Miramar, California - 1969
Frank Ault was a busy man. He’d had a ship sunk out from under him in the Second World War and subsequently retrained as a pilot. After that, he’d helped create the US Navy’s first nuclear bomber squadron, managed the Navy’s first space program, commanded a squadron and two ships, and now he’d written a report on why the US military wasn’t killing enough North Vietnamese.
Captain Ault had 5,000 hours in the cockpit, though none of it in combat. He didn’t need that experience, however, to see that the United States should have a much better record than three-to-one in the area of aerial combat against the air force of a third world nation, no matter how well the Soviet Union was supplying them.
At the conclusion of his report, Ault recommended the creation of an advanced fighter weapons school.
And so, TOPGUN was born.
Naval Air Station Miramar had been selected for the school. Ault flew there for the opening ceremony.
Miramar was host to a couple of squadrons, mostly for training. The unusual group of misfits that had been rounded up to establish the weapons school were officially hosted by VF-121, the west coast F-4 school squadron.
The ceremony was short; everyone had better things to be doing. Ault wished them luck. With scant funding, no syllabus, a handful of senior Navy pilots and a sprinkle of Marines thrown in - all leaders and no followers - they were going to need it.
_ _ _
The weather was good. Probably the best weather in the country, or maybe even the world.
It was certainly better than Southeast Asia, thought Major Colin Ruthven.
Someone, probably a boss enamoured with his abilities but disgruntled with his antics had recommended him for the new assignment. That’s what Ruthven told himself. Experienced pilots were needed to stand up a new training program. As a combat veteran with stick time in both F-8’s and F-4’s, Ruthven fit the bill. And gettig to live only ten miles north of downtown San Diego was only a bonus.
Walking into the ready room for the first time, Ruthven knew he had to smile and swagger. First impressions were important, reputations were everything, and it was better to be thought a maniac than a coward.
His jacket covered most of that. He’d done more than one tour in Vietnam and gotten the patches to show for it. These Navy guys went boating, where it was safe. He’d slept in the dirt and liked it.
Ruthven was not the only Marine present, but one of the few. They brought a slightly different perspective, but the main goal here didn’t depend on where the pilot took off and landed, it was all about what happened next.
Putting a group of hotshots in a small room with a chalkboard on a warm spring day was like filling a vault with gunpowder: not dangerous by itself, but not any place a sane person would want to spend much time.
Commander Johnson had put a quote on the chalkboard. There are pilots and there are pilots; with the good ones, it is inborn. You can't teach it.
“Robin Olds,” he mentioned.
A chorus of boos went around the room. “The Air Force?” someone heckled.
Johnson held up a hand. “All the same, I think you’ll agree it’s true. So aside from the naturals, how do we teach everyone else?”
That started another round of catcalls. Still, the group managed to stay relatively on track and pinned down their course of action.
First, they had to figure out what worked in aerial combat. After that came the arguably more difficult task of molding it into a lesson plan.
The group of pilots had collectively flown in half a dozen airframes across the Navy and Marine Corps. Some had even done exchange tours with the Air Force or with foreign services. They still found one major thing to agree on: training needed to include close-quarters dogfighting.
The revolution in guided missiles had sparked new airplanes to carry them. Some overenthusiastic advocates had even declared the age of the gun to be over. The F-4 Phantom II had even been designed without one.
But the age of the gun was not over. Rules of engagement in the Vietnam War and a relatively small battlespace over the narrow country had led to turning battles being the rule, rather than the exception.
Ruthven and F-8 Crusader pilots like him found themselves at center stage. The Crusader was the last American fighter designed with guns as its primary weapons, and its pilots had been trained accordingly. Over Vietnam, it had already made a name for itself, and became even more potent with the addition of Sidewinder missiles.
The Last Gunfighter was a title Ruthven carried with pride. The Crusader was fast enough, but didn’t have the raw thrust or weapons of a Phantom, or the lightweight maneuverability of a Skyhawk. Ruthven was qualified for both of the other aircraft, however, and could experience each side of the air battle to work towards a solution. Exploiting adversary weakness and your own aircraft’s strength was part of the equation.
The other part was tactics. They might have received the best training their military could give them, but that didn’t mean there weren’t improvements to be made. It would require a lot of test flights to experiment with new techniques and figure out what worked best.
