China TV news channel airs stolen scene from Top Gun!

A news channel in China broadcast a training exercise by the People's Liberation Army Air Force with one plane firing a missile at another - but the scene turned out to be lifted from a Tom Cruise movie.

A viewer spotted that the resulting explosion telecast by China Central Television News last week matches a blast from the final fight scene in Top Gun, reports the Guardian.

Liu Yi showed the frame-by-frame similarities between the aired telecast and the Tom Cruise flick and the Wall Street journal has produced a video comparing the news clip with the movie scene.

However, once news spread, the broadcast vanished.

A spokeswoman in the foreign affairs department at CCTV said that she wasn't aware of any such incident.