Fly high in San Diego - the sunny Californian city that's home to Top Gun
23.05.2022 - 13:57
/ msn.com
Gallery: Campsite owner installs James Bond submarine for £40,000 and you can stay in it (Metro)‘If they tried to turn their heads to see if there was an enemy plane behind them, they would get vertigo and probably pass out. ’ The solution was that jets had rear-view mirrors fitted inside the cockpit. In search of more facts, I set off for the USS Midway, a giant 1,000ft aircraft carrier that came into service in 1945 and was eventually decommissioned in 1992.
Now a museum (tickets from £21), it features all the sexy jets you could wish for – my favourite has a cartoon shark’s teeth painted on its nose – along with thick wire cables placed at intervals. These, a former fighter pilot who volunteers here tells me, are what stop the jets when they come back into land. The planes have a hook underneath, which has to try to catch the cable – not easy at 150mph.
Another retired pilot recounts the time he was being catapulted for take-off but wasn’t going fast enough, so had to eject. He landed in the sea to see his carrier coming straight towards him. Thankfully, he managed to swim out of the way.
I exit via the gift shop – touting Ray-Ban Aviator sunnies and Cruise-style leather flying jackets – and make my way up to the Cabrillo National Monument on Point Loma. Commemorating explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first European to land on the west coast of the US, in 1542, it sits on a high viewpoint overlooking both Coronado Island and the city’s main naval base. As military planes zip by in the distance, all this adrenaline is making me hungry so I head to Kansas City Barbecue, a diner with a dive bar feel where a key scene from Top Gun was filmed: Maverick and his best buddy Goose belting out You’ve Lost That Lovin’
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