If you like old aviation films

[mikephillips]

I was watching a film called Air Force last night, new release on DVD. It was originally released in 1943 and is a typical war film of the period, so don't expect academy award performances. But, lots of great shots of original design shark tail B-17s, including several of a formation of 9.

 

[jumpinjan]

Mike,
I was watching the same movie. The first time I remember watching it was about 50 years ago.
Jan

 

[Alpine Bob]

Well this isn't that old but it is about an old airplane. Enjoy! http://users.skynet.be/fa926657/files/B29.wmv you might have to copy and paste in your brozer.

 

[jumpinjan]

I have seen it fly

I have seen that B29 model fly at the giant scale meet in Dayton a few years ago. Its the same weekend as the Invasion
http://www.dogsairshow.com/page2.htm

 

[skywords]

It's amazing how sycronized the four engines are on that B-29. They were all singing in the same key

 

[Rsgwynn1]

While you guys were watching Air Force (seems l recall B-17s destroying a Japanese convoy from 15,000 feet--good luck!) I was watching Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart. I'll bet he did that one for free! It's a terrible movie, mind, but watching that B-36 in flight is something. What was it? "Six turning and four burning"?

There was a movie in the 30s called Dive Bomber (Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy?) that covered this new technology. Seems like the plot had to do with inventing a device--some kind of inflatable belt--that kept pilots from blacking out from the g-forces.

Does anybody know any cases of mobile capital ships ever being destroyed by level-bombing? Maybe the Repulse and Prince of Wales? Mediums like the B-25 switched to a tactic called "skip-bombing" later in the war, and I've read that it was pretty effective. Probably better than our torpedoes, which for a long time were pretty unreliable.

My dad trained as an air cadet at Randolph in 1938. Luckily (for me) he washed out after having a sun stroke while walking punishment tours in the Texas sun. Otherwise, I'd probably not be here. He later went in the the Merchant Marine (not a safe ride, either, exactly) but got through ok. Two movies I love from the 30s--both about training at Randolph--are The West Point of the Air and I Wanted Wings. Beirne Lay's book (which was the source of the latter, sort of) is still a good read and will impress you with how far we've come. The movie is pretty bad, but it does have Veronica Lake in it. Lay was also the screenwriter for Twelve O'clock High, which still rates in my book as one of the great films about combat aviation, surely much better than later ones like The Memphis Belle.

Nick, have you ever heard of Assen Jordanoff? A friend of mine, the poet and critic Dan Hoffman (a neighbor of yours in Swarthmore), worked for him writing manuals for the P-47 during WWII. It was sheer coincidence, but one of my favorite books as a kid was a "how-to-fly" book by Jordanoff that my father had on his shelf. When I first met Dan I told him that he and I were probably the only two people in American who knew who A. J. was. Dan has written a wonderful memoir called Zone of the Interior about his WWII service, which was probably the dullest imaginable (but he does a good job making the tale interesting).

What I love about those WWII small-unit movies is that they manage to make every character, even the minor ones, memorable in some way. When I saw The Thin Red Line a few years back, I couldn't even keep the actors straight--they all looked and sounded alike to me. Not like Van Johnson guarding those eggs in Battleground or that guy in The Story of G. I. Joe who keeps trying to play the record of his son's first words.

Flyboys, btw, is a total piece of crap (only slightly less so than Pearl Harbor), but there's a pretty good recent movie about the ferry pilots for the Hudson bombers called Above and Beyond.

 

[Bill Blue]

The "movie" Memphis Belle has to be one of the worst flicks of all time. Had every time worn, war time flying cliche ever created. It was so bad that anything that I had not seen before looked like a time worn cliche. Bad, bad, bad.

On the other hand, the war documentary with that name is one of the best. Never heard of it until I was about 40. Stayed home with the flu and saw it on the PBS station. I was stunned as I had no clue that anything like that existed.

The engines on the B 29 sounded like they were synchronized. Especially on takeoff. Did not have the pulsing sound variation. Can it be done electronically?

Bill

 

[Rsgwynn1]

The pilot of The Memphis Belle who (if memory serves) died not too long back wrote a pretty good book about the experience of war and the post-combat bond tours. I've never seen the plane, but I have heard that a preservation project is ongoing in Memphis, where it's been displayed (open to the elements) for a good while.

