Goofs

When Maverick leaves Charlie's house after he has dinner with her, there is a For Rent sign in her yard (as there is when he drives by her house later in the movie), but there wasn't one when he arrived.

During the final dog fight, Iceman's F-14 is hit, resulting in him shutting down an engine. This is now an emergency aircraft needing priority handling and landing ASAP. However, upon returning, Iceman elects to do a single engine high speed flyby with Maverick.

Exactly where Hop 31 takes place is totally inconsistent. When Maverick is in the flat spin he is above a rocky, desert area, yet somehow crash lands in the ocean nowhere near any desert terrain.

In the stairwell, Iceman puts on a watch twice.

In the mission when Maverick has Sundown as his RIO, Jester's plane alternates between a plain gray paint job, and a camoflauge one.

In the final engagement when Maverick says he is "supersonic," the next shot shows his F-14 with the wings in the extended position. For an F-14 to be traveling at supersonic speeds, the wings would have to in the swept back position. He could not have forgotten to sweep his wings back because the wing geometry of the F-14 is not pilot-controlled; it is controlled automatically by the flight computer.

There are several scenes of Maverick walking outdoors without a cap or hat; in the Navy and Marines, this absolutely is not done.

The center of the story at the pilot training school is a series of competitions that lead to the awarding of the "Top Gun" trophy. The real flight school has never had that trophy or anything like it, as the training is designed to encourage cooperation amongst the pilots.

In the opening, a full-screen explanation of the Top Gun program says it was created "to "insure" that pilots receive the training..." etc. The correct word in this case is "ensure" as in 'to guarantee.'

During Cougar and Merlin's approach to the carrier, the approach controller makes a call to their aircraft, "Cougar, you are well below glide path at 3 quarters of a mile. Call the Ball." Then, the Landing Signal Officer hears a reply, "Roger Ball," without ever hearing Cougar confirm that he had the Ball in sight. Additionally, the approach controller made radio calls to both Maverick and Cougar, referring to both of them by their callsigns, which is something never done over the radio. Anyone calling their aircraft over the radio would refer to the aircraft's mission callsign, in this case, "Ghostrider 117" for Cougar and Merlin, and "Ghostrider 203," for Maverick and Goose. Once the approach controller tells the approaching aircraft to "call the ball," Maverick's reply, for example, should have been "Ghostrider 203, Tomcat Ball, 1 Point 1." That lets everyone know several important pieces of information. One, the aircraft callsign and type of aircraft approaching, so the sailors working the carrier arresting gear know the proper tension to set on the wires for a safe landing. Two, the fact that the pilot sees the Ball, so that the LSO can take over control, and guide the crew down to a safe landing. Three, the amount of fuel the aircraft has remaining, in this example 1,100 pounds of gas remaining. That way, the LSO knows how to properly sort the approaching aircraft by amount of fuel remaining, should the aircraft miss the wires, and be forced to make another landing attempt, divert to a land base, or join on the tanker for more fuel.

Navy rules state on tactical jets, oxygen shall be worn from takeoff until landing, a rule broken throughout the movie. Real Navy/Marine Corps pilots break this rule all the time as well.

Flight crews are seen throughout the film wearing golf shirts under their flight suits. While it is more common to wear a t-shirt under the flight suit, in the 1980's up until the early 2000's, crews did have the option to wear a golf shirt with their squadron colors under their flight suits.

When Charlie chases down Maverick on his motorcycle her car has a blue DOD decal on its windshield. Blue decals are used for officers, red decals for enlisted. As a civilian employee she would have had a green DOD decal for her car. The vehicle "Charlie" is driving was borrowed from her "older date" at the beginning of the movie hence the vehicle having a blue DOD decal.

Goose is depicted as a Lt (jg) and wears the proper insignia: on a white uniform, shoulder boards with one thick gold bar and one thin, and in khakis, a single silver bar (a full lieutenant wears double silver bars). (Some thought he was wearing full lieutenant insignia; they are similar.)

The insignia for a Navy Lieutenant happen to be the same as for Army and Air Force Captains. Thus, Maverick and Iceman are correctly wearing Lieutenant insignia.

Maverick fires the same missile from the same wing station at least three times. This is because only two live missile launches were authorized by the military and so the footage is repeated many times throughout the film along with model shots.

During the first hop, Jester clearly states that the hard deck would be 10,000 feet. However, during most of the engagement you can clearly see that the fighters are flying much closer to the ground than 10,000 feet. They fly through the terrain,and at one point Goose even says "Watch the mountain!" Since the tallest mountain in San Diego County doesn't rise above 6,600 feet, there would be no way for them to be in any danger if they were actually above the hard deck.

Several times you can see missiles that are supposed to be live for combat hanging from aircraft wings. The missiles have a blue band around them indicating they are inert training missiles. Live missiles would have a yellow band as a warning of the live high explosive warhead.

In the elevator scene, Charlie's hair is noticeably darker than in other scenes. This is because this scene was shot after principal photography, and Kelly McGillis had already dyed her hair for another film role. The filmmakers tried to hide her darkened hair with the cap, but it's still noticeable.

