It’s Top Gun: Maverick Week here at For The Win, where we’ve taken to the skies for five days’ worth of content to celebrate the premiere of the sequel to 1986’s iconic ode to Naval Aviation. Strap in for a wild ride (no spoilers!).
Tom Cruise was adamant that the aviation sequences in Top Gun: Maverick be realistic. This meant that the young actors had to go through intense training, both on the ground and then in the air. A large part of that ground training involves water survival, something all naval aviators have to complete in case the absolute unthinkable happens and you end up in the water.
The worst and most memorable part of this water survival training for most participants is the Modular Egress Training Simulator, better known as the Helo Dunker. The Dunker simulates when a helicopter hits water and begins sinking, at which point it flips upside down.
Yes, you read that right, it flips upside down and continues sinking as it fills with water.
To complete the training, you unstrap yourself (once you come to a full stop upside down and submerged) and egress through one of the approved exits. This may involve working a lever to open a window or climbing over multiple seats to find one of these aforementioned windows. Sometimes, you have to wear a blindfold. Fun!
The Dunker is third in a series of crawl, walk, run underwater training to prep you for egress, and it looks a little something like this:
As a former naval aviator, I have been personally tormented by the Helo Dunker, and even more times than the training required as I am a self-proclaimed terrible swimmer and therefore terrible at the whole process. When done properly, the whole thing takes a matter of seconds, even if you’re in the seat further from the window. If you didn’t think you were terrified of being strapped into an enclosed space while it fills with water, you will be after you do it a few times.
It can humble even the biggest and strongest of aviators, or in the case of Top Gun: Maverick, actors. “There were tears,” Jay Ellis, the actor who portrays Payback, said immediately upon being asked about his experience with the dunker. “There was a lot of shaking.”
Cast mate Lewis Pullman — callsign Bob — laughed. “Look at all of our body language,” Pullman said as he, Ellis and Monica Barbaro physically recoiled as they thought back to their Dunker runs. “You get kicked in the head,” Barbaro said before Ellis agreed. “I got knocked out almost.”
Pullman had the misfortune of needing to complete the training with a fever of 101 degrees. Since they were on a tight timeline to begin filming, he had no choice but to power through, a fate I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy.
Miles Teller, a.k.a LT Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, succinctly sums it up. “Well, the Dunker is horrible.”
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Danny Ramirez, who plays Weapon Systems Officer Fanboy in Maverick, had his own tale of terror from the experience. In an animated fashion, Ramirez explained how he and co-star Glen Powell (callsign Hangman) volunteered for an extra ride as solidarity for Tarzan Davis (callsign Coyote), who still had one more run through to get fully qualified. “At that point, I felt all cocky that we had passed the test,” Ramirez said.
Easy, right?
Not so fast. His harness wouldn’t unlatch, leaving him stuck hanging upside down underwater. “The harness wasn’t opening, and I see Glen [Powell] kind of waiting for me,” Ramirez said, mimicking Powell’s underwater treading as he waited for his open window to egress out of. “He sees me unable to open my harness, and he’s like, ‘alright’ and just leaves.”
Davis and Ramirez bust up laughing as Powell attempts to explain that he didn’t abandon his cast mate. “Tarzan was already out — he accomplished the test,” Ramirez continued. “Finally two of them let loose and I squiggle out of there.”
This wasn’t the only time that Powell got some flak with regards to the Dunker, however.
“You’ve got to trust your buddy — I won’t name names … Glen Powell — to open a window the way you tell him,” Barbaro said with a smile. “There’s only one way this window is going to open, and he’s like, ‘yeah sure, you’re just not as strong as I am.'”
Powell, however, was the lone cast member that admitted to loving the Dunker. There is always one in a group that goes through training, and for this cadre of Maverick actors, Powell was the guy.
“I think I’m the only one that loved the Helo Dunker,” Powell said with a wry smile. “I’m that guy. I just thought it was like an American Gladiators activity. So even after I passed I went back in it with everyone for solidarity, but really I was just having a good time,” he added with emphatic air quotes on the word solidarity.
All the stress and inhaled water was worth it, however, when you get to see the finished product that includes the actors in the back seats of F/A-18s. They just might give a little extra pause when driving over a bridge from here on out.
Top Gun: Maverick hits theaters May 27 nationwide.
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