BoB is definetly the best ever!!!. Also the dambusters as well as the BBC TV show the Pathfinders, loved that show. For WWI has to be Blue Max as my dad brought me to the set when they were making it. Thats when my passion for WWI aircraft began.
Steve
Speaking as an old “SAC Trained Killer”, I would have to vote for Strategic Air Command with Jimmy Stewart and June Allyson, Bombers B-52 with Effrim Zimbalist Jr and Karl Malden as well as A Gathering of Eagles with Rock Hudson, Barry Sullivan and Rod Taylor. The MITO take off sequence in Eagles was absolutely awesome as was the opening sequence with the 3 Titan I, ICBM in raised position.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
My alltime favourite /besides Top Gun of course/ must be CATCH 22. Man, those Mitchels were awesome!!!
Great question - I was just pondering the same thought a few days ago.
My all-time favourite movie is without a doubt “Battle of Britain” - I can watch the DVD over and over just to hear all those Merlins purring at idle and growling in the combat scenes.
For flight footage, I reckon “Top Gun” comes in at second place. I thought the movie was crap but I love the flight scenes, even though my preference is for aircraft with props.
Another one that nobody has mentioned yet is “Air America”. Again, not a great movie but some excellent flight scenes, albeit mostly lumbering transport aircraft (C-123, Pilatus Porter, etc) and helicopters.
I also like “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”, “Twelve O’Clock High”, “Tora Tora Tora”, “The Dam Busters”, “633 Squadron”, “The Blue Max”, “Memphis Belle”, “Wing and a Prayer”, “The Flying Tigers”, “Those Magnificent Men…”, “The Great Waldo Pepper” and the aircraft footage from films like “Empire of the Sun”, “Catch 22”, “Sink the Bismarck” (some brief but nice footage of Stringbags) and even the flying scenes from “Out of Africa”.
The C-47 para drop sequences from “Band of Brothers” were pretty cool too, I thought.
I agree with the guy who commented on the P-40 sequences in “Pearl Harbour”. The B-25 footage was also nice. Like “Flyboys”, the film was over-dramatised in my opinion, but I found them entertaining enough.
Have to go with “Battle of Britain”, saw it when it first came out. “Tora, Tora, Tora”, same as “BoB”. “The Right Stuff”, gotta love Gordo Cooper. “Tuskeegee Airmen”, some of it was filmed right here in Fort Smith. Would sit at the end of the runway everyday when the P-51s and/or T-6s would take off! Ahhhhhh, the smell of burning methanol!!! And of course, “Always”, great fire bomber action.
Somewhere in my “MIA” Air Classics I have the issues that show the a/c used in “BoB” and “Tora, Tora, Tora”.
Top Gun, Memphis Belle and Flight of the Intruder.
The Belle tricked me into building the revell fortress. And I built 2 or 3 each of the tomcats and intruders because of those films.
-Fred
did you ever watch “Battle of BoB” ? it is a movie about making a BoB. Fascinating stuff. Pilots from both sides [:)], and a drama of making the movie. Real scenes of dogfights with cameras …
I really enjoed it.
Greg
I second “Dark Blue World”
These threads come up every so often and a guy on the Warbird list recommended it a couple of years ago. I’d never heard of it but got it and proceeded to watch it about 20 times in a row. It’s very engaging story (displaced Czech pilots fight in BoB with Spitfires) and the theme song is haunting. I just read a piece in Plane & Pilot magazine written by the guy who directed “Flyboys” - he was recommendding flying books, but slipped in DBW as a movie pic. I think he should have watched it a few more times, as not enough rubbed off! (Flyboys? Yuck!)
One of my favs, not yet mentioned is “War Lover” with Steve McQueen. Great flying scenes. The “Body” limping home over the channel, all shot up and barely flying is unforgetable.
For me it was Flight of the Intruder, BAT 21, and Air America. I was only about 12 when I saw these and I think they started spooling up my head about military aviation. I enlisted as a helicopter mechanic right out of high school.
If you like seaplanes "Murphys War " has some great Grumman Duck footage.[8D]
Well, you really have to love the F-86 flying sequences in “The Hunters,” with, I think, F-84’s standing in for MiGs.
One film that never makes anyone’s list, because it is so obscure, is “Toward the Unknown,” with William Holden and a flimsy plot. But it was filmed entirely at Edwards AFB in 1954-55, and the real stars of the film are the aircraft, including prototypes for the early Century series (early Huns, F-101 [F-88], F-102, YF-104, etc. And there are the scenes with the downright bizarre XB-51, F=94’s, lots of Sabres, X-1E, X-3, X-5, and the opening sequence shows the XF-92 taking off at dawn. I hope this film has been saved in some kind of medium, because I’ve lost my old VHS copy. Many of the flying sequences are taken from well=known aviation stories, such as the one about the Sabre in Korea pushing his wingman back over friendly territory with his nose when the wingman flamed out at altitude (in the movie they use F-94’s).
