Wing Man

Ice Man: You can be my wingman any time.
Maverick: Bullshit. You can be mine.

—Top Gun

It takes two to tango in the air combat business, so you need a wingman. Or three. Or sometimes more.

The wingman is a pilot of another plane whose job is to cover his or her lead's six o'clock—behind him—in an attack, and provide witty banter or, occasionally, someone to rescue. The wingman (or woman) will often have a contrasting personality to the Ace Pilot. They may also be wearing a red flightsuit.

In multi-player video games involving fighters, you can get a wingman as a given. Other games feature AI wingmen. They may utter the phrase "I Got You Covered!" Generally has nothing to do with Winged Men.

Compare Guy in Back, when a pilot has a companion sharing the same plane - for example, a navigator or radio operator. Since the F-4 Phantom II and F-14 Tomcat, two of the coolest planes around, are two-seaters, it's common to get a "four in two" group of characters.

Has mutated and been adopted as slang for the guy who, when you encounter a couple girls hanging out together, keeps one occupied so you can try to pick up the other. But that's not this trope. And not to be confused with the manga called Wingman.

Many wingmen themselves may be aces, especially if they fly in a target-rich environment.

Examples of Wing Man include:

Anime and Manga

  • In Robotech, Rick Hunter has Max Sterling who also has his own wife Miriya, as his own wingmate. As it is the couple are better pilots than Rick himself, but the former hotshot pilot has matured enough to eagerly concede that fact, especially he is still their squadron leader and he couldn't ask for better company to watch his back in combat.
  • The pilots of Area 88 generally watch each other's backs when in formation, but permanent pairs don't often show up because of the base's high turnover.
    • Mickey often performs this role for Shin and Saki, although he's a formidable fighter pilot in his own right.

Comic Books

  • Marvel Star Wars has 'wing guards', which seem to be the same thing. Luke Skywalker has a budding romance with his wing guard, Shira Brie. ... It ended poorly.

Film

Literature

  • In the X Wing Series, pilots all have wingmates - since each person in the squadron is numbered, it's sequential. Leader/One is wingmate to Two, Five and Six are wingmates, etc. When the numbers are uneven, a temporary three-member wing forms. When one pilot is making an attack run, they typically tell their wingmate and are, in return, told "I'm your wing" - basically "Okay, I'll keep the enemy off you." The squadrons may split by wings to achieve different objectives.
    • Squadrons during the Yuuzhan Vong War tended to split into shield trios instead, with the idea being that they could overlap and support one anothers' shields. Other formations, including wingpairs and flights of four, were used with the same concept.
  • The Sixth Battle. As F-14s and A-6s feature a fair bit, you get "four in two" combos as well.

Live-Action TV

  • Battlestar Galactica has Starbuck frequently flying wing for Apollo. The position assumes additional significance when Apollo, trying to bolster Starbuck's confidence during a suspected breakdown, offers to fly her wing. It's a big deal since he outranks her, and also proves just how far he's willing to go for her sake.

Music

  • Dos Gringos, being a band comprised of United States Air Force fighter pilots, has written a number of songs dealing with wingmen. The Wingmen specifically makes fun of new pilots fresh from training that act like The Ace just because they're now fighter pilots.

Video Games

  • Ace Combat, from the beginning (except in 4), though wingmen were useless in the first couple games (read more here). The enemy has them, too. To list just the most notable:
  • Wing Commander has many of them.
  • Star Fox has Peppy, Slippy, and Falco as your wingmen for (almost) every mission in the original SNES game and Star Fox 64, though they tend to be the ones needing assistance, and if they get shot down in the original, they're gone for good (in 64 they just sit out the next mission for repairs). In Adventures, you're only in the Arwing between missions and for the final boss, and only for the latter do you get a wingman to help, while Assault goes back to having three wingmen each level, though Peppy is your Mission Control, and Krystal instead takes his place as a wingman. In Command, you control all of the characters yourself, and in the unreleased SNES sequel, you pick two characters to play as, switching between them at will.
  • The Comanche series has Griffon 2-7 flying alongside 2-6 (the player and his copilot). The manual explicitly states that no self respecting army pilot would ever refer to his teammate as his 'wingman', but 2-7 will be treated as one for game purposes.
  • The Free Space series features Wing Man who manage to be red shirts without being useless. Issuing proper orders to them can sometimes make a difficult mission much easier.
  • Tachyon the Fringe allows you to hire wingmen for an up-front fee and a percentage of your mission payouts.

Real Life

  • Erich Hartmann, the top scoring Ace Pilot in history, never lost a wingman.
  • John Thach, a brilliant US aerial tactician, made the wingman part of the fearsomely effective Thach Weave technique that could make the initially inferior US fighter planes a match for the Japanese Zero any day. Essentially, the two wingmates would fly some distance apart from each other. If one found an enemy on his tail, they would simply turn towards each other, with the enemy forced to either break off, or fly right into the second pilot's gunsights. Given that the American planes were sturdier and more heavily armed than the Japanese fighters, the resulting head-on confrontations usually favored the Americans. Later American designs emphasized these advantages, along with greater speed, to the point of intentional Game Breaker status as the war continued.
  • Based on the military meaning, the term "wingman" has come to mean generally "supporter/assistant/backup." Especially when it comes to dating, asking people out, or random hookups.

Your wingman needs to watch your back and fend off that jerk in the fancy suit and TIE who's been chasing after your sister. Once you're in the trench, it's easy to get drunk on excitement, so your wingman should remind you to keep your targeting computer active... just in case you try to Force your torpedoes in the wrong exhaust port. Do yourself a favor, and choose Wedge as your wingman. If you don't, you might wake up next to a Wookiee.

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