It depends upon what one means by "saving".
Yes, films built awareness and reminded people they were out there. And, that popularity helped encourage some preservation. You can also make the argument that commercial warbird operators and air show participants would have a lot less business without that exposure.
But, as noted above, with few exceptions...The Battle of Britain, Catch 22, 633 Squadron (provided excuses to restore or not to scrap a few airplanes which kept them around until the warbird movement gained momentum) and a couple others...the film industry didn't do the hard work of finding, preserving or encouraging the preservation, restoration and operation of types. That was left to visionaries like Maloney, Palen, the founders of the CAF and others.
Films led to the saving of some types...for example the Jennys and Ryans made airworthy for The Spirit of St.Louis, but didn't save many of the ships sacrificed for the pre-WWII WWI epics, or the 500 plane fleet bought by Paul Mantz after the war.
The survival of some types: the B-17, P-38, TBM, PV2, Stearmans and others has to do with the other uses found for the airframes post war.
The 1990 Memphis Belle didn't save any B-17s, they were already "saved", instead one was lost during filming, but it raised the profile of the type with the general public, but aircraft fans already venerated the type. The Dam Busters didn't save any of the Lancasters that appeared in it, most of the surviving Lancs owe their existence to the fact the French and Canadians flew them into the early '60s..and the dawn of the warbird (or at least preservation since most Lands don't fly) movement.
True, some people who pay money to see them fly today got turned into warbirds from various films but equally important are the airplane nerds like me that read books about the airplanes our fathers (or grandfathers) flew in the war. So you can also credit early airplane book authors...guys like William Green, Arch Whitehouse, Martin Cadin, Peter M. Bowers, Air Classics, The Aeroplane and others who covered the subject back when the topic wasn't covered like it is today.
Growing up on an airbase, I was really fortunate that the base library had a great selection of aircraft books...which I checked out all the time. Things would have very different for me if I had been in a small town in the days before all the specialty publications and the internet.
_________________ Remember the vets, the wonderful planes they flew and their sacrifices for a future many of them did not live to see.
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