San Franciscans have Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a classic film of cinematic heights and existential falls, to define their city by the bay. Los Angeles explains its fundamental fatalism about corruption and power through Roman Polanski’s nasty noir Chinatown.

But San Diego—a beautiful place full of people who have thought and fought for their country—has long had to settle for 1986’s Top Gun, a dumb, jingoistic, and misogynistic Tom Cruise vehicle about Naval aviators, as its cinematic signature. Sure, San Diego played other places in acclaimed films from Some Like It Hot to Citizen Kane (the latter filmed in the city’s Balboa Park). But when it comes to playing and expressing itself, San Diego’s stuck with Top Gun and the 2004 comedy Anchorman, about dumb and misogynistic local TV personalities.

The arrival of a Top Gun sequel—after 36 years—certainly doesn’t solve the problem, even if it is a box office hit. This ludicrous film mirrors American decline, while misrepresenting San Diego in the process.

Top Gun: Maverick is premised entirely on an error of fact, pretending that the eponymous school for Navy fighter pilots operates out of the North Island Naval Air Station.

But the real-life Topgun was relocated from San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station to Fallon, Nevada back in 1996, as part of post-Cold War defense consolidation.

It’s not coming back.

Except in the movies—because a vapid and predictable film wants to tap into the magic of San Diego.

Part of that magic lies in the city’s beauty. So, the movie transports audiences not just to the naval base on North Island, but to Point Loma, various parts of Coronado, and Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. And we also get the tourism-bureau-approved privilege of watching Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise sail across the bay.

Another piece of that magic is San Diego’s image as protector of America. San Diego is California’s most American city, a striking contrast to Los Angeles and San Francisco, which see themselves as global metropolises, proudly out of step with the rest of the United States.

While other Californians debate whether to stand for national anthem at all, San Diegans sing the song themselves, often while flying the flag outside their front door. And the longstanding presence of the military provides the city with a deep well of patriotic renewal.

Top Gun: Maverick seeks to mine this well, but ultimately undermines it. When the movie taps into San Diego’s patriotism, it does the city a disservice.

While the original Top Gun was full of memorable, funny one-liners (“I feel the need, the need for speed” and “No points for second place”), the sequel decides to champion the line, “Don’t think—just do.”

The phrase isn’t just clunky. It reads as an indictment of both the film’s idiotic denouement (a Star Wars rip-off, with jets flying through a steep canyon to get off a miracle shot in the climactic moment) and of the United States itself.

“Don’t think” all too perfectly describes a country that thoughtlessly fails to vaccinate or wear masks—and ends up with more than one million people dead from COVID, apparently the highest death tally in the world. “Don’t think” fits an America that responds to gun violence by loosening restrictions on guns, making mass shootings routine. “Don’t think—just do” mirrors the American foreign policy that has kept us at war, in one place or another, for decades.

Pity San Diego, or any place else with a mission of defending such a country. Because so much of the time, to defend America is to defend the indefensible.

Which is why the movie is so unfair to San Diego. While military and aerospace are still highly visible in San Diego, the place is hardly dominated by these industries.

And San Diego actually does quite a lot of thinking.

In the original Top Gun, Cruise’s love interest was a mathematician with a PhD who worked for the Department of Defense; in the sequel, his love interest owns a bar. But San Diego, unlike Cruise’s cinematic partners, has become smarter over the past generation. It’s one of the country’s most educated cities, by measures that combine college degree attainment with the quality of its schools. It’s a leader in inventing new health and medical devices. Its remaining military installations are deeply grounded in science and tech. It’s a force in trade. And it just opened a new trolley line to its leading university, UC San Diego.

The film ignores this context, instead projecting its idiocy onto the city.

That’s too bad. San Diego deserves a cinematic touchstone as smart as it is.

The post <i>Top Gun</i> Is Too Dumb for San Diego appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

I offer that line not as a jab at the advanced average age of the Coachella Valley’s retiree-heavy population. Rather, it’s a testament to the warmth and wonder I felt while waiting for a recent flight at Palm Springs International Airport.

Pandemic-era air travel in California is typically a miserable combination of unhappy passengers and unreliable service—except in Palm Springs. There, flying still feels like a miracle.

The airport is small, with fewer than two dozen gates, and easy to navigate. Security lines are often short. After your body and bags are scanned, you emerge into an outdoor desert garden, with good coffee. It might be the best waiting room in American aviation.

And, if we’re lucky, sun-splashed, open-air PSP—the code by which this airport is known—will become a model for post-pandemic flight across California, and especially in the smaller airports of our growing inland regions.

