Flight of Black Angel 1991

Captain Eddie Gordon (William O’Leary) is a talented and aggressive pilot who stands out from his fellow cadets at the United States Air Force Academy. His flight instructor, Lt. Col. Matthew Ryan (Peter Strauss), attempts to guide him toward restraint, yet Eddie’s intensity keeps pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable.

After his birthday party at his Las Vegas home, Eddie unveils a religiously motivated, long-planned scheme. He kills his brother (Rodney Eastman) and both of his parents, and then takes Captain Melissa Gaiter (Patricia Sill) at gunpoint, forcing her to arm his IAI Kfir C1 with live ordnance, a radar-jamming pod, and a tactical nuclear weapon. Melissa resists, and is murdered when she refuses to cooperate further.

News reaches the base that a triple murder has occurred at the Gordons’ residence as a training exercise involving Eddie continues. Eddie uses the moment to attack his fellow students, and Ryan works to alert the base while trying to lure Eddie into the firing range of the base’s surface-to-air missiles (SAMs). Eddie, however, destroys the SAMs, takes out Ryan’s plane, and wrecks the airbase runway.

Eddie lands in Garrison, Utah, and hides his jet in a deserted barn, where he is accidentally discovered by a vacationing family—the Dwyers, Richard (Michael Keys Hall) and Valerie (Michele Pawk) Dwyer, along with their baby. Before Valerie can raise the police on a CB radio, Eddie seizes them as hostages.

With the bomb’s safeguards a moving target, Eddie works to bypass the fail-safes, all while absorbing lethal radiation that rapidly takes a toll on his health. The next day, he and Valerie visit a hardware store to obtain tools. Valerie uses a traveler’s check and writes the hostage location on the back, but the clerk (Scott Menville) fails to notice. They then stop at a drug store to seek a cure for Eddie’s vomiting and nausea; the pharmacist (John Brancato) spots Valerie’s notes on the check.

Two police officers arrive to investigate—one is killed by Eddie, and the other is engaged in a firefight and dies along with Richard and Valerie after a failed attempt to flee with their baby. Valerie is wounded but manages to crawl to the roadside and is picked up by a passing truck driver.

Detective (Lee Ryan) tracks leads as Valerie reports that Eddie is the man with the bomb. Ryan informs Colonel Douglas to shift focus to Las Vegas. An AWACS confirms the target, and Ryan takes an F-16 to lead the chase, with support back at Hill Air Force Base.

It becomes clear that Eddie cannot launch the bomb, but his jet fuel could detonate it if he is fired upon. Ryan deliberately provokes Eddie into a desert duel to see if God made him “the one.”

“the one”

After evading Eddie’s final missile, Ryan orders the others to clear away and then fires, incinerating Eddie, the pursuing pilots, and 36 people on the ground.

Back at the hospital, a recovering Valerie watches sanitized TV news reporting the incident and holding her baby close, with the coverage framing the pilots as having been on a routine training mission in the area. The film closes on this somber note, underscoring the cost of a crisis driven by fanaticism and unchecked power.