most of it. In some cities recruiters manned tables outside movie theaters during the premieres, catching moviegoers on the way out. The often-repeated claim that recruitment “jumped 500 percent” is another matter, as we explain below; the documented effect was real, but a good deal smaller.

Cuarenta años después, la influencia de la película en la cultura de la aviación militar sigue siendo innegable. Top Gun no solo vendió entradas de cine, sino que transformó la forma en que toda una generación imaginaba a los pilotos de combate, el servicio militar y las máquinas de guerra aérea.

La alianza perfecta del Pentágono

La relación de Top Gun con el ejército estadounidense fue simbiótica desde el principio. La Armada le dio a Paramount acceso a auténticos F-14 Tomcat, portaaviones reales e instructores de TOPGUN reales en la base naval de Miramar. A cambio, los productores le dieron a la Armada la aprobación del guion. El resultado fue una película que hizo que la aviación naval pareciera el trabajo más emocionante del mundo, lo cual, para ser justos, probablemente lo fue.

Las secuencias aéreas se filmaron con aviones reales realizando maniobras reales, con cámaras montadas en aviones especialmente modificados. No se utilizaron gráficos por computadora. Cuando Maverick realiza un giro invertido sobre un MiG-28, se trata de un F-14 real girando invertido sobre un F-5E real. Cuando se encienden los postquemadores durante el lanzamiento con catapulta, ese brillo de calor es real. El público podía sentir la diferencia, aunque no supiera explicar por qué.

La película costó 15 millones de dólares y recaudó 356 millones de dólares en todo el mundo. Ajustando por la inflación, fue una de las películas más rentables de la década. Y lo que es más importante para la Armada, convirtió la expresión "piloto de caza" en sinónimo de élite y sofisticación, algo que ninguna campaña publicitaria podría haber logrado.

Indicativos de llamada, aviadores y voleibol

Top Gun embedded fighter pilot culture into civilian consciousness. Callsigns, previously an insider tradition, became mainstream. Leather flight jackets and aviator sunglasses became fashion, and the claim that Ray-Ban’s Aviator sales rose 40 percent after the film is repeated everywhere, although we could not trace it to a published figure from the company. Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” became inescapable. For better or worse, the public image of a military pilot shifted permanently from stoic professional to adrenaline-fuelled maverick.

Los pilotos de combate reales tenían una relación compleja con la película. A muchos les encantó: mostraba su trabajo con la misma emoción que en realidad. Otros se estremecieron ante las licencias de Hollywood: las tácticas de combate aéreo tenían poca semejanza con el combate real más allá del alcance visual, y la idea de que un piloto desobedeciera órdenes directas y sobrevolara una torre de control acabaría con su carrera antes incluso de aterrizar. Pero incluso los escépticos admitieron que la película acertó en algo: la sensación. La emoción pura, física y aterradora de subirse a una máquina que soporta 7 G y alcanza Mach 2.

Maverick regresa, y también el efecto.

When Top Gun: Maverick was released in 2022, the US military was struggling to recruit, with service chiefs describing the toughest market in decades. The Navy tried the 1986 playbook again. “We are working with local theaters to look for opportunities to have recruiters engage with people interested in learning more about Naval service,” Navy Recruiting Command said, and in some areas recruiters were invited to set up tables. The sequel grossed about $1.5 billion worldwide, Tom Cruise’s highest-grossing film, and it earned something the original never quite managed: genuine respect from fighter pilots for its flying. The Navy has published no figures showing a recruiting bump.

Las imágenes aéreas de Maverick fueron filmadas con actores reales. F/A-18 Super Hornets Realizar auténticas fuerzas G —una exigencia de Tom Cruise que casi trastocó el calendario de producción— dio como resultado las imágenes de combate aéreo más auténticas jamás filmadas. Para una nueva generación que nunca había visto un F-14 en el cielo, la secuela logró lo que la original había conseguido 36 años antes: hizo que alguien saliera del cine pensando, por primera vez: "Yo también podría hacer eso"."

The 500 Percent Myth

Almost every article about Top Gun repeats that Navy recruitment rose 500 percent after the film. The earliest printed version traced by fact-checkers is a single sentence in David Robb’s 2004 book Operation Hollywood, attributed to “the navy” without a source, and it referred to young men wanting to become naval aviators, not recruitment overall. Navy Recruiting Command figures cited by Australia’s AAP FactCheck tell a calmer story: 94,878 enlistments in fiscal year 1986 against 87,593 the year before, a rise of about 8 percent, followed by a small fall in 1987. Fiscal 1986 ended in September, only four months after the film opened, and the Navy’s advertising budget was rising sharply at the same time.

The Navy itself was careful at the time. In 1987 a spokesman said the film had been “a plus for Navy interest”. In 1989 another told reporters the service had not seen “any specific event cause a change in the result of recruiting.” Interest in naval aviation clearly rose. A fivefold surge is not in the record.

The Navy Says Thank You

Whatever the exact numbers, the Navy is in no doubt about what the films did for it. On 17 December 2024, at Longcross Studios near London, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro presented Tom Cruise with the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award. Established in 1951, it is the highest honour the Secretary of the Navy can give a civilian from outside the department. Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg received it in 1999 for Saving Private Ryan. In 2020 the Navy had already made Cruise and producer Jerry Bruckheimer honorary naval aviators.

Most of them cannot. Fighter aviation is one of the most selective career paths in the world, and a two-hour movie is not a substitute for years of training, excellent eyesight and the ability to think clearly while pulling high g. But the films have made sure that every generation since 1986 knows what a naval aviator is.

Sources: Naval History Magazine; Associated Press via the Los Angeles Times (5 July 1986); USNI News (27 May 2022); AAP FactCheck (14 June 2022); Military.com (11 August 2022); David L. Robb, Operation Hollywood (2004); US Navy press releases (24 September 2020 and 17 December 2024); DVIDS; Box Office Mojo; Smithsonian Air & Space