Originally Posted by chopper2004
Slightly digressing here but Green Knight, I do recall the filming credits of Top Gun been allocated to USS Ranger as well as the other 2 carriers (can' remember) and prior to the films release, in 86, must have taken a year or two of preparation and filming so were you on board when Hollywoods finest came to film out of interest?
Yes, my squadron was assigned to Ranger's Air Wing (CVW-2) during the filming of both
Top Gun and
Star Trek IV (the scenes aboard ship were filmed on CV-61, not CVN-65) in late 1985-early 1986... but when the ship is in home-port (
NAS North Island, Ca.) the squadrons are back at their home bases.
These were
NAS Miramar, Ca. for the F-14A & E-2C squadrons (VF-1, VF-2, VAW-116),
NAS Whidbey Island, Wa. for the Navy A-6E and EA-6B squadrons (VA-145 & VAQ-131), the airfield side of
NAS North Island for the S-3A & SH-3H squadrons (VS-38 & HS-14), and
MCAS El Toro, Ca. for VMA(AW)-121 (80 miles or so north of
NAS N.I.).
Therefore, only the Ship's Company were present during the filming of the on-board scenes (which took no more than a couple of days in reality for each movie). Few of the ship's crew even knew about the filming in advance, only finding out when the studio crews showed up... we in the squadrons only learned about it later, weeks or months after the fact!