Factual error: After the graduation at Top Gun, the next scene shown is an aircraft carrier and the caption "24 hours later." To allow pilots time to overcome the effects of jet lag, they are grounded one day for every three times zones they crossed. Maverick wouldn't even have been on the flight schedule within 24 hours of having left California.

Factual error: When Maverick and Goose are launched off the enterprise, the dogfight in which Iceman is in trouble takes place many hundreds of miles out. Despite this Maverick reaches it in "30" seconds. The F14 is fast, but not that fast...

Continuity: In the last dogfight, Ice says "two MiGs passing between us."  It then shows the two passing between either Ice or Maverick and a single tail jet.  The Grumman f-14 Tomcat is a twin tail.

Factual error: The helicopter on an aircraft carrier is usually one of the first aircrafts airborne during flight ops. The helicopter should have been airborne already when they call to launch the rescue helicopter when Iceman was shot down.

Factual error: When Maverick is riding his bike to get away from Charlie, he comes over a hill. There are no hills near NAS Miramar (Home of Fighttown USA/Top Gun).

Continuity: While in the opening air scene, the names of the pilot and his RIO are backwards.

Continuity: At Top Gun, Maverick does a fly by of the tower. He flies by, the camera cuts to the guy drinking coffee who spills it on himself. Then the camera cuts back to the sky and Maverick flies by again.

Factual error: In the two dog fight sequences, when Maverick uses his speed brakes to "bleed off" air speed to cause the MIGs on his tail to overshoot him, the nose of his Tomcat pitches up and the MIGs pass beneath him. When pilots do this maneuver to evade pursuit by faster aircraft, loss of airspeed results in loss of lift which cause the aircraft to nose down and lose altitude, and the pursuer to pass above them. Closing the speed brakes and applying afterburner then brought the nose back up in a position to fire missiles into the opponent aircraft's exhaust pipe.

Factual error: At the beginning when Maverick and Cougar are flying back to the ship and they are sweating running out of fuel before Maverick can talk Cougar down, this would not have been that much of a big deal. The carrier would have launched a tanker and refuelled the planes.  Even if Cougar was too shaken to land on the carrier, with the help of tankers, they could have diverted to a land based runway which is infinitely easier to land at.