Ruthven smiled to himself. A lot of test flights. It had been almost worth getting involved in this rolling argument just to log more hours.
As the afternoon wore on, Ruthven doodled in his notebook and occasionally contributed to the discussion on how best to proceed with creating the weapons school training program. They were all in agreement on needing to find the best tactics. How to establish what was best remained the debate.
Ruthven had filled his notebook page with a few jets and diagrams of maneuvers. Split-S, Immelman, the works. He knew them all by heart, but they seemed so regimented and fixed. They needed a fresh perspective.
It came to him in a flash. “We need to study a natural.”
Commander Johnson looked at him. “What was that, Jarhead?” Ruthven gestured to where the quote from Robin Olds had been erased and written over with a brainstorm. “I know who we need.”
He grabbed his jacket, which hung on the back of his chair and showed the rest a patch on the shoulder. It had been custom made by a little old lady with a tailor shop in South Vietnam, based on the specifications Ruthven’s old squadron had provided.
_ _ _
She’d appeared one day at Da Nang and the Marines had adopted her. Other folks from all kinds of places and agencies had tried to get their hands on her, but needless to say, the Marines could be pretty stubborn when they wanted to be.
The brightly colored pegasus - for what else could they call a flying horse? - seemed at best mildly interested in people. Her interests seemed to be flying, napping, and playing pranks.
They’d named her Rainbow.
The creature was the oddest thing Ruthven had ever seen. Animals just didn’t come in blue, much less a swath of other colors besides. Even with the wings that didn’t belong, they’d all thought that some joker had dyed her.
It quickly became apparently that they were actually dealing with what might be best described as a cartoon character come to life. From the five colors in her mane down to the curious lightning bolt on her hip, Rainbow was completely real.
Despite that, it was still utterly unbelievable. The idea that a horse, well, perhaps a pony based on her size, could fly seemed impossible. But her feathery wings were entirely functional and she flew, better than birds even. In addition, Rainbow was obviously a thinking creature, and occasionally seemed to speak, though none of them could interpret horse noises.
While it took some convincing, she’d eventually consented to let them run tests on her. Just basic stuff. Anyone who even mentioned dissection was escorted from the premises by a couple of burly Marines.
Aside from that, it had been great publicity. The creature that had wandered out of the jungles of Southeast Asia became a worldwide sensation overnight. Peter Max had done a whole series of paintings just about her, throwing the psychedelic movement into an even higher gear.
As for Ruthven’s squadron, they’d adopted her as an official mascot. Rainbow seemed to love preening and posing for the camera. Someone had taught her how to hold a service weapon for a picture, and the rest was history. Mama-san at the patch shop was pumping out merchandise like crazy to whoever wanted to buy.
_ _ _
“That flying pony?” asked someone, as Ruthven showed off his patch.
He nodded. “I think I could get her transferred here. I bet she’d give a Skyhawk a run for its money.”
“There’s no way she’s as fast as a jet!”
Ruthven, who’d seen that very thing with his own eyes, saw a drinking bet coming and grinned. “Well, maybe a Crusader or a Phantom could outrun her but couldn’t outturn her. You’d hate to be the guy who lost a dogfight to a horse, though.”
That touched off another round of debate. Commander Johnson, however, eventually waded in and decided it. “What the hell. Maybe a little publicity would get us enough resources to actually pull this off.”
Ruthven made a few phone calls.
_ _ _
Rainbow arrived the next week.
The instructors had had time to get a few things laid out and to obtain a rough idea of where they would be getting their aircraft for the school. While VF-121 was their primary host, VF-126 and VC-7 had also agreed to help.
All the instructors were waiting on the flight line when the C-130 arrived with Rainbow. She disembarked, yawning, having probably slept the whole flight. The small contingent of Marines assigned as Rainbow’s permanent handlers were with her. They were mostly veterinarian types pulled from the working dog field.
While one might assume a pony, even a flying rainbow-colored one, wasn’t that special, Ruthven knew that Rainbow was fully capable of complex thoughts and emotions. She wasn’t great at communicating them, but she was far more than just a mascot or hippy icon. The Marines had remained tight-lipped to the general public about exactly what she could do.
