What's your favorite Aviation Movie?

[Professor Brensec]

I like several ones like:

Twelve O'Clock High
Midway
a real oldie called Wings (Silent)
SAC
Spirit of St. Louis
I think it is called The Great Waldo Pepper with Robert Redford, also cant think of the names of some but nothing beats the real footage from the signal corps like Midway, Memphis Belle, and from the Why We Fight Series called The Battle of Britian -- that's the real stuff there. (I also have one with Ronald Reagan as a fighter pilot who has trouble recognizing Zero's and is in need of instruction --a training film)

The ones with authentic footage are always interesting to see. However, having seen so many History Channel Doco's containing the same footage over and over, I don't think there's much around that's not been used in films or doco's that I haven't seen.
I know that to 99% of people a film is a means of entertainment and it's only we buffs that are picky about things, but if I see that shot of an F6F on a carrier hitting the island and breaking in half, revealing the bulkhead behind the cockpit one more time, I'll scream.
Christ, isn't the poor bugger embarrassed enough yet..............lol.
As I said in my post, they don't seem too particular about getting the sequences correct in terms of time and place etc. For instance, the shot I mention above was shown in the Battle of Midway movie. Of course there were no F6F's. There were also many other shots which were glaring errors. But as I said, for most the entertainment value is there.
I could go to a movie about something I don't know much about and not be concerned with similar oversights.

As for Ronald's character having difficulty recognising Zeros. The Dauntless was very similar in shape and at a distance, especially in poor light, many mistakes were made. I read that Joe Foss (pretty sure it was him) was flying and spotted a group of Dauntlesses and thought he'd give them an escort. He ended up in the middle of a flight of Zeros. So it happened to the best.  ;D

[Hagar]

I think the main difference is that we watch any film with aviation content mainly for the featured aircraft. The storyline & acting take second place.
It's possible to be over-critcal. IMHO

I'm surprised nobody picked up my " deliberate" mistake on the Coffman starters. Maybe nobody is particularly interested. LOL
They do not discharge direct to the cylinders but connect to the engine starter jaw via a clutch in the conventional way. http://www.sjvls.org/sjvis/bens/bf010cs.html

[Professor Brensec]

I didn't pick it up because I know nothing about the system.
But it does amaze me that such a .............strange way of starting a plane engine was as widely used as you reported.
We have all seen the ground crewman wheel the "booster" trolley over to the plane for the pilot to get started, but this "Coffman" method is a bit new to all. As I said, I knew of it but that's it.

Tell me, if a WWII plane, say, a Spitfire was to stall (engine wise) in mid flight, could the engine be re-started by the pilot?
Were there any planes that had a completely self contained electrical system (say, like a car) that didn't need assistance at start-up?  

[Hagar]

The main advantages of a cartridge starter over the electric type are comparative lightness & reliability. Aircraft electrics were notoriously unreliable in those days.

Most aircraft would be fitted with some sort of battery or accumulator but this would be small capacity (again due to the weight) & mainly used for instruments & radio. It could be used for engine starting in emergencies, providing the engine was fitted with an electric starter of course. The trolley-acc would be used when available to save draining the onboard battery.

Aircraft engines cannot stall in the conventional sense. The word "stall" applied to aircraft would usually refer to the aerodynamic meaning of the term. Piston engines might cut out due to fuel starvation or some other problem. If they were to stop for whatever reason, piston engines can usually be restarted in the air by using the airflow to spin the prop. This might involve putting the aircraft into a dive to get it rotating.

PS. Various other methods are used for engine starting. These include:
Hand swinging. Tiger Moth, Piper Cub etc.
Hand cranked Inertia starter. Anson, Stearman, Harvard, some Bf 109 variants
Pneumatic (compressed air). Commonly used on Russian & Chinese types. MiG 3, post-WWII Yak 52 etc.

PPS. The electric powered inertia starter system used on the P-38 & your favourite P-40 can also be hand-cranked.