PSP is already the people’s choice. While the pandemic has grounded the ambitions of the airlines and the larger travel industry, PSP has soared. 2021 was the busiest summer in the airport’s history. And since last June, the airport has set seven new monthly records for passengers; PSP now serves more than two million people annually.

The commercial air traffic may keep setting new records. Southwest Airlines started service in Palm Springs in late 2020 and now flies from there to eight cities, including Sacramento and Oakland. Six other airlines have added flights, including American Airlines to Philadelphia, JetBlue to Fort Lauderdale, and, just last month, aha! to Reno. The 13 passenger airlines serving the airport now offer 35 different routes—creating more competition and lowering fares, and surely making PSP even more popular.

In local news reports, airport officials have expressed surprise at this pandemic surge; they hadn’t projected a return to pre-COVID numbers until 2023. But this small airport, a former military base that the city of Palm Springs bought and converted six decades ago, has long found ways to succeed, even in hard times.

Indeed, PSP has prospered ever since the Great Recession, even as other airports in California, Nevada, and Arizona have stagnated. One reason has been the large number of Canadian snowbirds buying Coachella Valley properties after the collapse of the housing bubble. That growing Canadian colony created a huge demand for flights from the Great White North. PSP now has non-stop service not just to Vancouver and Toronto, but also to Calgary, Edmonton, and Winnipeg.

Thanks in part to the Canadian influx, Palm Springs established new records for passengers in six of the seven years between 2012 and 2019.

The airport’s growth has been supported over the last two decades by the sort of careful and sustained investment that too many California localities struggle to pull off. Early in the century came a new control tower, runway enhancements, a new and larger terminal, and a remodeling of that outdoor courtyard. More recent years have seen the expansion of the ticket lobby and a new, improved baggage handling system. These additions, carefully designed, have not cost the airport its small and convenient feel.

Palm Springs can’t take all the credit for its growth. The awfulness of flying in and out of LAX, and the horror of driving anywhere from it, have driven customers to find alternatives. And Ontario Airport, the nearest Inland Empire rival to Palm Springs, has been badly mismanaged, shedding flights and passengers for most of the 2000s and 2010s.

When COVID hit, PSP, with that outdoor space, felt like a safe place to visit—not unlike Palm Springs. The Coachella Valley’s great weather, and its tradition of indoor-outdoor living, has made it a popular place to pass the pandemic.

I made my maiden voyage recently on a late afternoon flight from PSP to Oakland, after a tiring day of reporting around the valley.

For the first time I can remember, an airport refreshed me. I made it through security in two minutes, having to wait only for a very polite family of five, all wearing Toronto Maple Leaf sweatshirts. I lay down on a shady bench in the garden, before heading up into the Sonny Bono Concourse to grab a sandwich at an open-air restaurant. While eating, I took in fabulous views of Southern California’s two highest mountains, Mt. San Gorgonio and Mt. San Jacinto. It felt a bit like visiting a desert spa.

Marveling at the scene, I told an airport worker that the only thing missing was a swimming pool. She quickly corrected me—there is a pool, but it’s in the general aviation part of the airport, for those who fly privately.

I’ve heard people compare the look of the airport, with attractive canopies and all that light, to the sets in the NBC show The Good Place, a comedy that offered a sun-splashed view of the afterlife. Of course, we mere mortals have no way of knowing whether PSP really looks like heaven. But Palm Springs does have one advantage on that other paradise: an airport that makes it easy to get in and get out.

The post Am I in Heaven or Just Flying Out of Palm Springs? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Ever since the late 1950s, when the advent of the jet engine revolutionized commercial air travel, Hawai‘i has enjoyed, or some would say endured, an unceasing tourist boom. Since that time the state has become adept at handling an overwhelming number of passengers traveling to and from Asia and the mainland United States.

Yet this impressive tally of travelers, as well as the availability of so many direct and inexpensive flights to the Hawaiian Islands, obscures a foundational truth about air travel to Hawai‘i: Less than a century ago, it was a near-miracle for anyone to arrive to the Paradise of the Pacific by airplane.

In fact, 17 of the 25 aviators who attempted the first transpacific flights failed to land in Hawai‘i.

Despite their high rate of failure, these aviators’ efforts during the summers of 1925 and 1927 were instructive and inspiring. It took tremendous courage to wing across the water for more than 24 hours from California, traveling across half an ocean in a fragile, primitive flying machine made mostly of wood and fabric. These early American aviators were incredibly determined and industrious, as well as dead set on establishing an air link between Hawaiian shores and the mainland, no matter the danger of crossing 2,400 miles of open water.

