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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome back to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, call sign MHP.

Speaker 2: What the hell?

Speaker 3: Good morning, aviators. This is your captain speaking.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For the second week in a row, Top Gun: Maverick is flying high at the Box Office. Film is already grossed more than a half-billion dollars worldwide.

Speaker 4: Everyone here is the best there is. Who the hell are they going to get to teach us?

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes. After 36 years, Tom Cruise is back as the apply named Maverick, cocky, impulsive, and every bit as beach-ready as he was in the '80s. How does he do that?

Speaker 5: Grab the [unintelligible 00:00:45] listen to a house [unintelligible 00:00:48]

Melissa Harris-Perry: No major spoilers here, but the new movie centers on Maverick's relationship with Rooster played by Miles Teller. He's the son of Maverick's late partner Goose played by Anthony Edwards in the original, but there are modern elements too. Monica Barbaro plays Phoenix, the franchise's first woman pilot. Now we wanted to find out how real the portrayal of her experience was. We turned to commander Becky Dowling Calder, the first woman pilot ever to graduate from the Navy's Strike Fighter Weapon School, better known as Top Gun. Commander Calder earned her aviator wings in 2000, she served an operation Southern Watch, enduring freedom and Iraq freedom.

She accumulated about 2,500 flight hours. She's part of an elite group of people with very particular skills, but flying fighter jets wasn't actually her first love.

Becky Dowling Calder: I think I ended up there both flying and at the Naval Academy in the Navy and even in the reserves today because of my love for basketball, actually.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Basketball led you to being a pilot, how's that?

Becky Dowling Calder: You know what, it always comes back to basketball. I played basketball in high school and I wanted to play Division 1 and the Naval Academy recruited me. That's how I ended up at the Naval Academy and it was a chance meeting on a basketball court with a mentor of mine who told me I would make a kick-ass F-18 pilot.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It turns out you are a kick-ass pilot. Like whoever said that was absolutely right. Now, the Pentagon lifted its combat ban for women in aviation in '93. That was just before you went off to the Naval Academy, right?

Becky Dowling Calder: That is true. Yes. The Combat Exclusion Law or what was called the risk rule was officially rescinded. It's interesting because when I was told that, that day on the basketball court, it was just a few years after that. Women really hadn't been flying in combat yet. He was actually the deputy commandant of my shipment. He saw something that I didn't even know really was possible. It's a real testament to just the importance of both leadership and mentorship.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Tell us how you got to Top Gun.

Becky Dowling Calder: Top Gun for Navy pilots happens after your first tour. I did my first combat deployment after I joined my first squadron and it was right after the war started, we left in 2002. I got back from my deployment and I had an experience on that deployment, which really led me to try to apply for Top Gun because of some things I experienced. After my first deployment I knew I wanted to be the best pilot I could be. I knew that meant going to Top Gun.

Melissa Harris-Perry: When you got there, did it live up to the hype?

Becky Dowling Calder: There was definitely some hype, but I'll tell you, it was such a place of excellence, a place of expertise, a place of really just true dedication to a craft. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be the best. It was evident in everything that was going on at Top Gun that this was the place.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, one of the best parts of Top Gun, the original, other than the volleyball scene was of course the flight scenes and the sequel does not disappoint. The cast had to train rigorously, doing underwater training, flying in simulators, learning to operate cockpit cameras and eventually getting up in the air.

Speaker 6: Pick up some [unintelligible 00:04:23]

Speaker 7: During flight training, they would be embarrassed about puking. I was like, "Do not be embarrassed about that."

Speaker 8: I feel every bit of food I've had in my stomach-- I'm okay. [unintelligible 00:04:36]

Speaker 9: My mustache fell off.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We're back now with Commander Becky Dowling Calder talking about her time in the Navy's elite program for fighter pilots.

Becky Dowling Calder: There was elements of exhaustion. I think anybody that has gone through the program will tell you that it's a pretty intense school that tests you both mentally and physically and both the training in the jet and the training on the ground it's equally as exhausting. It really does change your outlook on what the mission is, what your job is in the service and just really what you're called to do.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What felt different in terms of that calling after your time in the program?

Becky Dowling Calder: I think it goes back to that experience I had on my first deployment, I was asked to do some things, to support some troops on the ground that I felt like I wasn't prepared for. That was something that I knew then that the tactics needed to change and the only way to do that was through going to Top Gun and becoming one of those tactics instructors. I think that once you go through the course and then you are charged with teaching those tactics to the fleet, not only the young pilots and the new pilots, but also the older ones too.

Sometimes that can be even more difficult than teaching the younger generation because the older generation the higher-level leaders they've been doing this for a long time, oftentimes longer than you have and it is your job to make sure that they know how to operate the F/A-18 in all sorts of scenarios, both in training and in combat and to make sure they do their job.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You're one of the few pilots to fly every version of the Hornet and that's a fighter jet that can go faster than the speed of sound. What is that like?

Becky Dowling Calder: I do feel honored to have flown all the versions. I think that is also a testament to my age and my not giving up. My first deployment was in the F/A-18 Charlie. That was the Hornet and then it switched to the Super Hornet. My second deployment was in the Echo, both the Charlie and the Echo were single-seat versions. When I went through Top Gun, I went through in 2004 and they also had some older versions of the Hornet, which we don't even fly anymore. I got to fly the Alpha and I got to fly the Bravo. That's where I flew those older versions and also the Delta. Those that's where those came from. Then the E and the F were the super Hornet versions. I flew a majority of those hours in my training officer tour, which was after Top Gun and in my instructor tour. I flew a lot of E and F time there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You were the first woman pilot to graduate Top Gun. Did it ever feel like you were under a microscope?

