Remember this scene in Top Gun, wherein Our Hero flies inverted over an enemy MiG and flips him off whilst Dr Greene Goose shoots a candid Polaroid?

Yeah, uh, just read this in a New Yorker article about Virgin Galactic’s lead test pilot, Mark Stucky, who has flown for both the Marine Corps and the Air Force:

Stucky also was a showboater. In 1985, on a patrol mission over the Sea of Japan, he spotted a Soviet bomber in the distance, caught up to it, flipped upside d own, got close enough that only a few dozen feet separated the cockpits, and snapped a photograph.

Maverick? Meet Mark Stuckey, who is way cooler than you on account of not being fictional.