Exclusive Clip: Tom Cruise on 'Top Gun' and Its Spectacular F-14s

One of the more awe-inspiring sequences in the movie Top Gun, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next week, occurs in its opening moments. Before Tom Cruise flashes a grin or any of the guys decide to play shirtless volleyball, we see images of Navy fighter jets gearing up for take-off and coming in for hairy twilight landings in the flight deck fog. It’s awesome, and in an exclusive clip above from the iTunes digital release of Top Gun, out today, Cruise himself talks about how awesome it was to witness in person.

“I was able to walk around. I went up to the deck and, watching these F-14s and these jets come in in the middle of the night, and seeing these guys call the ball and just right out there on the deck. And they’re just landing right in front of us and taking off, just like the opening,” Cruise recalls. “It was spectacular. You just couldn’t believe.“

Watch the clip for more. Oh, and funny coincidence: Know what F-14s were also often called? Tomcats.