Most of the instructor pilots had come to see her arrival. As Rainbow stepped off the plane, she looked around, sniffing the air and squinting at the sun. Her wings flexed.
She spotted Ruthven and her large magenta eyes widened slightly. Her head tossed up, just like a man would greet an old friend. He smiled and did the same.
He stepped forward. This had been his idea, after all. “Gentlemen, I’d like you to meet the best natural flyer I’ve ever seen.”
Reactions were mixed. Some of them had heard rumors about what she could do. Some of them actually believed them.
“We’re just letting it-”
“Her,” Ruthven corrected.
“Run free around here?”
“She knows not to interfere with flight ops. Da Nang was the busiest airport in the world for a while and nobody splattered her there.” Ruthven decided not to mention a couple of close calls.
Rainbow stared at the men. She knew what flight suits meant. She knew what crossed arms and furrowed brows meant. She ignored them and turned to look around, eyes focusing on the line of jets parked near hangars.
Ruthven was carrying a baseball and a glove. “Rainbow?”
She recognized they name they’d given her. Ruthven showed her the ball and tipped his head towards the other men. Rainbow rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, I know, this game again,” said Ruthven.
Rainbow made an annoyed noise.
“Look, they just want to see you fly. Tell you what. I’ll buy you a beer.”
That got her attention. If there were two works she recognized above all others, it was her name, and beer.
Smiling, Ruthven wound up and threw the ball as hard as he could.
Rainbow snatched it out of the air before it had gone fifty feet. He hadn’t even been aiming in her general direction. Hovering midair, she tossed it back, casually, and he caught it in the glove. Then, he spun in place and launched the ball in the opposite direction. Without even seeming to cross the distance between, she intercepted that throw, too. They all felt the wind off her wings, though.
Ruthven got the ball back and grinned at the others. “She’s definitely got the speed and maneuverability. I think we could learn a thing or two about the best possible way to fly.”
Behind him, Rainbow relaxed into kind of a midair backstroke, looking bored.
“I need a drink,” muttered someone.
_ _ _
The officer’s club had long been a fixture of aviation. While each unit had its own clique, the instructors were even more isolated from everyone else on base. No one was quite sure yet who they were or what they were doing.
Walking in with a chromatic pegasus, however, caught the attention of everyone in the building.
Rainbow enjoyed being the center of attention, though she also enjoyed the bottle of beer she had her fetlock wrapped around. From experience, Ruthven knew she was a literal lightweight, but had an uncanny metabolism.
“She’s not going to shit everywhere, is she?” one of the pilots asked, probably voicing the same question the bar ladies had been too timid to ask directly.
“She knows what a toilet is,” said Ruthven. “Didn’t even have to teach her, in fact.”
“So you were there?” someone asked. “When she appeared?”
Ruthven had told the story before, to the point that he could probably do it drunk and/or asleep. It was a good story, though.
“So, no shit, there I was in Da Nang with VMF-235. It was the beginning of ‘68. We got hit hard on the perimeter, rockets, mortars, sappers. Things had been uneasy for a couple of days before and they kept taking potshots at us.
“Anyway, Rainbow shows up in the middle of all this. I’m not sure if she was running from the NVA or if she just picked the only place without thick jungle to land. Anyway, she walked up on the first Marine she found, which happened to be a -235 mechanic posted to guard duty. He gave her some chocolate out of a C-Rat and brought her back to the shop.
“Of course, we had to tell someone. The Air Force Colonel in charge of the base tried to take credit, but he couldn’t if he couldn’t find her. I think we all kind of knew what we were dealing with from the beginning and did what we could to keep her secure. She didn’t like it much, because what she loves more than attention is flying.
“We did eventually have to turn her over. They were hesitant to bring her back to the states initially because we didn’t know if she had any livestock diseases. They took some samples and said her genetics didn’t look like anything they’d seen before. Might not even be from earth.”
“Really?” someone broke in.
Ruthven shrugged. “Get to know her a little bit, I think you might agree.”
They all looked at Rainbow. She took another swig of beer.
_ _ _
It took a little bit of pointing to pictographs and miming, but they eventually managed to communicate to Rainbow what they wanted her to do. Fortunately, Ruthven was a pretty good artist and could draw what he needed to say. A small figure of a pegasus flying among jets did the job.
