Airwolf/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Ace (Supposedly, Stringfellow was the only person who could fly Airwolf, as the vehicle was either so revolutionary or designed to run in a counter-intuitive, but still combat-worthy, fashion for security reasons. Caitlin acquired the necessary skill-set through observing him.)
    • It was more that Airwolf was such an experimentally high-performance aircraft that exceptionally few pilots could hope to fly it in 'turbo mode' and survive. Apparently Caitlin is an exceptional flying prodigy, given that it was once an explicit plot point that only half a dozen pilots in the world were on the level of Stringfellow Hawke, and that most of them were dead. (And one of them his brother.) Dom's flown Airwolf as well, conventionally, but to the best of my knowledge he's never flown it in turbo mode. See Fridge Brilliance for why it makes sense in ways the writers probably didn't intend.
    • Dom flies Airwolf with the turbos in seasons 2 and 3. Usually in order to save String's butt. It's also presumed that he did so to deliver the human heart in "Santini's Millions". He does not, however, fly her in combat with the turbos.
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Archangel; is his friendship with Hawke genuine and the terms of their deal the best he can do, or is he just using Hawke as a powerful deniable asset by dangling a carrot on a string?
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Opening theme and often heard during power-up scenes and routinely during battles.
    • Actually, that's the SECOND theme - the 'disco' theme, which I always hated. This was the original theme (notice the difference in the first few seconds; it's deeper, more forceful and less 'disco'-inspired. The change-over in themes - prime example of the beginning of the end.
  • Fridge Brilliance: Just what is it about Airwolf that makes it so only Moffet and Hawke could fly it to its fullest abilities? When in turbo mode, Airwolf essentially becomes a fighter plane. The entire concept is, in terms of realistic military application, a Game Breaker; helicopters are able to handle situations in small spaces and areas that fighter jets can't because they have minimum cruising speeds. However, helicopters stand no chance against fighter jets in combat, and a single fighter can easily solve the problem of ground units being assailed by helicopters. Airwolf can, at will, switch between both roles with one press of a button. The problem here is that piloting a gunship and piloting a fighter jet are two entirely different tasks, and someone like Dominic who only knows how to fly helicopters can't fly Airwolf in turbo mode because he doesn't know how to fly fighter jets.
    • Dom is show to use the turbos at times when he has to rescue String. However, he is never shown to use them in combat, which would require much more skill.
    • Where this falls down, of course, is that rotary-wing pilots do all of their initial flight training on fixed-wing aircraft, such as the T-34. So while a rotary pilot could not be expected to randomly be able to fly an advanced fixed-wing such as a B-2 or F/A-18, flying normally, even in jet aircraft, is very reasonable. Supersonic flight is not really very different, especially when adding in the computer-assists all modern supersonic aircraft (and of course, The Lady) have.
  • Special Effects Failure A badly-painted model (probably an Airfix kit) was employed every time Season 4 had finally scraped right through the barrel for Stock Footage.