While the F-14 Tomcat was shown off in Top Gun, the F-16 Fighting Falcon used the questionable Iron Eagle series to demonstrate the machine’s agility to cinemagoers
While the F-14 Tomcat was shown off in Top Gun, the F-16 Fighting Falcon’s agility was showcased to cinemagoers in the questionable Iron Eagle series.
According to Bertie Simmonds’ story in his book F-16 Fighting Falcon, when Masters Senior was shot down, Doug Masters (Jason Gedrick) saved his father, Colonel Ted Masters (Tim Thomerson), from the clutches of a despicable, clichéd Middle Eastern regime in the first movie released in 1986. The plot that unfolds is ridiculous: Doug and his teenage friends obtain information about the prison in which his father is being held in the made-up Arab state of Bilya, and they use that information to prepare two F-16s that are fueled-up and bombed-up so that Doug and Colonel Charles “Chappy” Sinclair (Louis Gossett Junior) can stage a rescue attempt.
British actor David Suchet plays the film’s snarling bad guy Colonel Akir Nakesh. Suchet also plays the major opponent in the dogfight at the end, where Masters destroys his “MiG-23” and all ends well.
The kiln has its moments, even though it’s a bandwagon exercise after the far more polished Top Gun. When the USAF declined to assist with the film’s production, writer/director Sidney J. Fury was compelled to turn to the Israeli Air Force. This indicates that the action sequences include some amazing aerial footage of Vipers tangling with “MiG-23s,” played by IAI Kfirs, shot by Jim Gavin (of Blue Thunder fame).
Doug Masters is shot down by Russian “MiG-29s” in the opening scene of the second movie, which is imaginatively titled “Iron Eagle II,” as he strays into forbidden airspace. The scenario that develops is an American-Russian combined ground and air force action targeting a nuclear site owned by a rogue state.
Traditionally, toward the end of the movie, we witness both sides cooperating to complete the task, transforming what at first seems like a mission that could never succeed due to the warring, excessively competitive character of the pilots and soldiers of the two nations. In the second 1988 film, the MiGs were portrayed by the IAF’s F-4E Phantom II Kurnass aircraft from 69 Squadron (complete with blacked-out rear cockpits). Again, there is some excellent air-to-air footage showing these two fantastic aircraft in action together and in combat with the ‘bad guys’ played once more by IAI Kfirs.
Similar to the original movie, Iron Eagle II was shot on site in Israel at a number of different places, such as the Israeli Air Force base close to Haifa and numerous mountainous and desert areas, where a large portion of the exciting air-to-air scenes were filmed. IAF pilots were used throughout the whole filming process, and they were constantly on guard for potential threats from their Arab neighbors.
Aces: Iron Eagle III came next, and it was, to put it mildly, a terrible spectacle featuring `Chappie’ James in a moving mock air-combat warbird show. With the last episode, Iron Eagle IV: On the Attack, the formula became even more absurd. Doug Masters, who had apparently been lazing in a Soviet prison camp, returns and is recruited to assist Chappie in turning a group of idle kids into pilots when they come across a chemical warfare plant. Even if F-16s are employed once more (in combat against T-6 Harvards flown by teens, of all things), the series by this point lost much of the charm that made the first one a moderate success.
F-16 Fighting Falcon is published by Mortons Books and is available to order here.
Screenshot from the movies