When Maverick is launching from the carrier before the final battle, he goes directly into a roll when leaving ship. An F-14 taking off with full tanks of fuel wouldn't have gained enough speed to do this so soon. You can see while filming this (rear mounted camera), the plane that does the roll comes from a low-level flyby over side of the carrier. Also, the catapult Maverick supposedly launched from is "stacked" with parked aircraft.

An aircraft carrier never turns on its own radar, nor do any of its escorting surface ships. The radar signal can be backtracked to its source; it's like lighting a match or a flashlight in the dark. Our flying services do this routinely; we have air-to-surface missiles that can backtrack a radar signal to its source and take out the radar set (and probably a number of members of the crew as well.) All radar surveillance is done by E-2C 'Hawkeye' radar planes. Their radar signals can be backtracked to their source as well, but all they do is give the enemy a general idea of where the carrier is, and by the time they worked out the exact location, F-14s would be in position to intercept any hostile aircraft. Further, the F-14s would not turn their radars on either; they'd get all of their interception instructions from the airborne Hawkeyes.

In the elevator scene the officer that enters is wearing a garrison cap. In the navy, indoors, the officer would not have been covered. Covers are only worn outdoors.

When Maverick is sitting on his motorcycle watching an F-14 land, the tailhook is in the down position. The tailhook is only used when landing on a carrier, not on a land-based runway.

The story narrative tells us that Maverick's father, flying an F-4 off the USS Oriskany, vanishes/was shot down. No F-4 squadrons ever deployed in Oriskany. In the Vietnam era, her fighters were F-8Es.

Although the F-5 depicts the fictional Mig-28, it is shown firing a rotary cannon that is only visible in the close up shots with an obscure background. The initial close ups of the Migs don't contain such a gun. It is more likely that they have the F-5 type revolver cannon without multiple revolving barrels. The revolver cannon only has a revolving chamber and fits better in small airframes.

When the command deck officer informs Stinger that the catapults are broken and that they can't launch aircraft, the officer's lip movements don't match what he says.

(At around 1h 27m) When Stinger says "The communication ship SS Layton has become disabled, and has wandered into foreign territory..." the movement of his lips clearly doesn't match what he is saying.

When Maverick is driving his motorcycle along the runway with the planes taking off, you can see the bed of the truck he's atop at the bottom of the screen.

At many points during the briefing prior to the first hop, you can clearly see men reflected forward in the actor's glasses, presumably crew members. They can't be characters since Charlie is the only character standing in front of the men briefing them at this time.

(At around 48m) When Maverick steps into the elevator, a crew member can be seen reflected on the picture frame on the wall behind him.

When Maverick arrives at Top Gun, the subtitles read "Miramar, California". There is no city named Miramar in CA. Naval Air Station (NAS) Miramar was actually in the Miramar neighborhood of the City of San Diego, CA. It has since been transferred to the US Marine Corps and is now known as Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Miramar.

For the first hop, the hard deck, which is the simulated ground level, is set at ten thousand feet (nearly two miles), meaning that for the pretended combat, there would be a buffer from the real ground. It is assumed that this is ten thousand above ground level, but when the pilots fly the hop and shoot Jester down, there are mountains very close, and Goose even warns Maverick to watch the mountains, as he nearly crashes into them.

The final dogfight happens over water, yet a mountain is visible in the corner of one shot.

In the opening scene, they are in the Indian Ocean, but during one of the fight scenes, you can see mountains in the background.

Upon arrival at "Top Gun" Jester details the creation of the school during the Vietnam war, explaining how pilots had become "dependent on missiles" and had lost their dog-fighting skills.

The pilots then spend their time in training attempting to missile lock each other.

When flipping the bird the lettering on the plane is messed up where it says Pete Mitchell Maverick.

For a rescue mission, it is ludicrous to send out only two Tomcats: Iceman and Hollywood who was replaced by Maverick after he was shot down. A 1980s US Navy Air Wing had two F-14 squadrons, two attack squadrons of A-7s or new F/A-18s, two all-weather attack squadrons of A-6s, E-2Cs for Early Warning and other support squadrons. They clearly couldn't secure filming these and the focus was on Maverick.

The term "bogey" is misused throughout the movie. A bogey is an unidentified aircraft. Once identified, it is referred to as a "friendly" (for friendly aircraft), "bandit" (for non-friendly aircraft) or "hostile" (for non-friendly aircraft that may be fired at). In USN terminology, a non-friendly surface radar contact is a "skunk".

During the final dogfight, Slider tells Iceman that there is a MiG "on your left, 3 o'clock." The 3 o'clock direction is to the right; 9 o'clock would be the left.

When Maverick and Charlie are having dinner, Otis Redding's "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" comes on and Maverick remembers his "folks loved it", then states his father "disappeared in an F-4 November 5th, 1965," yet this song was not written until November 1967.

In the flat spin sequence, Goose calls "Altitude 8,000, 7,000, 6,000", but when he calls "6,000" the altimeter is passing through 2,000 feet.

The signal that Maverick is given before he takes off for the final fight scene is not the launch signal, but rather the "remove power" signal. This signal is given early in F-14 launch procedures, not right before launch.