PLANES IN WAR MOVIES

​The flying scenes from three movies have impressed me the most.
For World War One it is 1931’s Flight Commander, remade in 1939 as Dawn Patrol, but using the same flying scenes, but with Errol Flynn and David Niven. The movie is about British flyers in France and they wound up using a nice replica of the Sopwith “Camel” airplane. The flying scenes are terrific, especially watching the fragile little plane fly down a railroad track sort of sideways in a crosswind. In truth, in that era, planes were more like motorized kites than airplanes. You could take a sharp pencil and poke right through the canvas wing surfaces.
For World War 2, God is My Co-Pilot, and 30 Seconds Over Tokyo both from books of the same names stand out. The aerial scenes in the first movie using the P-40 (not very successful for us) are spectacular.

​​In 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, the B-25 sequences are amazing. There is a story told to me by a family friend and former B-25 pilot that some of the scenes were done by Doolittle raiders themselves, pulled out of combat (the film was made late in the war). The plane flies dangerously close to the water, and our friend said that no stunt pilot was confident enough to make the scene.

It makes a great story, but I have come to think for a number of reasons that it is not true.