When she learned that her job was to fly and do it as high-performance as possible, Rainbow was beside herself. It was amazing how well her expressions matched human ones.
They matched her up with a Skyhawk first. A video camera was hastily rigged in the back of a twin-seat trainer.
Ruthven didn’t fly it, but he closely studied the film they brought back. So did everyone else, as it was screened in the ready room. The fight was pretty one-sided. Rainbow had been all over the jet. She’d even played tag with the rudder.
The lights came up. Ruthven glanced at Rainbow, who sat in the back of the room, looking smug.
“We’re going to have to classify this film and throw it in the darkest vault we can find,” Johnson said, his tone halfway joking, halfway serious. “If it got out, the general public might have questions.”
The group of aviators went back over the film again, several times, frame by frame. Anything that they could glean from the way Rainbow flew might help give them an edge.
Rainbow herself fell asleep as the discussion dragged on. Without knowing how to speak the language, all she could contribute was her flying. It must be nice, Ruthven thought.
“So she’s fast and maneuverable enough to wax a Skyhawk,” Johnson said. “If we want a fair comparison, we’re going to need something better. Right, Rainbow?”
She raised her head, looked around, and yawned.
“How about a Phantom?” Johnson said.
The guy running the projector spun the film to the beginning, when the camera happened to catch a parked F-4.
Rainbow grinned and made a bring-it-on gesture with her hoof.
_ _ _
As it turned out, Rainbow was not faster than an F-4 Phantom. However, she didn’t show up on radar and didn’t have a big enough heat signature to get a lock, so there was no other way to engage her but tail chase.
And if the Phantom slowed down below a Mach to do so, the situation turned right back into the same harassment the Skyhawk had endured. This time, Rainbow even made sure to leave muddy hoof prints on the tail.
The Phantom at least had the advantage in the vertical. But that was an old lesson - the more powerful aircraft in an engagement should use its advantages.
Of course, when that battle was done, they all wanted to see what the Crusader could do. Ruthven volunteered.
The Vought F-8 Crusader had been designed for the US Navy and later adopted by the Marine Corps. This particular jet had VC-7 and NAVY painted on the side, as well as a bright red tail. That was actually less flashy than the jets Ruthven had flown with VMF-235. Those had been painted with red noses and tails with stars. Because of that, most people shunned the squadron's official name - “Death Angels” - in favor of “Bozo Noses.”
The loaner was an F-8C, a downgrade from the Bozo F-8E’s. It was giving up 10% in thrust, a better radar, and an infrared sensor. At least the C was slightly lighter weight, for those same reasons and also the fact that it didn’t have the additional equipment needed to guide Bullpup missiles. Plus, that meant it didn’t have an annoying second, smaller joystick in the cockpit for command-guiding those weapons.
At any rate, Ruthven didn’t remember the last time he’d flown the Crusader without weapons of any kind, not even a few hundred pounds of 20mm gun ammunition. That was probably more than Rainbow even weighed.
At least he had the advantage that he’d flown against her before. It hadn’t been serious, like this, but he’d still seen her moves up close. His experience, combined with the Crusader, made Ruthven feel he had the best shot at besting Rainbow.
The Crusader was really a remarkable aircraft. Its wing structure had a unique feature that allowed it pivot seven degrees upwards to gain additional angle of attack. Lightly loaded, the jet had enough thrust to climb straight up. A few absent minded pilots had even been able to take off with the wings still folded. It had been the first American fighter to exceed one thousand miles per hour. The great Marine aviator John Glenn had used an F-8 to make the first supersonic transcontinental flight.
It was, perhaps, a rather ugly jet. Its wings were high mounted like a cargo plane. Its air intake gaped low like an alligator's mouth. The complicated systems and variable wing led to a dangerous reputation among naval fliers that the Crusader was an ensign eliminator.
But it was The Last Gunfighter, the plane built as the epitome of close quarters dogfighting, straddling the jet age and the missile age. Ruthven had trained his whole career on the jet, going through the Fleet Air Gunnery Unit and getting the chance to put lessons to practice in Vietnam. And as a Marine, he’d never needed to learn how to land on an aircraft carrier, allowing him to put his full concentration on actually flying.
