I saw it in IMAX when it was first released at the USAF Museum in Dayton with several of the pilots that were in the movie present. Very cool meeting them in person. About the only thing that beats it is being at Red Flag as invited media shooting pictures between the runways for the mass launch.
I have it on DVD. It's available quite inexpensively: Amazon.com: IMAX: Fighter Pilot - Operation Red Flag: John Stratton, Robert Novotny, Sam Morgan, Randy Cason, Michel Perron, Charles Edwin Powell, Harald Winter, Stephen Low: Movies & TV
Ryan- It was a long time ago. I flew in the first one in the 70s and a few after that. Had not turned into the full dog and pony it evolved into. On the first one the weather was really bad and just about everybody aborted, but it did not bother our F-111Ds flying on TFR into the Nellis ranges. Our red air never made it.
Sorry...had to stop watching at 15 minutes...this is total fantasy. Having participated in several flags both during the day and at night, very little about any of this documentary seemed like reality. The flying footage, while outstanding from a cinematography standpoint, was so coreographed it was ridiculous. "At two miles and closing, using blah blah blah, a classic dog fight ensues"... With barrel rolls, flying in chase formation, tooling along straight and level with a viper on your butt, OMG...vomit time. I could go on for an hour on that 2.5 minutes of BS. But hey, it makes everything look so exciting...like Top Gun. I almost feel bad saying this, but this is like an advertisement. Everything looks so shiny and cool where reality is messy, hot, potentially dangerous, and incredibly stressful.
It def does have some cheese factor and its definitely being used as advertisement. But the camera work is pretty good.....
