Sky's the limit: John Semcken was a Top Gun Navy pilot and an adviser on the Tom Cruise film. Now he's trying to get an NFL stadium off the ground.

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LIFE has turned out very differently for John Semcken than how it looked from the cockpit of an F-14 fighter jet. Back then he was a Navy pilot landing planes on the decks of aircraft carriers. A 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy and, later, the famous Top Gun flying school, his skills and expertise eventually landed him a job as technical adviser on the hit 1986 movie by that name starring Tom Cruise. After retiring from an eight-year stint in the Navy, he worked on several other Hollywood productions including ABC miniseries "War and Remembrance," based on the World War II novel by Herman Wouk. Today, Semcken, 52, is vice president of billionaire developer Ed Roski Jr. 's Majestic Realty Co., where he throws around some weight. Semcken was point man on the company's 1998 development of the $375 million Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles. He is currently overseeing Roski's effort to attract a National Football League team to a proposed 75,000-seat stadium in the City of Industry. The Business Journal caught up with him in his office in the San Gabriel Valley city.

Question: What in the world ever possessed you to become a fighter pilot?

Answer: My dad was a Navy pilot and I grew up wanting to be one my whole life. I went to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, then went to flight school and kept on dancing until I got selected to fly jets. I first came to California when the Navy stationed me at Miramar in San Diego.

Q: What was it like?

A: Really fun. When you're young, flying an airplane off aircraft carriers is very exciting. I flew almost every day for nearly eight years. It was an exciting part of my life.

Q: What stands out?.

A: I flew off the USS Enterprise in the early 1980s when we were in detente, trying to show the Russians that we were always going to be wherever they were. I guess the most interesting thing that happened was when the Russians shot down Korean passenger Flight 007 in 1982. The Navy sent three carrier battle groups to the Northern Pacific for a month and a hall and we were overflown by Russian airplanes every day. We intercepted them and escorted them out so they knew that they couldn't get near the ship.

Q: Any scary moments?

A: All the time. There are always moments when things go wrong on airplanes, of course--like running out of gas and having to land on the deck when it's pitching 30 feet. Once a compressor stalled on the catapult, I lost thrust in one of my engines, went off the end of the ship and sank. Generally, though, I was lucky.