- [Heather] You may rememberthe 1986 movie Top Gun.

It brought nationalattention to the Navy's

elite fighter pilot school.

- I feel the need,

the need for speed!- The need for speed!

- [Heather] But it didn'ttell the whole story.

The story begins in1956, when Dan Pedersen

began flying for the Navy.

Based off the West Coast,he and other young pilots

flew the skies, ready tointercept Soviet bombers.

But then, the Vietnam War began.

And suddenly, the Navybegan losing its very best,

in what it had long prided itself on,

air-to-air combat.

- You go to dinner at night,

and there's empty chairs at the table.

- Dan Pedersen foundedthe Navy's Top Gun school

to take on an incredible challenge.

The Navy was failing inthe skies over Vietnam,

and losing its pilotsat an astonishing rate.

- The general thought wasthat all you had to do

was send aviators into action,

teach them how to use the equipment,

and if they would do thatthey would win victories.

- [Heather] Military historian Timothy Orr

says the Navy went into theVietnam War supremely confident,

after great success in theskies during the Korean War.

It quickly began losing pilots however,

and Orr says that'sbecause most had received

little training in air combat.

- They would get surprisedby North Vietnamese Migs,

and if they got into a tangle with them

the Migs, though they were vastly outdated

were very maneuverable,

and the pilots of themknew how to push the limits

of their aircraft.

- [Heather] In 1967Pedersen was flying off

the USS Enterprise, off the Vietnam coast.

In just four months, hisair group lost 13 men.

In what's known as the kill ratio,

the Navy was losing one planefor every two it shot down.

- You can't live with losingairplanes like we were.

So we had to do somethin'.

- [Heather] Pedersendocuments that something,

the founding of the Navy'sFighter Weapon school

in his new book.

We met aboard thedecommissioned USS Midway

to talk about one of the great turnarounds

in modern military history.

For Pedersen, it startedwith the Ault report,

a 1968 brief that examinedall the Navy's problems

in the air,

and recommended hard-coretraining as a remedy.

- [Dan] It was time to getwell in the middle of a war,

and the only way to get well in a hurry

is to do a graduate level school.

In other words train a nucleus of people,

and have them go out andtrain the guys in the fleet.

- The way the Navy lookedat it was in general,

that they were relying toomuch on the technology.

That they needed to getback to teaching pilots

how to dogfight,

teach them how to usethe tricks of the trade

to outmaneuver their opponents in the air.

- [Heather] A Navycaptain tapped Pedersen,

a flight instructor at theMiramar Air Station at the time,

to organize and found the school.

He offered him no money, no mechanics,

and no planes to call their own,

along with a tight deadline.

- I said you know, how much time I got?

And he said somewhereover 60 days to 90 days,

and to have the first class convened.

I said you gotta be kiddin' me.

"Nah, we're gonna do it here."

No building, no classroom to teach in.

He said you can do it, he said improvise.

- [Heather] One of Pedersen's instructors

found an abandoned trailer,

and paid a crane operator a case of scotch

to move it.

Pedersen then picked eightof Miramar's finest pilots,

who would teach a newgeneration how to dogfight

all over again, and pushtheir planes to their limits.

- You may train, you maythink you're the best.

But you're gonna find out for real,

and if you don't do itright, you don't go home.

- [Heather] The extremely practical

and finely tuned curriculum,

taught by specialistswho understood mechanics,

the tactics of the enemy,and the need for innovation,

would make all the difference.

Three years later in thenext major aerial campaign

against Vietnam,

the kill ratio improved 600 percent.

The Navy was now losing one plane

for every 12 it shot down.

Looking back, Pedersen seesthe hand of God in it all.

And says the original bro's do as well.

- There are no atheistsflying combat airplanes.

They may think they are for a while,

but over the course oftime they'll have things

happen to them or their airplane

that will bring God right to the surface.

- [Heather] Today, TopGun continues to take

just the top one percentof the Navy's pilots,

and train them to train others.

- The reason that U.S. Navypilots are among the elite

is because of the education they receive.

- [Heather] Pedersensays he considers Top Gun

to be bigger and better than ever.

But he says he wrote thebook for high school kids,

trying to figure out what they want to do.

He hopes they'll consider the Navy,

and maybe even flying,

if they're up for achallenge like no other.

Reporting in San Diego,Heather Sells, CBN News.