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Fighter pilot with Danish roots created the real 'Topgun' | India | DR Dan Pedersen has Danish roots - in the US he is known as 'the godfather of Topgun'. By 'Topgun'. The film that is known and loved by most people. Among other things, because of Tom Cruise, who flies fighter jets and plays volleyball in jeans and topless. This week, the sequel to the popular action film from 1986 premieres. 'Topgun: Maverick'.But Topgun is not only found on the big screen. The film is inspired by the real world, namely the American School of Advanced Air Combat.'United States Navy Fighter Weapons School '. Or just Topgun. The school was founded in 1969. By Dan Pedersen, who has Danish roots, eats for Christmas and is married in Grundtvigskirken in Copenhagen. - I have a lot of Danish blood in my veins. I'm the first generation in the United States. My father was born in Kongens Lyngby, says Dan Pedersen, who speaks via a Zoom connection from his home in San Diego, California. The 86-year-old former naval pilot - with the flight name 'Yank' - is known in the USA as' The godfather of Topgun '.In the 60s, American planes were beaten by built Mig fighters in the sky over Vietnam. Too many were shot down in air combat against the agile Mig planes. Among other things because and the air force had dropped the air dog fights - where the fighters in neck-breaking maneuvers tried to get on firing range of the opponent. could shoot the enemy down. That's just not how it went. The American missiles did not work as intended and instead they were in large numbers victims of the machine guns on the North Vietnamese fighter planes. It was Dan Pedersen's task to start an intensive course that would retrain the pilots on aircraft carriers to fight in the air. - We wrote the textbooks about , tested it all in the air and generally expanded the fighter manuals for what they were capable of.- Factory manuals do not do well in air combat. The only thing that counts there is to win, says Dan Pedersen, who describes the whole story in the bestseller 'Topgun: An American story'. - After two months, you could see it in the students' way of flying. Their enthusiasm was completely different and we started to win the air war. Reality's Topgun takes place in rough outline, as you see in the film: An intensive course with air battles from early morning to late evening. With one exception: Tom Cruise's character in the film, Maverick , is far too caricatured, he takes too many chances and his ego is too big.Otherwise, Dan Pedersen is quite well satisfied with the two Topgun films. Perhaps especially because the first one caused the number of applicants for the pilot training to explode in 1986. Dan Pedersen himself has flown combat missions over Vietnam and stopped his career as commander of the aircraft carrier USS Ranger. He believes that today's digital training of pilots in computer simulators is wrong. It's in the air that you become a dangerous fighter pilot.- I'm from the old school, my friend.- There's one thing that disappears in a simulator. One does not have the fear of the real world in the cockpit. You get some procedural skills, but not practical, and you have to have that. For the same reason, Dan Pedersen is not a strong supporter of the F-35 fighter jet that Denmark, among others, has bought. It is far too complicated, too expensive and therefore there are too few of them.- I am a strong supporter of simple solutions in large quantities. If you gave me 100 planes that work flawlessly 98 percent of the time, and were equipped with machine guns and Sidewinder missiles, I would take up the fight with anyone. - That's what I preferred 40 years ago. I swear by the simple, which is easy to maintain and reliable, says Dan Pedersen.