As the young civilian air navigator Emory Bronte exclaimed in 1927, “As far as I’m concerned, it’s heaven, hell, or Honolulu for me—and I know it’ll be Honolulu!”

These first flight attempts to Hawai‘i occurred during the golden age of aviation, the two decades between the World Wars when the airplane matured from a curiosity to a useful, semi-reliable, and absolutely revolutionary mode of travel. Airplanes of this era evolved from biplane designs to monoplanes, and used more powerful and efficient engines. By the mid-1920s, airplanes regularly flew between cities, above mountains, and over lakes, jungles, and deserts. Aviators, too, were performing amazing feats, pulling off airplane stunts for movie cameras and air show crowds, landing on ships, and consistently shattering speed and altitude records.

Yet for all this progress, by 1925 there was one glaring omission on the list of aviation accomplishments: No one was making nonstop flights across oceans. (The exception was one flight in 1919 between Newfoundland and Ireland that ended in a crash landing, but that’s a different story.)

To remedy this shortage of transoceanic flight—and to establish an air route to military facilities at Hawai‘i’s Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy organized its own pioneering, transpacific, and nonstop West Coast-Hawai‘i Flight. On the afternoon of August 31, 1925, two Navy flying boats (a type of seaplane that combined a boat hull with wings) took off from the northern arm of San Francisco Bay, beginning an anticipated 26-hour flight to Pearl Harbor. Tens of thousands of people lined the bay and stood on San Francisco rooftops to watch the flying boats, heavily laden with fuel for the long flight, slowly lift from the bay, fly past Alcatraz, and pass through the Golden Gate (which had yet to be bridged).

“Running parallel with the shore for a mile or more,” wrote San Francisco Mayor James Rolph, “they rose as gracefully as two birds.”

Flying out past the Farallon Islands and across open ocean, the flying boats tracked a path toward Maui, the nautical midpoint of the Hawaiian Islands. Aiming for Maui was important. While lots of things could go wrong on the 26-hour flight, from mechanical failure to pilot fatigue to bad weather, the biggest worry was navigational error. Should the flying boats’ route be off more than three degrees when leaving San Francisco, its crews would not even spy the Hawaiian Islands and could become hopelessly lost above the world’s largest ocean.

To help ensure safe passage, the Navy placed ships every 200 miles along the flight path, providing visual markers for the aircraft as well as assistance should the flying boats need to refuel or make repairs. This guard line of vessels proved its worth when one of the two flying boats was forced down atop the waves because of a broken oil line and needed a tow back to San Francisco.

The oil line mishap left just one Navy aircraft remaining in the air—flying boat PN-9 No. 1. Operated by Commander John Rodgers and a crew of four, this flying boat powered on through the night, keeping course by use of a variety of navigational tactics, including dead reckoning, radio communication, celestial navigation, and the consistent sighting of the line of Navy guard vessels. But while the flying boat was on course, it was not on time. The aircraft had battled an unrelenting headwind from the start.

As gas ran low and the headwind persisted, Rodgers grudgingly conceded he could not make a nonstop flight and made plans to rendezvous with a refueling ship about 500 miles from Hawaii. But when he alighted hours later atop the water in a bad rainstorm, a radio mix-up left him and his crew desperately alone, out of sight of any nearby Navy vessels.

As hours and then days passed without rescue, the crew of the floating flying boat realized the Navy might never find them, especially since their radio transmitter was inoperable, leaving them incommunicado. So, in a resourceful moment, the Navy men ripped fabric from the flying boat and strung up the cloth between the upper and lower wings of the floating aircraft. If they couldn’t fly all the way to Hawai‘i, they decided, they’d sail there. And so they did for ten days, all the while slowly starving and suffering from thirst as sharks and barracuda trailed their clumsy and slow-moving, makeshift sailboat.

Finally, as they sailed through the channel between the islands of O‘ahu and Kaua‘i, a Navy submarine spotted the missing Navy craft and towed them into a harbor at Kaua‘i. The world rejoiced over the rescue and the crew’s amazing flight and voyage. But still it remained for someone to fly nonstop across the Pacific to Hawai‘i.

The U.S. Navy crew of PN-9 No. 1, rested and bedecked in leis on Kaua‘i in September 1925 after 10 days lost at sea. Courtesy of the Naval History and Heritage Command.

