The movie, Top Gun Maverick, is second only to another Top Gun maverick, Captain Charles Plumb.

About two decades before Tom Cruise catapulted into the silver screen, Charlie Plumb was trained by the late Sen. John McCain to fly the F4 Phantom Jet.

“Top Gun started by accident. My buddy and I were wandering down the pipeline and saw they had F9s, which we had already flown during training. We would save a little gas at the end of each flight and work our way up the coast of San Diego and wait for the F4 Phantoms to come by. Until one day, there was a note on the bulletin board for my buddy and me to report to our commanding officer immediately. He asked if it was us who followed an F4 Phantom through an entire loop with guns on them the entire time because he was in that F4. He asked us if we wanted to go out again tomorrow and fight them, and that is how the whole Top Gun school began.” Charlie Plumb

After 74 successful combat missions and just five days before the end of his military service, Plumb was shot down over Hanoi, Vietnam in 1967.

Captured and tortured, Charlie turned his suffering into a lifelong motivational message for success.