 

[Rsgwynn1]

Ah, I see it's in Dayton now, being preserved with various Sunbeams!

http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?storyID=123008845

 

[Nickodell]

Nick, have you ever heard of Assen Jordanoff? A friend of mine, the poet and critic Dan Hoffman (a neighbor of yours in Swarthmore), worked for him writing manuals for the P-47 during WWII. It was sheer coincidence, but one of my favorite books as a kid was a "how-to-fly" book by Jordanoff that my father had on his shelf. When I first met Dan I told him that he and I were probably the only two people in American who knew who A. J. was. Dan has written a wonderful memoir called Zone of the Interior about his WWII service, which was probably the dullest imaginable (but he does a good job making the tale interesting).

No, I'm not familiar with the name.

Here is one of the pictures signed by WWII aviators hanging on the wall of my office. It's the Memphis Belle and crew, with captain Robert Morgan 5th from the left, and his signature top left. Without for a minute taking anything away from this brave Band of Brothers, it should be remembered that they and the plane were hurried back to the states in May 1943 to do War Bond raising publicity tours, and vists to armaments factories.
Many hundreds of other crews went on to complete more missions without any recognition.

However, the Belle's 25 were by no means milk runs. At various times she was struck by 20mm cannon shells and machine gun fire, and every major part of the plane was replaced: engines (nine times), both wings, tail units, main landing gear. It was a flying "Lincoln's Ax."

Col. Robert Morgan, 85, died 61 years later, to the month (May 2004), ironically after breaking his neck in a fall at an air show in his home town of Ashville, NC.

I agree with everyone about what a load of tripe the Hollywood film was. Some bits were absurdly ridiculous, such as the two waist gunners arguing loudly, without oxygen, at 30,000 feet where you have about 15 seconds before blacking out, much less breath to yell. Then there's the bit where the copilot shoots down a fighter, which then collides with the plane carrying his buddy, and hears him go AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! as the stricken bomber goes down. Wait a minute, instead of trying to bail out, he holds the transmit key down and goes AAAAGH into the mike? And, magically, everyone in the Belle hears him? Give me a break.

 

[mikephillips]

The film Dive Bomber was with Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray, Flynn was the flight surgeon who invents the suit and MacMurray was the pilot who dies testing it. The one with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey was called Test Pilot where Gable was the pilot and Tracey was his trusty mechanic.

Most films of this type aren't great cinematic gems but they're not meant to be and I enjoy them anyway. Up through the 50's the co-operation of the the Air Corp, and later the Air Force gave them access to all kinds of equipment. As mentioned before Strategic Air Command is great for B-36, with that amazing R4360 rumble, and B-47 flying. Bombers B-52 is also from that period with B-47s and early B-52 operations.

And if you want to see the Memphis Belle, get the original 1943 release, where you'll learn that the 25th mission was actually fairly quiet as those thing went. The 1990's version, other than the aircraft themselves, wasn't worth printing on the film.

 

[Nickodell]

RAF Duxford (Cambridgeshire, England) just celebrated its 60th air show with one of the biggest displays ever. Included in this was the UK's only flyable B17, the Sally B, which was the actual aircraft masquerading as the Memphis Bell in the 1990s movie:

Interestingly, the original Belle was there, too, so you could look at a bit of real history. Unfortunately, the Sally B may not be flying for much longer. The good old European aviation authorities have reclassified it as an - wait for it - airliner, because it takes passengers on short flights. This has raised its insurance to over $70,000 a year.

 

[Rsgwynn1]

I believe I read a few years ago that the last flying (Martin) B-26 had crashed. It belonged to the (formerly known as) Confederate Air Force. I wonder if there are any Liberators still flying. The CAF used to have one of the single-tail reconaissance B-24 models (Privateer?) down in Harlingen.

 

[mikephillips]

The CAF has a B-24A, actually found rebuilt as a C-87. The Collins foundation operates a B-24J. The 8th AF museum in England has one capable of flying but doesn't. These are all that come to mind off the top of my head.

As for the B-26, As I recall it was being transferred to another wing from Texas for a complete restoration but crashed during a pilot orientation. Cause was found to be structural failure due to corrosion in the wing spars I believe. Kermit Weeks has an early one that was restored and did fly although I don't think it has continued to.

 

[weaselkeeper]

The original 12 o'clock high movie was a good demonstration of leadership. I watched that for the umteenth time in a class I took sometime ago and the assignment was to look for good/poor leadership examples. There are many, if you're looking.

Aluminum Overcast graced our airways several weeks back.