And yes, when I was eight years old, I think I saw “A Gathering of Eagles” seven days in a row. The way director Philip Kaufman trampled all over the facts in “The Right Stuff” gets in the way of my enjoyment of what is, after all, an absolutely spellbindingly beautiful film. I mean, the real story was exciting enough. It didn’t need psychic bushmen and the two bumbling NASA men (I’m not saying NASA men don’t bumble) played by Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum. We’re expected to believe that Al Shepherd was picked for the program right there on the flight deck of a carrier at sea during flight ops.
But just ranking them based on the quality of the filmmaking, the script and the acting, among other things, my favorite movies involving airplanes are “12 O’Clock High” and “Dr. Strangelove.” I know the latter choice will get me accused of treason, but I stand by my pick.
Ah, there are just so many great ones, and if I had them all…
BTW, someone mention the yellow wings planes in “Dive Bomber.” Well, Wayne Tevlin’s Yellow Wings Decals makes a set of markings for literally every airplane that appears in that film. It’s a beautiful set, and all in 1/48. You’ll have a hard time finding one or two of the types, since they are vacuforms, but all are kitted in this scale.
One more thing and I turn it over to others: Does anyone remember Craig T. Nelson and the lovely Elizabeth Shue in the TV series in 1984-85, “Call to Glory”? He flew everything from the U-2 over China to Phantoms in SEA. It was a fine TV show, and it just didn’t get enough of an audience.
Tom
This is a great thread, I am going to have to make a list. Midway is amoung my favorites though it does contain scenes with aircraft that did not participate in that campaign. Tora Tora Tora, BOB and Memphis Belle was good too. I watched Hell’s Angels for the first time a couple of weeks ago and just loved the footage of the Zepplin bombing London.
Someone mentioned a B-24 in Iwo Jima but I’m pretty sure it was either a Lockheed Ventura or Hudson.
I liked the original Documentary of the Menphis Belle. seeing the attacking 109’s. Geez those guys had some cahooners (Fort crew). The fighters were like missiles. How the heck you got a good shot at one is baffling. Also Empire of the sun was a cracker. The scene with the lad on the tower as the P51’s shot by low level was a cracker. As he shouts ‘P51 Mustang, Cadillac of the skys’
…Guy
How about Dogfights on the History Channel. It’s not a movie but a series I’m sure everyone has heard of.
I can’t get enough of it.
My girlfriend is gonna kill me… I just did a little re-prioratizing of our netflix list[:D] Lots of stuff that needs re-viewing, and many new ones to add to the list.
I to would have to add catch 22, and Air America to the list. both great films.
As to the dude who had a hard time with The Right stuff… remember, Kaufman was pretty loyal to Tom Wolfs book, and like it or not NASA deserved, and still deserves much critisism for it’s actions past and present, and Tom wolff is not the only author to make light of the bumbling dunderheadness of NASA over the years. read “Riding Rockets” written by an astronaut himself heck, even Chuck Yeager had few kind words in his autobiography…the list goes on… anyway, all politics aside, who can’t love the insanity of the space race and that movie catches both sides perfectly!
I would go with 12 O’Clock High, Top Gun, Tora Tora Tora, Flying Leathernecks, Flying Tigers, and Midway. I picked up a great book a couple of years ago called “When Hollywood Ruled the Skies” by Bruce Orriss. Great book on the WWII aviation film classics. I got it used on Amazon as it is out of print. Great info on the classic films of WWII aviation. I am using it as a guide for films to try to add to my library.
Steve
Another great one is Mel Gibson’s We Were Soldiers, featuring a bunch of Vietnam-era jets such as an F-100 and the last prop-driven Navy warbird, the Skyraider. Add in 13 Days, the Kevin Costner movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis, with some nice footage (probably animated) of such birds as an F-101, an F-8 Crusader (or perhaps the F-7 Corsair II?), and a U-2.
With this I was not referring to the aircraft that the Japanese general disembarked from at the beginning of the film, which didn’t look particularly like a Japanese aircraft. I was talking about a brief sequence where the Jap camp on Iwo gets bombed by high-level bombers, and the airplanes I could see in the shot far up in the sky looked like B-24s. I may be totally wrong on this, and obviously such a shot would have been generated in a computer any way.
In “A Walk in the Sun” you have a short scene wth a flight of P-38’s doing a flyover. In the “War Lover”, I have read that much of the aircraft scenes were actually taken but not used of “Twelve O’clock High”. The B-52 scenes in “Dr. Strangelove” were all probably products of the studio’s special effect department, but still they were great.
Mike T.
Wow, great info. I’ve never heard of “Toward the Unknown”, but I’m going to track it down for sure. It was also called “Brink of Hell”, apparently.
I thought of Strangelove too, but it’s all one big model shot once you get past the opening credits, which have good B-52 footage. Look carefully though, in the aerial shots of the model B-52 flying over snow (and yes, I built it in 1/72), there is the shadow of the camera plane that shot the original backdrop footage. It’s a real B-17!
I’m going over to VideoDroid with a list!
Wow, I got to look some of these up, I don’t know what its called, someone would probobly know. But the one where the B-52s get a misssion to strike Moscow, and they can’t get the recall order and then the General winds up having to drop a nuke on New York and then stabs himself with the drug. I love BoB and Midway, and the Scene from The Longest Day with the Skyraiders going overhead.
I never knew Flight of the Intruder or Catch 22 was a movie
David