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Then, like a hawk spotting a squirrel, Anderson banks sharply left and dives. Crammed into a cockpit no bigger than half a phone booth, he has the sensation of "riding on the tip of a pencil" when he wrenches the F-16 sideways, almost upside down. The tank appears below him through his canopy ceiling. For a microsecond the world is turned on its back. Anderson is pulling the stick toward him to "lift" the plane horizontally and down. Simultaneously, he eyes a cockpit screen called a heads-up display. The tank, seen distantly through the screen as if through a window, has to be matched to a targeting figure projected on the screen's surface, then moved, by minute adjustments in the plane's trajectory, to a bull's-eye pilots call the death dot. In effect, Anderson hopes to slam-dunk a basketball while racing by the hoop at 600 m.p.h.
World War II pilots rained death and fire by pulling on a lever said to resemble a dill pickle. The modern military pushes a "pickle" button. Anderson has half a heartbeat to push his. Since this isn't war, he is actually dropping a 25-lb. bowling pin with fins called a bomb dummy unit. It contains a small flash charge enabling technicians watching on video screens to pinpoint the hit or miss. Each pilot drops 28 bombs during the six-day contest. Two years ago, the top team triumphed over the runner-up by dropping a single bomb one yard closer. In theory, spring-loaded reflexes and microscopic eyes should make a winner. Pilots joke that proficiency in arcade video games helps too. But skill isn't everything. "Getting that little bitty death dot on that target isn't easy," says Anderson. "You might get bumped by turbulence or the cart ((bomb rack)) might be slow. The jets aren't perfect."
Anderson pickles -- and misses. His bomb "splashes" six yards left. In war, anything within ten yards would have won the day, but this is a contest. Muttering angrily, he rockets up toward the mountains to get in line again, wondering who missed, man or machine. "Hey, lead," he barks to Dulaney on his radio, "where'd your first bomb go?" It is 28 seconds since Anderson made his 3,000-foot climb. The contest allows 30 seconds from the climb to post-pickle recovery. Back at the base, the pilots gather in briefing rooms, close their doors and punch up video tapes of the day's run. Maybe one pilot stayed too long over the target, jamming the next man. Somebody probably flew too low, or too high. "The R.O.E. ((rules of engagement)) in a debriefing is no rank," says Cowboy Dulaney. "A lieutenant can tell a colonel what he did wrong -- with a little tact."
At Gunsmoke, it is hard to imagine tact. Scriptwriters for Hollywood's Top Gun didn't exaggerate. "I've always wanted to be a fighter pilot," says New Orleans Reservist and Viet Nam Veteran Major Craig Mays, 41, a burly A-10 pilot with blond hair and a Kennedyesque smile. "I'm going to be one until they take the uniform off my cold, dead body." The major's call sign is Darth Vader. Reservist Lieut. Colonel John Haynes, an Air National Guardsman from Georgia, was an F-4 "gib" (guy in back) in Viet Nam. He happily recalls "trolling" Haiphong Harbor, hoping to lure out MiGs. Now owner of two evangelical Christian bookstores in Atlanta, Haynes still finds flying magical. "We take a brick, put a little sheet metal on it, add propulsion and cram it into the air," he enthuses. "That's neat."