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

Dave Baranek (callsign "Bio") was one of 850 young men to receive his Wings of Gold in 1980 as a naval flight officer. Four years later, seasoned by intense 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 at the Navy's elite Fighter Weapons School. As a TOPGUN instructor, Bio was responsible for teaching the navy's and Marine Corps' best fighter pilots how to be even better. He schooled them in the classroom and then went head-to-head with them in the skies.

Then, in August 1985, Bio was assigned to combine his day-to-day flight duties with participation in a Pentagon-blessed project to film action footage for a major Hollywood movie focusing on the lives, loves, heartbreaks, and triumphs of young fighter pilots, titled Top Gun.

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

Dave "Bio" Baranek enjoyed a successful and satisfying twenty-year career in the United States Navy, starting with assignments to F-14 Tomcat squadrons and the elite Topgun training program, and followed by later assignments to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the US 7th Fleet. Baranek retired from the Navy in 1999, and now works as a defense contractor in the Washington, DC area. He lives in Burke, Virginia. Learn more about Dave Baranek at http://www.TopGunBio.com