The line chief awakened me before daylight and told me to go out and preflight a P-38 with the squadron identifier LMT. He said I would now be crewing for John Eiland. My pilot had been transferred out to another outfit when we left England. LMT was a new P-38 ferried over the southern Atlantic route from the Lockheed factory and had arrived at Tafarouri the previous day. I can remember the following as if it happened yesterday. I finally located LMT with my flashlight. I tried to start the engines for the preflight but the battery was dead. My first thoughts were not pleasant nor was I confident, at that early hour, that my beginning as a crew chief for Big John, who was second in command, was getting off to a good start. I knew Big John would be out to take off at the break of dawn, and I needed to get moving although I was all by myself. I sat down in the cockpit and primed the left engine with fuel, set the throttles, set the mixture controls, set the parking brakes and put wheel chocks in front of the wheels. The plane still had the belly tanks on from its last flight, I thought if I was successful in getting the engine inertia starter up to speed by hand cranking the starter by myself, I would be able to get the left engine started. I could jump on the belly tank, make one leap onto the wing, another leap into the cockpit and hit the starter switch before the inertia starter lost speed to turn the engine over. I believe the adrenaline jolt I was having, would enable me to make the first vault onto the belly tank and the rest would be a race against time. I hand cranked the inertia starter until I knew, from the high pitch whine, it wasn't going to go any faster so I dropped the crank and made my first leap. Every thing went as planned and the engine started at the first rotation of the propeller. I then started the right engine by using the generator on the left engine and continued on with the pre-flight. http://www.1stfighter.org/warstories/duncan.html

[phil509]

Ive seen "flight of the Pheonix" but thought it lame because,A:How can you re-assemble a wrecked C-123 Provider,and make a completly new A/C ,in the middle of the desert with no tools B:How do you transfer fuel without ALOT of drums.C:Aluminium is light,but unless there were alot of cammels around,how do you move major airframe components into the precice posititions needed for assembly,and D:If Im not mistaken,the C-123 used a variation of the Wright Cyclone engine which was battery/magneto start-not a stupid cartrige.       Ive seen films,and heard stories about the Canberra with its cartrige starters-manny`a ground crew shot his PKP bottle into the intake after seeing the cloud of black smoke,thinking the engine was alight and not knowing that was normal.                                                                                      ;D    p.s. "Air America" is my second favorite

[Hagar]

Phil. It's a while since I saw the film but I think you'll find the aircraft was a Fairchild C-82 Packet. http://afmuseum.com/aircraft/c82.html
I agree with what you say but this is a work of fiction. Where's your imagination?

[Blade]

Oso I saw this film a while back on TCM, I can't remember its name though "The Flying Aces"? But I remember the planes having the Ace of Spades marking on their tails, I believe this Sqn. is still in service with the USN?
As for cartridges, well Hagar by the time I got to Chipmunks they were all gone... But I think most of the Merlin engines used the Coffman too....

Ozzy

Its VF-41, the Black Aces. They now fly F-14 Tomcats stationed on board the USS John F. Kennedy.

http://www.topedge.com/alley/squadron/lant/vf41hist.htm

[Professor Brensec]

[quote]Phil. It's a while since I saw the film but I think you'll find the aircraft was a Fairchild C-82 Packet. http://afmuseum.com/aircraft/c82.html
I agree with what you say but this is a work of fiction. Where's your imagination?

