The true aircraft of ‘Top Gun’ and the searching pilot who killed his controls in 1994 starring the dramatic comedian album ‘Tomcat’ | Culture | EUROtoday

This is a shifting subsidiary love story, love and love of airplanes and the flight, all mixed. Tomcat, The new comedian album (Norma, 2025) of the 45 -year -old French cartoonist Romain Hugault, thought-about the most effective specialists on the planet in drawing airplanes, writer of The Grand Duke a collection Angel Wings (starring an aviator), tells the true story of the reactor Grumman F-14 Tomcat that was taken as a mannequin for the 1986 movie Top Gunwith Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, and that of the Naval pilot Kara Hultreen, who died in 1994 in an accident at his controls. Hugault, which can be aviator, is an enormous fan of the spectacular F-14 who after the movie acquired iconic standing, on the top of the Sabre F-86, the Phantom F-4, the MIG -15 or the Mirage III of Tanguy and Laverdure. “The Tomcat is for me a mythical plane, a hero of my childhood, which was sublimated in Top Gun and that marked all the children of the eighties, “Hugault explains to this newspaper.” It was a gigantic and powerful hunting that impressed. I had a poster in my room and knew me by heart. ”

The Tomcat of the album recounts his life Since he left the meeting chain of the CALVERTON FACTORY, NEW YORK, at Christmas 1977 with the 160390 serial quantity till his loss throughout a touchdown (apontaje) on the flight cowl cowl of the service USS Abraham Lincoln On October 25, 1994 in opposition to San Diego, California, through the preparations for deployment within the Persian Gulf. In that tragedy he misplaced his life, because the vignettes, Lieutenant Hultreen (1965-1994), the primary aviator of the USA launched into plane and the primary searching pilot of his nation in dying when he crashed when he crashed. “With my screenwriter, Anastasia Heinzl, we look for a different and original angle to tell this story that is both technical and emotional, and we opted for that idea of ​​making the plane itself speak and that I saw its entire existence pass before him in his final moments. The goal was for readers to feel involved with both Tomcat and the character.”

There is the circumstance that Romain Hugault’s personal mom, Catherine Hugault, aviator herself (as are the daddy of the cartoonist, Colonel Alain Hugault, and her older brother, Sébastien) and president of the Cohué-Brux Aeroclub DR400-120. The misfortune, based on his son, came about per week after the viñetista and his mom noticed within the cinema – on his final afternoon collectively – the sequel to the movie of Tom Cruise, Top Gun: Maverick. Romain Hugault determined to maneuver ahead with the album, projected a 12 months earlier than his mom’s loss of life, who was an enormous fan of his son’s work. “It was very hard, he died at the controls of his plane. Heaven gives a lot and sometimes he takes and is violent, but that has not diminished my love for airplanes.” Has the private drama influenced you when drawing the story of Kara Hultreen? “Yes, I have clearly spoken of the eighties and ninety years that are also those of my childhood, the passion for airplanes, Top GunTomcat, which is a way of talking about the duel, pilot women and pilots who crash and die. I had the idea of ​​doing the album before, I hesitated to change everything because the story tells Kara’s accident in the landing, and there is an obvious similarity; Then I decided to do the best I could, thinking of mom, and as a form of tribute. ”

The album Tomcat The stroke of the protagonist aircraft follows, which included being a part of six completely different squadrillas, together with the VF-84, the well-known Jolly Rogers of the pirate flag as emblem, the VF-41 of the Black Aces (the AS of Picas), or the VF-213 Black Lions, to which the gadget belonged and Kara Hultregen after they crash. When it was highlighted in 1980 on the plane carriers Nimitz (As the comedian recollects), Tomcat appeared as further within the science fiction movie The finish of the countdown, through which the F-14, transferred by an odd atmospheric phenomenon to World War II, confronted the Japanese zeros, to their shock. But his nice second, as proven spectacularly within the vignettes, arrived in August 1981 with the Black Aces when carrying Larry Muczynski (Music Indicative) and radarist, sitting behind, sitting behind, James Anderson (AMOS) was deployed within the Mediterranean in opposition to Libya and felt two mig 23 fighters from Gaddafi Hostiles. The episode appeared because the culminating second of the movie Top Gun launched 5 years later. Hugault’s comedian reveals how a younger woman Hultreen goes to look at the film at its premiere in Austin (Texas) and, excited, decides to be a day Maverick, the character of Tom Cruise.

The second a part of the album consists of the historical past of the lifetime of the younger lady, her formation as a navy pilot, her battle in opposition to sexism and discrimination within the air forces (together with being the sufferer of abuse at an Navy social gathering in Las Vegas that fell aside), and her earnings, breaking not the sound barrier, however that of gender, within the Miramar de San Diego college, the identical Top Gunto type as a Tomcats searching pilot in 1993 when the mixing of ladies for fight was authorised. The story concludes when the protagonist Tomcat and the aviator coincide and undertake its remaining flight. Hultreen’s forty ninth Astine (Hulk Indicatives, for his final title, and Revlon, for the make-up he utilized in a tv program) was the final one: the gadget was destabilized, a engine failed, he went to the left of the deck, turned on the wing on that aspect and fell into the ocean. There is a filming of the accident and Hugault reproduces with chilling realism the episode on a double anthological web page. The radarist behind the pilot managed to catapult himself effectively and survived, however she, an on the spot later, was shot on to the ocean due to the angle of the aircraft and killed himself immediately. One of probably the most spectacular drawings within the e book is the one which reveals Tomcat immersing himself in direction of the marine abyss and the aviator in his seat ejected subsequent to him with the cross arms just like the wings of the gadget. An picture worthy of the Crucifixions of the Harrier of Fiona Banner within the Tate Britain and the Túpolev Bomber of Francesc Torres within the MNAC. The Navy rescued the aircraft 19 days later, which was 1,100 meters deep, and the physique of the aviator, nonetheless tied to the seat. She was buried within the National Cemetery of Arlington with navy honors.

Criticism arose to the alleged lack of qualification of Hultreen and his loss of life was utilized by those that noticed with dangerous eyes the presence of ladies in fight aviation, however an inner investigation confirmed that the accident was as a consequence of a mechanical failure and to not a pilot error. In simulator exams underneath the identical circumstances 97 % of the pilots crashed similar to Kara. It would in all probability not even saved Maverick. Hugault remembers that the aviator was a veteran and had piloted planes with troublesome repute.

Hugault, which pulls its plane with a realism and a really refined sensational technical element (the album contains appendages in regards to the technical specs of the Tomcat, its operational and cultural historical past and the way in which to attract them), has been in a plane service, the Frenchman Charles de Gaulle. When telling him his interlocutor who was within the USS Truman In the Persian Gulf and it nonetheless has a tough time believing the expertise, it factors out that the French ship could seem “relatively small” in comparison with its US family members, however that “it is funny to point out that given the slightest length of the roof the mode of us the French to take off and apontante is the ’emergency’ mode of the Americans, to whom the talent of the French pilots impresses visit. ”

From the problem of capturing the Tomcat, probably the most cumbersome and heavy hunt ever manufactured within the US, he says that it’s a “complicated drawing” aircraft since it’s a “proteifical, which looks like an animal”. He provides that, being a variable wing geometry, when it’s flying with the folded wings and when it lands with them prolonged it doesn’t appear the identical aircraft. “It has many volumes and details, I particularly love to draw the patina of the paint that, even if this seagull gray has so many touch -ups, spots, traces of use, fingerprints of wear, which is a real patchwork that encourages the life of the plane.”