He brought his considerable talent and the Crusader’s formidable ability to bear on a multicolored flying pony with a competitive streak.
If Ruthven did say so himself, it made for good television, at least.
Commander Johnson was handed the tape in the ready room after the flight. He looked up at Ruthven, sitting in the front row. “Was it any good?”
He nodded. “I think so, sir.”
The Crusader had no second seat for a camera operator, so Ruthven’s gun camera did the recording, overdubbed with his commentary.
Johnson handed the film to the projector man. “Let’s see how the Jarhead did.”
Ruthven knew he had held his own. The forward-facing camera couldn’t capture Rainbow on his tail, after all. Even with her damnable maneuverability, there was still a limit. He managed to lay his gunsight across her several times in the fight.
Even Rainbow seemed to appreciate watching the film, though she was singularly alone when it came to picking sides. She was the only one who applauded her own victories in the mock battle, but was enthusiastic enough to make up for it.
_ _ _
Of course the real question, the one they’d brought Rainbow there to answer, still hadn’t been tested: exactly what was the perfect way to fly?
The group of them spent a couple of days up in Pasadena, using the wind tunnel at CalTech. Once shown how it worked, Rainbow tread air against the fan and smoke, when she could be bothered, anyway. The researchers occasionally had to coax her back into flying straight and level while they analyzed her. The pilots stood by and watched with critical eyes for something less tangible. It wouldn’t be the first or last classified military testing done there.
Ruthven made lots of sketches. Muscle-powered flight wasn’t exactly conducive to airplane design. Though, they’d known that from the start. They were looking for technique from a natural.
Rainbow was clearly bored with the work. It took a lot to convince her to even do it. She rode back to Miramar with Ruthven on I-5, sprawled in the passenger seat of his Corvette. He sketched on the wheel as he drove. His daughter would appreciate it.
He showed Rainbow how cute she was when she woke up, and grinned. She actually blushed, before snorting and crossing her forelegs sulkily.
Ruthven got the feeling that he might regret that. And sure enough, when he came out to his car the next morning, he found a small raincloud hovering directly over it, sprinkling over the open convertible top. It could only be Rainbow’s work. What honestly surprised him more was how she’d managed to slip out of base and somehow navigate to his home in the middle of the night.
He was far from the only one subject to her pranks, though. All around the improvised school small items went missing, only to turn up in high places, usually roofs, and usually just after the owner had slighted Rainbow. She didn’t take things personally, she just got even.
While Ruthven had known her longer than the others, they too came to see her as an equal partner, despite the fact that she didn’t talk and wasn’t even human.
It was all too easy to adopt her likeness on their unofficial patch, though that probably wouldn’t fly for the official one accepted by the high brass. As it was, they were lucky to get their submission for the official patch approved.
Ruthven, the artist, created it. It was blue with a red border. An enemy fighter with a gunsight superimposed over it took up the center. Fighter Weapons School was spelled out on the border.
Rainbow preferred the one that looked like her. Still, she wore the school patch. The pilots had gotten the parachute riggers to sew up a uniform for Rainbow that slightly resembled a flight suit, but also allowed her to pack small pieces of equipment for testing purposes in the pockets.
They’d managed to rig a small radio and a headset to give her directions, though it was a tossup whether she would follow them. Ruthven got the feeling she understood more English than she let on but just chose to play dumb.
One afternoon, Ruthven passed her coming out of the restroom. The men’s restroom. To be fair, being around military bases, she probably had rarely encountered a women’s restroom. Through pictographs, he got the point across, though, and she did look embarrassed.
He had to convince her he wasn’t putting her on, though. Pranks worked both ways.
Such as the time when they decided to give Rainbow a ride in the back seat of an F-4.
Ruthven had volunteered to pilot, of course. He usually flew single-seat fighters, so he was used to not having any help. It took some time and extensive drawings to communicate what Rainbow should and shouldn’t do. Don’t touch anything, for starters.
The instructors debated back and forth whether they should strap her in. In an emergency, she wouldn’t need a parachute. A g-suit might have been a good idea, but there were none that fit her. In the end, they decided to use the seatbelts, but showed her how to unfasten them.