Two years later, aviators were again ready to tackle the oceans. In May 1927 the young American airmail pilot Charles Lindbergh shocked the world by flying alone and nonstop across the Atlantic, from New York to Paris. Overnight, Lindbergh became an international hero, a model of ambition and derring-do. Among those inspired by Lindbergh’s feat was James Dole, Hawai‘i’s pineapple baron.

Dole, eager to connect the islands to the wider world and expand the local economy, offered a $25,000 prize to the first aviators to duplicate Lindbergh’s flight and cross the Pacific to Hawai’i. When dozens of people responded enthusiastically to the offer, Dole had to amend his contest and establish a formal air race to Hawai‘i, with all aviators able to leave for the islands on a race day set at the end of the summer.

Meanwhile, other flyers chose to skip Dole’s contest and try for Hawai‘i even sooner.

The U.S. Army had been preparing for a transpacific flight since the beginning of 1927, hoping to finish the job started by the Navy. And when the Army Air Corps’ plans for the flight became public in the days after Lindbergh’s epic flight, the military picked up a civilian rival. By the end of June 1927, a month after Lindbergh’s flight, two planes sat at the start of the runway at the new Oakland Airport along San Francisco Bay: a trimotor Fokker C-2 designated by the Army as Bird of Paradise and a single-engine Travel Air 5000 named City of Oakland, which was to be piloted by civilian Ernie Smith. With tens of thousands of Bay area residents again watching the beginnings of transpacific flights, the planes took off on June 28, each aiming to be the first to fly to Hawai‘i.

Inside Bird of Paradise, Lieutenant Lester Maitland piloted the plane while Lieutenant Albert Hegenberger provided expert navigation. They made the flight across the Pacific with hardly a hiccup, arriving to a hero’s welcome on O‘ahu, where a healthy portion of Honolulu’s population stayed up through the night to welcome the aviators the morning of June 29.

City of Oakland’s flight, however, was short-lived, as a wind deflector broke off the aircraft just a few minutes after takeoff, requiring Smith to abort the flight and return to Oakland. Two weeks later, however, he was en route to O‘ahu once again, taking along a new navigator, Emory Bronte. They flew above fog the entire way, not seeing ocean until they sighted the Hawaiian Islands a full 24 hours after takeoff. But just as they spotted the islands, their gas began to give out, forcing the daring duo to make a crash landing in a thicket of thorn trees on Molokai. Smith and Bronte had both flown safely to Hawai‘i, but landed on the wrong island!

Despite Bird of Paradise and City of Oakland both making the Hawaiian Hop, James Dole insisted his contest would continue. So weeks later, on August 16, 1927, eight planes containing 16 pilots and navigators took off from Oakland in succession, about two minutes apart. Three other entrants in the race had died in crashes en route to the starting line.

The bad fortune continued during the race, as only four planes successfully flew away from the coast. The other flights were all foiled by mechanical problems or crashes during takeoff. And of the four planes that cruised out over the Pacific, only two finished the race, with Hollywood stunt flier Art Goebel and his navigator, Navy Lieutenant William V. Davis, capturing first prize in Woolaroc and barnstormer Martin Jensen and his navigator Paul Schluter finishing as runners-up in Aloha.

Gone missing over the Pacific was Golden Eagle, a speedy Lockheed plane sponsored by the Hearst newspaper chain, and Miss Doran, a biplane carrying a pilot, navigator, and one famous passenger: a 22-year-old schoolteacher from Michigan named Mildred Doran. Photos and interviews of the cute and sassy “Flying Schoolma’am” had been splashed across newspapers for weeks leading up to the race, endearing the young woman to Americans nationwide. “I’m really tickled to pieces to be here, and I haven’t the slightest misgivings about the coming jaunt to Hawai‘i,” Doran said before her disappearance. “I’ve always wanted to do something different and to be the first woman to do it.”

In the wake of so many deaths, the Dole Derby became known as the Disaster Derby. As an indication of the considerable danger still present in any ocean crossing, all those aviators who flew nonstop across the Atlantic and Pacific in the summer of 1927 packed up their planes and took steamships back home. No one wanted to push their luck by flying across so much water once again.

But progress would not wait forever. By the 1930s, Pan Am Clipper ships started regular service to Hawai‘i, only to be interrupted by World War II. In the late 1950s, the first passenger jets began landing in Honolulu, launching the modern age of air travel to the Paradise of the Pacific.

Nowadays, anyone with a few hundred dollars can fly comfortably and safely to Hawai‘i from California. Next time you do so, remember that the air route you’re traveling was pioneered by a few brave American men and women, some of whom gave their lives in the pursuit of new paths across the Pacific.

The post How Hawai‘i Inspired the Advance of Aviation appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.