Top Gun Pilot

The Speaker was  Club member retired USA Navy pilot, Jerry Beaulier. Jerry has spoken before, but this talk was just as riveting as previous encounters from this extraordinary man. Unusually, Jerry had joined the US Navy and came up through the ranks over 8 years as an aviation electronics technician, to become an officer and, subsequently, a fighter pilot. Given the current situation in Iran, what he had to say washugely relevant. What followed was a summary of Jerry's involvement with aircraft carriers and the aircraft he had flown. Carriers first appeared in the US Navy in 1910 and with time these enormous ships got bigger and bigger. Many carriers today have 100-plus aircraft and around 5000 crew members. Taking off, and more importantly, landing on an aircraft carrier takes a lot of training and requires precision flying. British influence on the development of carriers includes the Steam Catapult System, the Fresnel Lens, Angle Decks and Ski Jumps! Jerry's excellent presentation showed video clips of take-offs and landings, including some that went wrong and "near misses" when an aircraft overran the landing deck and disappeared below the Carrier, ostensibly into the sea, but happily to reappear, having been only 20 feet above the water and inches from  disaster. Inevitably, there were comparisons to 'Top Gun’, the movie  with Tom Cruise, but Jerry Beaulier was the real thing. He flew 200 missions in the Vietnam War and he was credited with being the first US Navy Pilot to down a Vietcong aircraft. The 'Top Gun' program was introduced to improve success ratios and Jerry's Dog Fight methods were adopted using new tactics including the so called "fighting the egg”.  Such was the success of this program (4,700 pilots have now passed through it) that Jerry's methods are still used today in video training. Over the course of his remarkable career, Jerry flew 71 different types of aircraft and became a Test Pilot after his Navy career.  His three favourite aircraft were The Phantom, the V10 and The Beaver. Inevitably, Jerry talked briefly about the situation in Iran but, for security reasons, he is still bound by US Navy protocols preventing him from making detailed comments about current events. Like everybody, he is concerned about civilian casualties and indeed the potential legality of current actions. Following numerous questions the vote of thanks was delivered by Colin Brown