Topgun Days ─ Dogfighting, Cheating Death, and Hollywood Glory as One of America's Best Fighter Jocks

DaveBaranek (callsign "Bio") was one of 451 young men to receive hisWings of Gold in 1980 as a naval flight officer. Four years later, seasoned byintense training and deployments in the tense confrontations of the cold war,he became the only one of that initial group to rise to become an instructor atthe navy's elite Fighter Weapons School. As a Topgun instructor, Bio wasresponsible for teaching the best fighter pilots of the Navy and Marine Corpshow to be even better. He schooled them in the classroom and then wenthead-to-head with them in the skies.

Then,in August 1985, Bio was assigned to combine his day-to-day flight duties withparticipation in a Pentagon-blessed project to film action footage for a majorHollywood movie focusing on the lives, loves, heartbreaks, and triumphs ofyoung fighter pilots: Top Gun.

Biosoon found himself riding in limousines to attend gala premieres, and beingsingled out by giggling teenagers and awed schoolboys who recognized the name"Topgun" on his T-shirts. The book ends with his reflections on hiscareer as a skilled naval aviator and his enduring love of flight.