One of the F-14 pilots who flew in The Final Countdown shares his personal notes on the movie that introduced the Tomcat to Hollywood. “Splash the Zeros!”
A full six years before “Top Gun” brought the F-14 Tomcat into the spotlight, “The Final Countdown” had already showcased Grumman’s twin‑tailed fighter as a natural star. As a young lieutenant and F-14 pilot, Al “Shoes” Mullen flew in The Final Countdown, and he has generously allowed the author to draw on his personal notes about the experience.
Shoes reported to Fighter Squadron 84 (VF-84, the Jolly Rogers) in September 1977 as a brand‑new pilot and quickly stood out, earning a coveted slot at the Topgun course in September 1978 with RIO Jim “Tex” Huston. Only a few months after completing Topgun, Shoes and Tex joined a group of pilots and RIOs who spent several weeks at NAS Key West filming a science‑fiction adventure in which the USS Nimitz is sent back in time and crosses paths with elements of the Japanese strike force in the days leading up to the Pearl Harbor attack. If you can accept the time‑travel premise, it’s actually a pretty good movie.
Peter Douglas, the son of actor Kirk Douglas, originally conceived the movie. The project sat idle for several years until Commander Emory Brown learned about it shortly before taking command of VF-84 and offered the squadron’s support. That’s how the Jolly Rogers—who already flew some of the Navy’s most distinctive F-14s—ended up becoming internationally known as movie stars.
Shoes says filming in Key West “started with a helicopter as a camera platform, two T-6s (and a spare) playing Zeros, and about five F-14s: two painted as ‘202,’ two painted as ‘203,’ and one spare ready to be anything.”
“The strategy was doomed from the start. The movie guys wanted the Tomcats flying with their wings swept back to look cool (so we had to be fast), the T-6s flying with their canopies open to looking cool, (which slowed them down), and the helicopter hovering as a stable camera platform, theoretically in a known location.” That is, until the tropical winds blew it around.
Before shooting any flying sequences, the pilots and film crew carefully planned and briefed each shot, just as they would for a normal flight.
However, using a helicopter as the camera platform made filming much more difficult. Shoes said, “Every scene was an attempt to get three pool balls to collide on a pool table at exactly the same time. Try it sometime!”
On top of everything else, they were shooting on film with no video playback for instant review. They’d spend all day filming, then ship the reels off for processing. They kept filming for another day or two before the first batch of film came back—only to discover that very little of what they’d shot was usable.
“Either the Tomcats and Zeros were awesome, but no helicopter was there to film it. Or the helo was trying to hang on to information of Zeros, and the Tomcats fell out of the sky trying to slow down to below 200 knots with the wings swept back.” It was an expensive waste of time.
In the end, the production team brought in a modified B-25 from Tallmantz Aviation, outfitted with a camera in the tail gunner’s position.
“This was a game changer because the bomber was speed compatible with the Zeros, and they could comfortably fly in formation with the bomber as one element. We (Tomcats) could fly at 300 knots or more to sweep the wings, and finally, we only had to get two pool balls to hit on the table at the same time. Infinitely easier!”
The finished film delivered some unforgettable shots not just of the F-14, but of the entire air wing and carrier operations. Standout moments include the sequence where two alert Tomcats are cleared to arm, then roar forward as their wings sweep back. Moments later, after they’ve mauled the Zeros and the enemy fighters break away, we see a Zero skimming the tops of the clouds—only for a Tomcat to loom into view right behind it, looking ominous.
The Final Countdown hit theaters on August 1, 1980. It was positioned as a summer blockbuster, but audiences responded only moderately. According to the website “The Numbers,” it earned nearly $57 million worldwide at the box office—not terrible, but the majority of that total came from international releases rather than domestic ones.
These days, several movie sites describe The Final Countdown with positive terms like “interesting,” “entertaining,” “thought‑provoking,” and “fun to watch.” It’s especially beloved by Tomcat enthusiasts, who never tire of seeing the big jet in action.
Author Dave “Bio” Baranek was a student RIO when The Final Countdown came out in August 1980. He went through the Topgun class in 1982, and LT “Shoes” Mullen was one of his instructors. Bio’s next book, Tomcat RIO, will be published in May 2020.
