Maverick, star of the the cinematic classic “Top Gun”, man of this airborne bildungsroman, suffers the loss of Goose, his best friend and RIO (Radar Intercept Officer), after slipping into a “flat spin” induced by steering his F-14 through the “jetwash” of another jet during a training exercise.
“Jetwash”—more accurately referred to as “wake turbulence”—is the colloquial name for the highly turbulent exhaust evacuated from a jet engine during flight. This jetwash is—while brief—highly volatile, and another jet can suffer a “flameout” (engine failure) after passing through the jetwash. A flameout results from the fact that air intakes on jet engines require incoming air to be traveling at sub-sonic speeds, and engines are outfitted with a series of compression plates that slow down incoming air when flying supersonically. In many jets—as in the case of Maverick’s F-14—these compression plates are automatically engaged and disengaged when the jet travels above or below mach 1, and when Iceman banked his Tomcat across Maverick’s flight path the latter was traveling at sub-mach speeds and therefore his engines compression plates were not engaged. As a result, the jetwash induced both engines to fail and the aircraft entered a “flat spin” and Maverick lost his forward momentum and developed a high rate of rotational velocity as he and Goose plunged toward the sea. Thus, once Maverick and Goose finally ejected, the canopy could not be effectively jettisoned after detaching from the aircraft because an insufficient amount of drag had been produced by their reduced forward momentum to properly clear the canopy from the path of the pilots’ ejection seats. Goose cracked his head on the canopy and died, Maverick went all emo, and Viper told Maverick he’d get his RIO when he got his ship and if not to give him a call because he’d fly with him.
This morning a gentleman wearing roughly four fluid ounces of cologne cut across my path on my way into the office and I felt like I was going to go into a flat spin and crack my head on the pavement.
