Go To Guns

#106 Go To Guns   $19.95

Fighter pilots study their opponents the way football teams study game films. How good are their jets? How hard to they fly them? Will they be able to shoot me down? The questions are simple, the answers are a matter of life and death.

To look at our opponents, we took our Challenge of Flight cameras to where they fly the jets we may one day fight: Moscow. What we saw was chilling. The awesome MIG-29 Fulcrums, the SU-27 fighters, and three of the world's deadliest strategic bombers. Piloted with an abandon not often seen in the West.

Are we really the world's top guns? Judge for yourself. It's all here, some of the hottest, most unusual flying we've filmed, set to music, edited for continuity, but largely without interruption so you can watch it the way we pilots do. If you fly, this is your game film. Join us for a first hand look at the adversary air power of mother Russia.

Your job ... get through to the Target. The Enemy's job ... to stop you and your jet.

This is the story of the high-speed run, the Target Run .. against a gauntlet of AAA, SAMs and hostile MIGs from an enemy that wants to blow you out of the sky. The bomb run can be called one of the most task saturated environments in aviation: Switchology. Flying the jet. Head in and head out. Confusion on the radio. Dodging the enemy's fire.

In war, pilots must react to each situation as it comes. There are no milk runs. Each second is different. One sometimes wonders how it was that any jet got in and back out in one piece. Truly a fog bank of confusion, smoke, debris, and hostile fire, ... the pilot, flying low across the deck must find the friendlies and get his eyes on the target, drop his bombs and get out in a matter of seconds. More SAMs and AAA. Will it ever stop? ... Head'n home. Only, to come back tomorrow.

Pilots have lost control of airplanes since the very first days of flight. Stalls, spins and unusual attitudes have long challenged new and experienced aviators alike. The wrong angle of bank, too much pitch, too little airspeed, equipment failure, or any combination of these and dozens of other conditions -- often lead to an airplane desperately "Out of Control."

Those that fly know these dangers. They know that there are inescapable boundaries separating what is safe from what can kill. Though they train to recognize those boundaries, to stay within the margins that will bring them home to fly another day, airplanes still go out of control. Every pilot knows that staying in control is yet another CHALLENGE OF FLIGHT!

Flight is no and never has been a boundless expanse. Rather, aviators live with immutable rules, inescapable constraints, physical and scientific limits that stand as surely before them as gravity itself.

There are limits on speeds and altitudes, g-forces, human factors; limits on weapons, weights, loadings, and countless other variables. The Challenge and the job for the engineers and the test pilots, is to overcome these limits. New engines, new materials, new design concepts force old limits out of the way -- and turn over to flight testing, the mysteries, risks, dangers, and often cataclysmic outcomes of the new ones.

Once the boundaries are set, one's imagination is free to explore new horizons and again be part of the timeless CHALLENGE .. to Push the Limits of Flight.

No job is more hazardous than Carrier Air operations. Yet, few Navy pilots would trade their seats for any land-based aircraft.

The cat launch: nothing feels better than a good solid cat stroke. A naval aviator plans for the worst. A soft or cold cat, locked flight controls, improper attitude, engine failures, all contribute to the long list of potential problems that could mean a lost aircraft and a hot seat into the drink.

The recovery: the most challenging phase of flight. With steady seas and a bright sun, pilots say they can cat a trap all day long. But add in-flight emergencies, mechanicals, blown tires, pitching decks, and low fuel states, and the recovery becomes a test of confidence, skill and nerves.

The best trained professionals in the world ... steeped in the knowledge that they must do their jobs well because, cruising across the vast expanse of the oceans, there is ... Nowhere Else to Go!

There was the world - and then, there was Vietnam.

For ten years, this foreign land was home to thousands of American military aviators. To them lay the day-in, day-out job of fighting a difficult, confusing, almost surreal war. The mental and physical demands were high. The presence of the enemy, constant. It was a long way from home.

One by one, the pilots met the challenge. Improvising. Toughing it out. Drawing on inner strength. It wasn't what anyone wanted, but it came down to duty and this duty was theirs.

