I’d forgotten how good, how backlit and sexy, “Top Gun” made San Diego look.

You can have your “Almost Famous,” “Traffic,” “Some Like It Hot,” “Anchorman” or “Stunt Man.”

As a celluloid postcard to San Diego, nothing touches the 1986 movie originally pitched to Paramount as “Star Wars on Earth.”

Pete Pettigrew, a Vietnam MiG killer (more than 325 combat missions) and Top Gun instructor, was hired to be the film’s technical adviser. It was his job to keep the scriptwriters grounded in reality.


In that respect, he failed, but spectacularly so.

The rear admiral, by then retired from active duty, was paid $35,000 to work on the project. Separately, he was asked to play a cameo role as the boss of Charlie (Kelly McGillis).

You can spot him seated at a table in the early “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” scene at Miramar’s WOXOF Bar.

Last week, Pettigrew lectured at MiraCosta College, sharing war stories about his failed campaign to keep director Tony Scott’s film from flying into space.


Pettigrew soon realized that, though the filmmakers did want to capture the essence of Fightertown, what they really wanted was the thrust of supersonic myth, pinning “mom and pop and Oklahoma” into their seats with maximum G-force.

All the things “Top Gun” famously got wrong — the Maverick vs. Iceman competition for an individual trophy, dogfighting close to the ground, the mixing of desert and ocean footage — heightened dramatic impact.

But all the things the movie got right — the cool throwaway language (“If I told you, I’d have to kill you”), the choreography of the dogfights (no computer simulations) and the logistics of the crash that killed Goose, well, that’s pretty much Pettigrew.

At 72, he lives in La Jolla, up near UC San Diego. He stopped flying Gulfstreams for hire a year ago. With a body like Beowulf’s, he’s a fiercely competitive rough-water swimmer. Teamed up with five other guys over 70, he recently swam in a relay (one-hour legs) across the Catalina Channel in 10 hours and 57 minutes, setting a record. He plays age-division water polo, recently competing in Montreal. To keep his hand in military history, he serves as a docent on the Midway.


Four times a year, Pettigrew receives royalty checks for his bit role that add up to maybe 50 bucks, periodic reminders of his tour of duty with a make-believe squadron hooked on the romance of modern aerial combat.

In addition to the technical advice, he helped the location director find, among other San Diego spots, Charlie’s bungalow, ideal because it was next to an oceanfront street where Maverick (star Tom Cruise, then 23 years old) could ride his motorcycle.

Over lunch at Harry’s Coffee Shop, the admiral takes me on a Cook’s Tour of Top Gun locations:

• The Coast Guard houses at the tip of Point Loma where the CO named Viper (Pettigrew’s call sign) told Maverick, grieving over Goose, how Maverick’s dad died in a Vietnam dogfight that turned into a furball.


• The locker room where Iceman (Val Kilmer) and Maverick square off in all their six-packed youth. Pettigrew says the scene was filmed at The Plunge in Mission Bay, a short distance from the Bahia where the cast partied like the hellbent flyboys they played. (Cruise, however, kept to himself in La Jolla Shores.)

• The WOXOF Bar wasn’t the real one but a gay watering hole that had a U-shaped bar perfect for shooting what Scott had in mind.

• The long-gone Windsock, a bar beside Lindbergh Field, where Charlie asks the despondent Maverick if he’s drinking hemlock.

• The Kansas City Barbeque, a totemic provider of down-home cooking and the comfort food of romantic love.


• The late-afternoon shoot on the Enterprise when Scott needed the ship to turn around to capture the best light. The skipper said no way, it would cost $25,000 to defray the cost. Scott wrote a check (that was never cashed) and the ship turned, an example of how the Navy partnered with Paramount to make arguably the most powerful recruiting film in history.

In time, Top Gun flew off to Nevada, a sore point for nostalgic Navy fighter pilots. Memorabilia at Kansas City BBQ burned in a fire (but not Goose’s “Great Balls of Fire” piano). Charlie’s house is a historic landmark in Oceanside.

Somewhere, Charlie’s black Porsche rag top, the one in which she raced up Laurel in pursuit of Maverick, is in a garage, gathering dust and value.

After lunch, the old fighter pilot said goodbye and drove off.


In a Porsche convertible.

Top down.

logan.jenkins@utsandiego.com