[phil509]

GREAT Pics,Blade!Those are desktop/wallpaper quality!         My third favorite flick:CONAIR

[Woodlouse2002]

[quote]

The ones with authentic footage are always interesting to see. However, having seen so many History Channel Doco's containing the same footage over and over, I don't think there's much around that's not been used in films or doco's that I haven't seen.
I know that to 99% of people a film is a means of entertainment and it's only we buffs that are picky about things, but if I see that shot of an F6F on a carrier hitting the island and breaking in half, revealing the bulkhead behind the cockpit one more time, I'll scream.
Christ, isn't the poor bugger embarrassed enough yet..............lol.
As I said in my post, they don't seem too particular about getting the sequences correct in terms of time and place etc. For instance, the shot I mention above was shown in the Battle of Midway movie. Of course there were no F6F's. There were also many other shots which were glaring errors. But as I said, for most the entertainment value is there.
I could go to a movie about something I don't know much about and not be concerned with similar oversights.

As for Ronald's character having difficulty recognising Zeros. The Dauntless was very similar in shape and at a distance, especially in poor light, many mistakes were made. I read that Joe Foss (pretty sure it was him) was flying and spotted a group of Dauntlesses and thought he'd give them an escort. He ended up in the middle of a flight of Zeros. So it happened to the best.

[Professor Brensec]

You might say that but how many of you guys noticed that in the Battle of Britain when the pole first go into combat (unintentionally) half the aircraft in the Hurricane formation are actually Bf109E's. Its hard to spot them but then again... Hurricane's never had struts to hold the tail plane up!

I remember you mentioning that a few months ago.
I went and looked at my tape to see if I could make out the struts (they're there).  ;D

I reckon if a few of us got together and watched a few older movies with "the critical eye", we'd manage to spot alot more of this sort of thing.
You've got to hand it to the movie makers, in some instances, after all, they didn't have ant kind of computer generation then, so it must have been hard.

By the way, Woody, how many Spits and Hurri's did they have available during the production in '68?

[ATI_7500]

i remember two other movies: Air America with Mel Gibson and euh another Vietnam-movie with Gene Hackman.

p.s: did anyone already mention "apocalypse now"? the helicopter attack. or the wreck of a B-52 in the jungle.

[Professor Brensec]

i remember two other movies: Air America with Mel Gibson and euh another Vietnam-movie with Gene Hackman.

p.s: did anyone already mention "apocalypse now"? the helicopter attack. or the wreck of a B-52 in the jungle.

Gene Hackman.................Bat 52.
I think I mentioned it earlier in some way. Or maybe it was in the "Best War Movie" thread.  ;D

[Hagar]

how many Spits and Hurri's did they have available during the production in '68?

You might find this article interesting. http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/place/gdg18/battleofbritain.shtml
The numbers were 27 Spitfires & 4 Hurricanes (2 airworthy). Not all the Spitfires were airworthy & some were used for taxying footage only. Many of these were completely restored afterwards. The film is claimed to have started the revival in warbird refurbishment & many aircraft on the current display circuit had some part in it.

They also built full-sized fibreglass replicas for static shots. These were later refurbished & exchanged for the remaining real Spitfires used as gate guardians on RAF stations.

The Spanish Air Force were still using home-built versions of the Bf 109 (Hispano Aviacion HA-1112-M1L Buchon) & He 111 (CASA 2111). 28 Buchons were purchased for the film while about 50 serving CASA 2111s took part, flown mainly by Spanish pilots. Only 2 "Heinkels" were flown to Britain & the rest of the filming took place over Spain. Unfortunately, no examples of other types of Luftwaffe bombers that took part in the BoB were available.

The producers went to a great deal of trouble to make everything as authentic as possible. It's all too easy to be over-critical. IMHO

[Professor Brensec]

The producers went to a great deal of trouble to make everything as authentic as possible. It's all too easy to be over-critical. IMHO  

Agree, most definitely. i don't think it's really critisism, more a need to point out that we are aware of the subtle differences.

I'm surprised to find that there was such a lack of Hurricanes, considering the number produced and available at wars end. Also, I imagine they would be a much cheaper proposition to restore, given the simpler construction etc.

P.S. I once heard that at the end of the war a complete "crated" Spitfire" could be bought in England (from the RAF or whatever Dept. involved) for 1,000 pounds. Is there any truth to this.  ;D