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 conf
Becoming the best doesn’t happen overnight; you’ve got to work for it.Before becoming an instructor in the Navy’s Topgun program, Dave Bio” Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating from college, he joined the Navy with the goal of becoming a fighter pilot. But, his eyesight waning, he knew that he would never be able to reach that goal. Undaunted, he plowed ahead and found his niche as a radar intercept operator in the backseat of the sleek, new Grumman F-14 Tomcat.Join Baranek in Before Topgun Days as he takes you along for this greatest, most exciting time of his young life: training to become a naval flight officer. Taking place before the events recounted in his previous memoir,Topgun Days, Baranek brings to life the anxieties and excitement of entering the fast-paced world of fighter jocks. From a green recruit to an experienced flyer, discover what it took to become a Topgun instructor.
From Topgun to Squadron CommandYou're in the cockpit of the legendary F-14 Tomcat fighter, blazing along at twice the speed of sound seven miles above the ocean and the carrier that hurled you off its deck. You're practicing dogfighting with "aggressors," guys on your side flying F-16s. You're patrolling the tense skies above Iraq, and with the push of a button you can launch the 100-mile Phoenix missile that can blow a foe to scrap before you even see him. You are an expert in fighter tactics and aircraft carrier operations, and it all leads to your command of an F-14 fighter squadron of more than three hundred people.Sounds like a week's worth of daydreams, but it's all real-life in the career of Dave "Bio" Baranek, and he shares it with you in the exciting, superbly crafted new book, Tomcat Rio. Dave - callsign "Bio" - pulled his readers into the exciting world of the F-14 and the Navy's TOPGUN program with his popular books Topgun Days and Before Topgun Days. Now he's back with
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
Becoming the best doesn't happen overnight; you've got to work for it. Before becoming an instructor in the Navy's Topgun program, Dave "Bio" Baranek was just another kid with a dream. Upon graduating