Becky Dowling Calder: There's a few challenges. I think I tried to navigate those with grace and as best as I could. I think that for anybody who has experienced being the first or someone who looks different than the majority of people that are in the room there is definitely an aspect of living under a microscope. I've had to navigate that throughout the rest of my career, really. I didn't do things perfectly. I tried to do things the best I could. I tried to stay true to myself. I just tried to do my job. That's what I went to Top Gun for. It was never to be the first, it was to learn that F/A-18 to fly the F/A-18 the best that I can. That's what it was about.

I think I've talked about this before the jet does not care about gender and that's what I've always leaned back on that I just need to do my job the best that I can and and hopefully do it well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: What sense of responsibility or connection do you feel with the women who have followed in your legacy?

Becky Dowling Calder: There is a sense of connection. I think both the connection of just those that have all gone through Top Gun. I think that there is a connection there. Then of course, for the women that have gone through the program, there has been just a handful, just over 20. I am so proud. I'm both honored and then proud to see this next generation of younger air crew going through the program, continuing to pursue just the excellence in their craft, and for F/A-18 teams that means going to Top Gun. I think that I have a lot of both respect because I know how hard the program is. Respect for those women, because I know how hard it is to be among the few and the only and that's hard.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, there is a little bit of a family thing going on here though. You may have been a first, often the only, but you weren't all alone. Your husband's also a Top Gun grad, is that right.

Becky Dowling Calder: He is. He went to Top Gun about a year before I did. Yes, we like to joke. We keep it in the family. He's an excellent pilot. He's actually just finishing his Navy career and retiring after 25 years of service. I'm also not only a pilot, but I'm also a proud military spouse. Some the last 10 years I have been supporting him and his career and loving every minute of that as well.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I think we got to talk about the movie a little bit, Maverick and in part because now that I've established you and your husband, then we've got to establish that there are kids and so much of Maverick is about the kid that then goes off to follow in the father's footsteps or in the parent's footsteps. Any sense that you've got some good pilots among your little people?

Becky Dowling Calder: Yes, we wanted to see the movie as a family. We picked our kids up from school early one day last week and we went to the theater together and I think the one thing I was not expecting was how emotional the movie was going to make me. I didn't realize I had seen it-- It came out when I was 10 years old and I had seen it when I was younger and didn't realize how much it was going to affect my life and become my life. Now, as I am on the other side of that not flying anymore now as a parent, as a military spouse, it really hit me differently.

I think part of it and the aspect of the movie of the child who grows up without his father really hit close to home, both in having my husband be deployed eight months a year, the last three years, having to say goodbye to him with my children, watching them say goodbye to their dad and just knowing and praying that he's doing exactly what he's being called to do, but realizing that some children, some military children don't have their parents and have lost their parents both at war in times of peace as well in training accidents and training missions, friends of mine, children that I know who are going to grow up without their father. It just really, really may be emotional.

All the on-screen, the flying, it was just absolutely amazing. It was also really emotional.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Did the flying feel familiar? Was it just so Hollywood that it didn't at all, or was there at least something in the spirit of it that felt like the flying that you're on the other side of [unintelligible 00:12:18]

Becky Dowling Calder: What's interesting about that movie and what made me, how it made me reflect on my life is to me that life is normal. Flying F/A-18s, fighting other jets, doing air to air combat in training, all of that is normal to me. Watching it on the big screen, sitting there with my children as a spectator now, as a Navy spouse, I realize just how truly not normal that is. It took a huge screen and it's been 30-plus years since the last Top Gun movie. I was sitting there just watching and I realized that what I did was pretty special and I'm excited that my children can see it and that everybody can see it.

The flying scenes were incredible and the aircrew who flew those, the Navy pilots who flew those scenes, they are serving our country today and they're doing it because they signed up to serve this country. Now everybody gets to see what they do and what they have sacrificed and what they do sacrifice every day for this country.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are the relationships real? By relationships, I mean the long-term connections between Maverick and Goose's son, Rooster. Are those kinds of relationships real?

Becky Dowling Calder: Those relationships are absolutely real. The connections are real. The people that you go to war with you become family with, and those are real.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay. We're going to finish up with a little speed round here because, you know, speed. Are you really good at beach volleyball?

Becky Dowling Calder: No.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Basketball, but not the volleyball. Okay.

Becky Dowling Calder: Absolutely.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Can the planes, can the jets really fly that low, that close, and that fast?

Becky Dowling Calder: They can, but they probably shouldn't.

Melissa Harris-Perry: If you did what Tom Cruise did and went rogue and took an unauthorized fight just to prove that the impossible was possible. What would happen?

Becky Dowling Calder: I probably wouldn't be flying anymore, but like I said, it's Hollywood and a lot of things can happen in Hollywood.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Charlie or Phoenix?

Becky Dowling Calder: Phoenix.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Original Top Gun or Maverick.

Becky Dowling Calder: Oh, that's a good one. I'm going to go Maverick.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Commander Becky Dowling Calder, the first female pilot to graduate from Top Gun. Thank you so much for being with us.

Becky Dowling Calder: You are so welcome. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:15:24] [END OF AUDIO]

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