For the unfamiliar, Top Gun: Maverick is set 30 years after the original film. Maverick is still a naval aviator, highly decorated, but with an uncanny ability to get into just enough trouble to keep from getting promoted out of the cockpit. He is the test pilot for the hypersonic Darkstar scramjet. We’re never told explicitly what Darkstar’s mission is, but it is noted that the government wants to pull the funding for the project in part because it hasn’t yet reached the contract spec of Mach 10 (7672.691 mph).

Maverick suits up for a test flight. He is cautioned to obey the parameters of it and not to exceed Mach 9 (6,905.42 mph). But this is Maverick we’re talking about. He pushes the aircraft to Mach 10, destroying it in the process. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Maverick’s contemporary who has advanced in rank, saves his friend’s career by sending him to the Top Gun school at NAS North Island, where he is charged with training the next generation of naval fighter pilots while battling his inner demons—one of the nuggets is the son of his backseater, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, who was killed in the first movie.

There is a lot of fancy flying in the movie, and it has generated hours of debate in FBOs and online from pilots and aviation enthusiasts who wonder if Darkstar is real and not the Queen Mother of a scale model movie prop.

(Reality check: The closest a piloted aircraft has come to Mach 10 is the SR-71 Blackbird designed by Lockheed’s Kelly Johnson during the Cold War that reached Mach 3.3 or 2,531.988 mph.)

According to Fred Bell, vice chairman of the Palm Spring Air Museum, Darkstar represents the sixth generation of aviation stealth technology. The conceptual design for it—not to be confused with a drone project of the same name—was created by Lockheed Martin Advanced Development Programs.

• READ MORE: Taking a Transcontinental Flight in the Hypersonic Darkstar, Virtually

Lockheed Martin Meets Hollywood

In 2017 Hollywood producers who wanted a hypersonic design for the movie approached Lockheed Martin asking for a conceptual design—could anything go that fast? They knew aviators and other “rivet counters” (the polite term for the people who pick apart aviation movies as though their parentage has been insulted) would be unmerciful in their criticism unless some effort was made to at least embrace the laws of physics and reality.

The Lockheed Martin designers came up with an aircraft that looks very much like a cross between two other of its models: the SR-71 Blackbird—SR stands for Strategic Reconnaissance—the now retired, super-fast design; and the Lockheed Martin F-35, also known as “the world’s most advanced fighter jet.”

In the movie, Darkstar has some dramatic and moving scenes. For example, on the morning of the test flight the camera pans the aircraft in sort of a walk-around and shows a skunk image on the tail. The skunk is a trademarked by Lockheed Martin ADP, which is also known as Skunk Works, because in the 1930s the company was located in Southern California next to a plastics plant that gave off a horrible stench. Super-secret aircraft were developed there, and the term “skunk works” remains synonymous with a place where such technology is developed.

Secrecy is still a big deal, even with movie airplanes. The Darkstar designers are identified only by their first names: Jim, Jason, Lucio, and Becky. According to information provided by Lockheed Martin, when the movie premiered, Jim is credited with the conceptual design. Jason and Lucio handled the task of turning the conceptual designs into a realistic aircraft model with a working cockpit. Becky, a mechanical engineer, worked with the movie team to build the Darkstar vehicle, including the functional cockpit, and kept the model structurally sound during the filming process.

This is no scale model, noted Bell.

“It measures 40-feet wide by 70-feet long,” Bell said. “It is a dagger shaped aircraft with a tremendous amount of detail. On the landing gear the serial number of the tires are stamped on the wheels. The cockpit has an articulating canopy that opens and inside you will see a Lockheed Martin Skunk Works control stick.”

The aircraft even has panel covers that read, “REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT,” and on the tail there is the famous skunk standing confidently on its hind legs with his front paws folded on its chest. 

Darkstar belongs to Lockheed Martin. According to Bell, the company arranged to have the aircraft trucked to the museum and then its technicians and those of the museum reassembled it. When the aircraft was fully together, it was celebrated with a dual water cannon salute. It will be on display near other Lockheed Martin aircraft.

According to a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin, there are no plans to take Darkstar on the road for a tour as the size and complexity of moving it makes that untenable. If you want to see the aircraft up close, make the trip to Palm Springs to see the Darkstar Rising Experience. This includes a comprehensive design-to-cockpit tour, and talks from guest speakers as the museum explores the developments in stealth technology.

“We will have people talking about how the aircraft was created and how it was used in the movie, and will talk about stealth technology in general—where it came from and where it is going,” Bell said. “It’s no longer enough to be fast.”