Lately, the treat is watching old Neptunes, loaded w/ retardant clawing their way into the sky to drop on one of the 600 thousand acres burning in this state. I watched a Neptune two weeks ago make a slow turn to the south after leaving the airfield, with just enough alt to clear the foot hills and dump his load on sagebrush. About that time, the crash bells rang and a few minutes later, he was on approach with #2 stopped and feathered. He was back in the air the next day.

 

[Rsgwynn1]

The B-26 had a bad rep early on in training ("Two a day in Tampa Bay"?), but I read somewhere that it had the best ratio of any allied bomber as far as missions-to-pilots-returned safely was concerned. They did decrease the wing loading in modifications.

It's interesting that the B-26s probably outnumbered the B-25s, and the Liberators outnumbered the Fortresses. I've spoken to members of Liberator crews who were pretty disdainful of the B-17s for their inferior speed, range, altitude, and bomb load.

I think a lot of this had to do with the B-25s being the plane on the Doolittle Raid, which made them immortal, and the fact that the B-17 was first on the scene and had that reputation for ruggedness. That and the documentary about the Memphis Belle.

I don't know how many times I've seen that horrifying piece of film of a Liberator in flames (shot from above) and the whole right wing just folds up.

It always struck me that the Marauder was a much more elegant-looking plane than the Mitchell, though the same couldn't be said about the Liberator vs. the Fortress.

One that is lost in all of this is the A-26 (a development of the A-20 Havoc?), which I believe was redesignated the B-26 in Korea (my uncle flew one) and was last employed, in utter futility, in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

I think I read that the Curtiss P-40, despite all of its shortcomings, was the most widely produced Allied fighter. It must have been cheap to produce.

 

[Nickodell]

The B-26 had a bad rep early on in training ("Two a day in Tampa Bay"?), but I read somewhere that it had the best ratio of any allied bomber as far as missions-to-pilots-returned safely was concerned.

If you restrict it to US aircraft, you may be right. Overall, for all Allied bombers, the DH Mosquito wins. Typical losses on a raid were 0.7%, often lower.

 

[Rsgwynn1]

What was that movie about Mosquitoes (wood-framed) bombing some impossible target? Seems like Burton was in it.

 

[Nickodell]

I think you mean 633 Squadron, starring Cliff Robertson [essential for US sales] and George Chakiris.

(One might think that the headline in the poster exhibits some hyperbole).

Stupid story and alternately meladramatic and wooden acting, but superb shots of the aircraft. Some amazing hardware errors, including two shots where modern sedan cars are in scene, and one where in the series of shots where Robertson exits a burning Mossie, his life jacket is first on fire, then not on fire, and mysteriously is on fire again in the final shot.

Incidentally, with the exception of things like engines, undercarriage and guns, the Mosquito was all wood - fuselage, wings, main spar, tail. Mostly silver spruce and balsa. With 3,000hp (and later more) it was faster than German fighters until the Me 262 jet appeared. And it could carry more bombs farther, faster, and with much lower losses than the B17. It could even carry the 4,000lb "cookie," which wouldn't fit into the B17 or B24.

Photo-reconnaissance, day bomber, night bomber, night fighter, night intruder, fighter-bomber and maritime strike - these were just the main roles performed by the Mosquito. Some of the most famous Mosquito missions have passed into legend, including precision strikes on various prisons and Gestapo headquarters. It made a deep impression on the Germans, who were never able to cope with the threat it posed in its various roles. For a time, Luftwaffe night fighter pilots were allowed to count a downed Mosquito as two victories, so difficult were they to shoot down. Even more impressed was Hermann Goering: on 31 January 1943, Mosquitoes disrupted two parades celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Putsch that brought the Nazis to power, which were to be addressed by Goering and Goebbels respectively. To listeners to Deutsches Rundfunk, instead of the expected motivating speeches, the sounds were of pandemonium and shouts of "Achtung!" followed by crashing explosions. Then it cut to recorded military music.

It was the Mossie, more than any other aircraft, that sent Goering into a rage. It is worth repeating his complaint to the head of German aircraft production [my comment in brackets]:

"It makes me furious when I see the Mosquito. I turn green and yellow with envy. The British, who can afford aluminium better than we can [from the USA], knock together a beautiful wooden aircraft that every piano factory over there is building, and they give it a speed which they have now increased yet again. What do you make of that?"

 

[Rsgwynn1]

Doesn't that poster illustration look more like a p-38 than a Mosquito? It's a little hard to make out at the reduced size but, if so, one more hooray for Hollywood.

I wonder what kind of radar profile the Mosquito presented. Surely it was the original stealth fighter/bomber.