Rainbow seemed excited as they taxied. They’d gotten her some earplugs to deal with the volume of the engines. Ruthven watched her in the mirror as he lit the afterburners for takeoff. Rainbow seemed almost bored with the acceleration, though her expression changed as it just kept coming.
Out over the Pacific they broke through Mach 2. That got her attention. Back over land, in the mountains of central California, Ruthven ducked through a couple of tight passes. Rainbow seemed almost bored with seven g’s, but was clearly concerned about his flying. Ruthven knew she probably would have cut turns a little closer herself, but also got the feeling that only being a passenger was the hardest part for her.
While he already knew she was a better flyer than he could ever hope to be, he began to realize that she was so advanced that human flight in a top aircraft still didn’t impress her very much.
_ _ _
Ruthven tried to convey that Rainbow should teach flying. She pretended to not understand. He tried to teach her English, speaking or writing. The halfhearted scribbles she made with the pencil in her mouth didn’t resemble anything so much as intentional illiteracy. He tried to convince Rainbow that she would be paid for her work, though he was privately not sure where the money would come from. All Rainbow seemed to really want was the occasional beer and fewer responsibilities.
It wasn't going to be easy to drag her into usefulness. Ruthven wasn't about to threaten sending her back to confinement and testing. He just needed to find the spark that kept her motivated.
He started adding more patches to her uniform, so that she sported more "been there, done that" credibility. Like Ruthven, she now wore patches from Da Nang, VMF-235, and the school. There had been some debate on whether she'd earned actual pilot's wings, but everyone agreed that she did at least need a nametag. The crowning touch was a pair of aviator sunglasses sized just for her.
Rainbow practically swaggered now, tossing back afternoon drinks at the officers club. In the weeks the program had been running, the instructors had finally nailed down a course curriculum and were finally ready for students. Even Rainbow caught their excitement, toasting along with the others, even if perhaps she didn’t know enough English to know why they were celebrating.
But they couldn’t just turn her loose on unsuspecting students. A fighter pilot had to know their limits, but also had to believe themselves the best in the sky. Embarrassing them from the start might set a negative tone for the rest of the class.
Of course, the students did see her around. Rainbow was hard to miss, and tried to be as visible as possible. Ruthven had to actively keep her from sneaking into briefing rooms. That only led to an escalation in the pranks against him.
It was hard to convey a bargaining process through pictures, no matter how good an artist Ruthven was. If Rainbow wanted to live like a fighter pilot, she had to follow the rules too. If she wanted to stay at Miramar and contribute, then they needed her to be a team player.
Maybe a little humbling was in order.
To that end, Ruthven called a friend in the Air Force. One morning, he got Rainbow into the back seat of an F-4 and they flew up to Beale Air Force Base in northern California.
They arrived in time to sit in on a premission brief. Rainbow seemed mildly curious, but eventually fell asleep.
She didn’t see the pilots she would be flying against putting on orange space suits. In fact, her first indication that anything was out of the ordinary was when Ruthven nudged her awake and took her to see the plane.
Needless to say, in the air, the SR-71 smoked her. Though, the way Rainbow pouted, speed apparently wasn’t everything. The Blackbird could barely turn.
Ruthven found it pretty amusing all the way back to Miramar, though he had a feeling he was going to regret it when Rainbow thought up a good prank to get back at him.
Trying to get ahead of that, he coordinated with a couple of other pilots. The next time Rainbow fell asleep in public, they put their scheme into motion.
Carrying a limp pegasus without waking her up was a challenge, but these men were champions of hand-eye coordination by profession. Carefully, they made their way to the flight line and put Rainbow down the gaping intake of an F-8. Then, someone stood near the rear of the jet and started to whistle like a jet engine starting.
It took a couple of seconds for Rainbow to groggily wake up. It took a further moment for her to realize where she was and what that sound could be. Then, however, she exploded out the front of the intake as if shot from a cannon.
The laughter was a dead giveaway, though. Rainbow was quick to realize what had actually happened and returned to where Ruthven was standing. She landed next to him and gave him an impatient stare in response to his grin.
She said, “Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, Jarhead.”
Ruthven reacted like he’d been punched in the solar plexus. “Wait, you speak…?”
She smirked. “Yep.”
“All this time…”
“Uh huh.” Rainbow grinned.
Her dedication was astounding.
“Well played,” Ruthven muttered.
