Aircraft, Flight and Cinema

[rkolinski]

I started a thread about Real Wartime Hollywood heroes and it seems to have been my best thread so far (I've received some positive feedback and it gets visited). So I thought I would try this one because I've always been interested in aircraft history and innovation and how it is used or portrayed in motion pictures. Having been in the U.S. Air Force (1967-1971), I managed to see some awesome aircraft, some of them still experimental and top secret at the time (the U-2, SR-71, F-111 and the Teledyne Ryan AQM-34 Firebee RPV (Remotely Piloted Vehicle) Reconnaissance Drone) to name just a few, the last one I managed to photograph from a Jolly Green Giant (HH-43 "Huskie") helicopter while flying over North Vietnam for a recovery mission. In case your wondering, the Firebee RPV was dropped by a manned C-130 aircraft and was remotely guided to photograph dangerous targets (like Hanoi and Haiphong) because too many F-105 manned reconnaissance aircraft (at least on the Air Force side of the war which I witnessed) were being shot down over N. Vietnam by Sam (Surface to Air - SA-2) missile sites. The Jolly Green Giant would recover these drones by snagging them in midair after their parachute opened (kind of like how that N Vietnamese officer was snagged off of the ground by a C-130 aircraft by a "V" shaped boom on the nose in the movie "The Green Berets"). Feel free to also include rockets, rocket planes and spacecraft depicted in film.

I know some will be tempted to post movies like Armageddon, and I'm already laughing about that possibility, but please limit yourself to those films and aircraft which actually existed or were at least in the experimental stage. Any movie will do, including SciFi's because some awesome aircraft, some of them not seen by the public at the time, were unveiled to the public in SciFi films.

Well, here's my first one:

COMMAND DECISION (1948)

[Show spoiler]

SYNOPSIS: General Dennis of the US Force in England in World War II finds that he must order his planes deeper and deeper into Germany to prevent the production of military jet planes that will turn the tide of battle to the Germans. He must fight congressmen, and his own chain of command to win the political battle before he can send his planes out. His problem is complicated by a very narrow window of good weather necessary to allow his effort to be successful. Adapted from a stage play, it attempts to look at the challenges of command in the political arena.

Starring: Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Brian Donlevy, Charles Bickford, John Hodiak, Cameron Mitchell (both Gable and Mitchell had flown in bombers during WWII and Donlevy was a WWI pilot) Nominated: for Best Written Drama and Screenplay by the Writers Guild of America

I believe this is the first time the public was actually shown images of a German Jet fighter aircraft incorrectly referred to as the Lantze-Wolfin the film. The truth is that the jet shown in that film was the ME-262, a jet fighter developed late in the war that, if it was mass-produced and sent up against the allied air forces a year earlier, would have won the Second World War for Germans. The German Masserschmitt Me-262 jet fighter could reach speeds of 540 to 580 MPH which was some 100 to 150 MPH faster then the swiftest USAAF and RAF fighter.

FEATURED 2 AIRCRAFT:

Messerschmitt ME-262 Schwalble ("Swallow")


Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress