Fly high in San Diego - the sunny Californian city that's home to Top Gun
msn.comGallery: Campsite owner installs James Bond submarine for £40,000 and you can stay in it (Metro)‘If they tried to turn their heads to see if there was an enemy plane behind them, they would get vertigo and probably pass out. ’ The solution was that jets had rear-view mirrors fitted inside the cockpit.
In search of more facts, I set off for the USS Midway, a giant 1,000ft aircraft carrier that came into service in 1945 and was eventually decommissioned in 1992.
Now a museum (tickets from £21), it features all the sexy jets you could wish for – my favourite has a cartoon shark’s teeth painted on its nose – along with thick wire cables placed at intervals.
These, a former fighter pilot who volunteers here tells me, are what stop the jets when they come back into land. The planes have a hook underneath, which has to try to catch the cable – not easy at 150mph.
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