For military pilots, it's a mission as dangerous as combat itself. For experience-hardened civilians, it's flown with exacting precision and control. For either, there is no room for error.

This is the challenge of Air Attack. C130 Hercules, P-3 Orions, OV-10 Broncos, and a host of civilian transports, against the violence and unpredictable rage of fires gone wild. See low level flight too close for comfort. Ride the cockpit as you push the C130 down into Malibu Canyon. And learn, first hand, what it takes to drag an eight ton load over an out-of-control wildfire.

Join us for this special edition -- Air Attack. A milestone production in the Challenge of Flight.

The United States Coast Guard has put airpower to work since the very first days of flight. Today, over 1000 people a year owe their lives to the Coast Guard, some saved by sea, some saved by air. Coast Guard pilots have at their call the air assets necessary to locate, initiate, and evolve a rescue in a matter of minutes. What manner of aviator takes it upon themselves to meet the challenges of emergencies, always with the threat of being overwhelmed during the rescue.

The answers tell volumes about a service that brings military flight discipline to situations so badly out of control that they are merely called evolutions. This is the story of pilot and aircraft, in the challenging world of air rescue.

If every mishap is a lesson learned, then this is the video encyclopedia of military flight lessons, all learned the hard way. You learn that a jet has to have a tail if it is to fly. Watch a B-52 struggle home without a tail. Listen in as an F-16 pilot declares an emergency and struggles to reach a runway after his jet flames out. These are the situations that take all a pilot has.

Challenge of Flight swept the nation's video archives to assemble this extraordinary collection. You will witness first hand the moments when things go wrong, the days when a small bolt brings down the finest technology the Navy or the Air Force flies. Best of all, you'll see ingenuity at play as pilots give whatever it takes to beat insurmountable odds and walk away time and time again.

Brute force lies at the heart of Navy aircraft carrier operations. A six ton catapult throws a 56,000 pound F-14 in full afterburner, off the end of the flight deck in a matter of seconds.

Aircraft operations off US Navy aircraft carriers are conducted on a scale unmatched by any military power on the face of the earth - up to 50,000 sailors at sea supporting flight operations for as many as 700 aircraft. That's not something done unless it can be done right. Indeed, until people and equipment pass the tests, they'll stay on land. One cold cat tells you better than a thousand words - nothing else matters until you pass the Challenge of Flight known simply as Carrier Quals.

There's no romance here, a jet stricken, disoriented, killed by a missile shot dying in violent skies....

The Hollywood notion of a fighter pilot misses the simple truth, that they are an integral part of a deadly weapon. They shoot, they bomb, they fire missiles and are fired upon. Pilots are at risk not only from an enemy breathing down their neck, but also from the jet they fly. After all, the cockpit is no safe place, wrapped as it is, in a virtual glove of fuel and explosives.

In the end, pilots survive the violent skies not because of their jet, the engineers, or their training. It's instinct. Adrenaline. A rush that leaves a pilot unable to explain what they did to survive. Pilots know that they'll someday face the challenge of such violence, when they do, this is what they'll see.

For all the marvels of the ejection seat, one thing remains true - given the choice, given any viable option, pilots prefer to stay with their planes and to bring them home. It's not always a rational thing to do. It's not always safe. Often it fails. But it is the nature of flying to end each takeoff with a landing, it is the nature of pilots to save all on board, no matter how hard.

To illustrate the how's and why's of these remarkable challenges you need go no further than this edition devoted entirely to getting home, limping home, on a wing and a prayer.

True aviators know that the sound of freedom is the sound of a fighter jet in full afterburner. Nothing else even comes close. In this remarkable edition of The Challenge of Flight, military pilots tell their stories of trials and triumphs in the ever-pressing job of keeping America free and safe.

Set to a masterful soundtrack, this program overwhelms the senses with some of the most incredible shots in aviation film and video. When you are done, you will know the answers to timeless questions about flying jets - power to the max, afterburners blazing. A Challenge of Flight Special Edition.