Details, including ticket prices, can be found here.

The schedule is as follows:

February 24: The making of Darkstar

March 1: Behind the scenes: Darkstar comes to life, making movie magic

March 20: The next generation of stealth

March 27: The next generation of hypersonic aircraft

All viewings will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. PST.

The post Movie Star Airplane Appears in Palm Springs Aviation Museum appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Besides, don’t you want to be prepared when your hangar neighbors and other airport friends start debating over the best aviation movies ever made? Failing to catch this feature would be like entering a discussion of aviation literature without having read Fate Is The Hunter.

There are a number of reasons it took me a long time to see the movie, from the heating system failing at my local cinema the first time I tried to watch it, on a very cold evening, to the anticipated discomfort of watching a story that covers a difficult period in our nation’s history. And we already know how this one ends

Still, there are so many more good reasons to see the show than there are good excuses for missing it. It has strong acting and direction, wardrobe and makeup seemed spot-on, and there were enough interesting aircraft—real ones—on screen to keep planespotters very busy. Indeed, after speaking with the film’s aerial coordinator, Kevin LaRosa II, also known as K2, I realized Devotion is an event every aviation enthusiast should experience.

LaRosa is vice president of aerial film production for Helinet Aviation Services and has shot compelling airborne footage for a wide range of films from the low-altitude sweeps over Napa Valley vineyards in the comedy Wine Country to the most exciting air combat and ground attack sequences in Top Gun: Maverick. But he says he has particularly strong feelings about the work he and his colleagues performed for Devotion.

• READ MORE: Pilots Will Love Top Gun: Maverick—It’s a Lot More Real

He is quick to point out that this film differs from Maverick in many ways. “The two films are apples and oranges, really,” he says. “Devotion is very gritty. It takes place during wartime and it’s a true story. It pulls the viewer in.”

Then there are the airplanes. Like some of our favorite character actors, a squad of vintage iron—including a handful of Vought Corsairs, two Grumman F8F Bearcats, a Douglas Skyraider, and a MiG-15—make a huge contribution to the film’s authenticity. Their pilots, including Steve Hinton and John Maloney, who have vast experience in movie flying as well as Unlimited Class air racing, had no trouble getting close to the camera, LaRosa says.

“There are lots of big radial engines in your face,” he says. A few times they had to back off a bit, like while shooting the Skyraider’s front end in flight, giving that rare aircraft’s many fans a good look at its legendary Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone radial. “Whatever electrical energy that engine was generating would start to blow out the cameras if we flew too close,” he says.

The memorable footage came from a camera mounted on the tail of LaRosa’s Aero Vodochody L-39 CineJet. The jet got lots of action chasing warbirds while filming them at speed. For sweeping shots of fighters flying past, he filmed from a helicopter. The mix was fairly even between jet and chopper, with “a little bit of drone” here and there, LaRosa says.

The film uses CGI when necessary, such as when director J.D. Dillard needed to show a flight of Skyraders but had just one real aircraft on hand. “But the closeups are real airplanes,” LaRosa says. “J.D. made great decisions on which scenes needed to use real aircraft.” So the Corsairs dog-fighting with the MiG? Those are real.

There was also some trickery, such as placing actors in the rear seat of a Hawker Sea Fury to enhance the impression that they are actually flying their fighters. Too bad we don’t get to see the rest of that machine on screen. 

Devotion is also about far more than airplanes. It delves into prejudice, complicated race relations, human relationships during war and peace, and the social norms of the mid-20th century America. The story begins in early 1950 when Lieutenant Thomas Hudner (Glen Powell) transfers to the Navy’s VF-32 squadron, which is training at Quonset Point Naval Air Station in Rhode Island. The squadron commander pairs him with Ensign Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors), the unit’s only African American pilot. They begin a long, sometimes difficult process of building a professional and personal relationship.

The film’s intimacy makes it more than an aviation extravaganza. The camera brings the audience very close most of the time, whether the scene involves a heart-to-heart conversation between Jesse and his wife, Daisy, or Jesse and Tom in the squadron locker room, or pilots running their hands slowly across the fabric-covered control surfaces of their aircraft during a preflight walk-around.

We find that the characters in this undertold story often are as compelling as the airplanes they fly. Even the Skyraider’s giant 3350 does not eclipse their performances.

This may be a busy time of year, but try to make room in your schedule for this one.

The post <i>Devotion</i> Is Worth Watching If You Haven’t Already—Or Even If You Have appeared first on FLYING Magazine.