Mission Impossible and Top Gun star Tom Cruise spotted flying at Duxford

Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise has been spotted flying at Duxford's historic airfield.

The Top Gun and Mission: Impossible actor – who feels "the need for speed" – was seen in the cockpit of an American 1943 Boeing Stearman Model 75 in the skies above the IWM site in Cambridgeshire.

The fixed-wing single engine aircraft was equipped with two camera rigs mounted on its wing struts, in a video posted on YouTube by High Flight last month.

One was on the red biplane's outer port (left side) wing struts and the other on the inner starboard (right side) wing struts. 

Cruise, a keen pilot, reportedly flew into Duxford earlier in the day by helicopter. 

An IWM Duxford spokesperson was unable to comment on Tom Cruise's visit.

The Stearman, US registered as N65691, is owned by Los Angeles-based Paramount Overseas Productions Inc, according to the US Department of Transportation Federal Aviation Administration registry.

The two-seater biplane was primarily used as a military trainer aircraft in America during the 1940s.

It has a cruising speed of around 93mph, whereas the supersonic F-14 Tomcat from Cruise's first Top Gun movie had a maximum speed of over 1,500mph (2,485 km/h).

Cruise has been filming Mission: Impossible 7 in the UK this year, with shoot locations including Birmingham and the Buttermere area of the Lake District.

He is known for performing his own stunts in the action blockbusters and is now preparing for Mission: Impossible 8.

Cruise spent a year training for one major Mission: Impossible 7 stunt in which he rides a motorcycle off of a cliff and base jump parachutes to safety.

Directed by Christopher McQuarrie, Mission Impossible 7 also stars Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, and Rebecca Ferguson.

On an earlier visit to Duxford last month, Cruise was spotted looking around the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster bomber, which was being serviced there at the time. 

Cruise played pilot Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell in 1986 movie classic Top Gun.

That film's long-awaited and much-delayed sequel, Top Gun: Maverick, is now due for release next year.

Studio Paramount has pushed back the Top Gun follow-up until May 2022 because of the pandemic. 

Mission: Impossible 7 has also been switched from its scheduled May 2022 release slot to September 2022 due to multiple production delays.

The seventh instalment in the Mission: Impossible franchise will once again see Tom Cruise as special agent Ethan Hunt. Simon Pegg also returns as Benji Dunn.

Cruise isn't the first Hollywood star to have visited Duxford.

Star Wars icon Harrison Ford, who is shooting the fifth Indiana Jones adventure in the UK, was spotted at IWM Duxford – Europe's largest aviation museum – earlier this summer during a break in filming while he recovers from a shoulder injury.

IWM Duxford was also a filming location for Wonder Woman 1984, with Gal Gadot, aka Wonder Woman, and Chris Pine filmed in the American Air Museum 'stealing' an aircraft in the movie.