Worst movie for aircraft accuracy?

Michel Lemieux · **Posted:** Tue Mar 08, 2005 8:46 am

Digger......

That movie was the Humter I think.

It shows an F86 with troubles on approach.

The actual crash scene is with an F100....very dramatic crash might I add.

Steve T · **Posted:** Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:33 pm

Hi all--

The Korean War film referred to was "The Bridges At Toko-Ri", starring William Holden and Grace Kelly and a whole bunch of F9F Panthers. (The book on which the film was based actually featured Banshees, but those were largely out of service when the film was made a couple years later). Pretty good flick, actually, and one of the few set in Korea. (The only other Korean War aviation film I can think of is "Battle Hymn", about Col. Dean Hess and his involvement with the ROKAF.)

One of the weirdest "stand-ins" for filming that I've heard about involved a Lisunov Li2 (Soviet C-47) converted for a Czech TV-movie back in the 80s...into a replica Vickers Wellington! Needless to say the resulting beast was not required to fly...

I think I might start a corollary thread to this one, and see what films the WIX community would give kudos for particular attention to accuracy. (My own '49 NAR flick would belong there rather than here: what with my having commissioned flyable reincarnations of F2G Race 94 and P-51 "Beguine" and all...ah, for $115 mil or so...) :roll:

S.

Chris Brame · **Posted:** Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:43 pm

Almost forgot... "Escuadron 201" (1945) about Mexico's famed fighter squadron that served in the Pacific. Training sequences are OK (especially if you like to see a LOT of T-6 footage) but once they get overseas, nary a P-47 to be had - instead, we get a bomber mission flown by... drumroll please... AT-11s featuring a crash sequence (miniature) of a B-25!

Martin Edwards · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:38 am

re; "The Bridges At Toko-Ri",
IIRC the Panther sprouts a propellor when it crashes onto the carrier!

Scott Rose · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 1:11 am

My favorite is a movie I can't remember the name of where a commando team in the Pacific finds a hidden Japanese air base with T-28's in a green Japanese Army Scheme. Very weird.

And my all time favorite is the C-130 posing as a Emily in Midway

Robbie Stuart · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 2:24 pm

Blue Thunder has got to be one of worst helicopter movies for realism that has ever been made. I maintained a Bell 206L Longranger offshore out of Morgan City La. back then, & I sure wish I could have got it to do half the things Blue Thunder would do. We had a joke going round the fling wing guys, we called it Blue Wonder. :lol:

Robbie

SaxMan · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 6:52 pm

I'd give the nod to "Midway". The basically took the action scenes from "Tora, Tora, Tora" and inserted them into Midway movie. Most of the stock footage used was from later in the war...Avengers, Helldivers, Hellcats and Essex class carriers abound.

I like how the Japanese carriers had reversed angled decks. They looked suspiciously like Essex-class carriers after their SCB-125 conversions and then filmed backwards. Hmmmm......

I like the movie, but another one is Dr. Strangelove. It is a B-52 in the low-level arctic flying scenes, but if you look at the shadow, it is the unmistakable shadow of a B-17. Coincidentally, the B-17 photo plane was also the same B-17 that was used in "The War Lover"....which, of course, became the NWM's "Fuddy Duddy"

JBoyle · **Posted:** Wed Mar 09, 2005 8:44 pm

Michel Lemieux wrote:

Digger......

That movie was the Humter I think.

It shows an F86 with troubles on approach.

The actual crash scene is with an F100....very dramatic crash might I add.

The film was the otherwise excellent "The Hunters".
I think you're being a bit too picky....
I'm not too taken aback by showing an F-100 crashing....it's better than a cheesy model of an 86!!!!
It might be in bad taste though to show a fatal crash...which clearly the F-100 was.

BTW: the crash scene was also used in the film "X-15"..a very good film lots of period Edwards AFFTC stuff.

DazDaMan · **Posted:** Thu Mar 10, 2005 5:17 am

Pearl Harbor:

GREEN Zeros
Polish-marked Eagle Squadron Spitfires
Ben Assf*ck shooting out his Spit's canopy, only for the aircraft to be flying away with a whole canopy in longshot.

That's just the start of it, methinks.

Brad · **Joined:** Thu Apr 29, 2004 10:30 pm **Posts:** 1131

Digger wrote:

Some of you fella's must be real old!
I haven't heard of most of these movies?
John Wayne, is that one or two actors????

Seriously, didn't Midway have a C130 in it too somewhere?
Digger

John Wayne...one actor. Simply the greatest actor to ever live. Anywhere, anytime...ever, and I'm only 32!

Much better than the other "world's greatest actors": Randolph Scott, Henry Fonda (can't stand his daughter), Lee Marvin, Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, Clayton Moore, Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Cary Grant and Yakima Kanutt.

I think you're right about the Mighty Herk in Midway.

TonyI · **Posted:** Thu Mar 10, 2005 8:45 am

Gotta love whatching a P-40 shoot down a Ryan SC. But they had to shoot something down :shock:

and in war time Japanese plane might have been hard to come by :wink:

Tony

bdk · **Joined:** Sun May 02, 2004 1:16 am **Posts:** 11324

JDK wrote:

This is the ONLY movie with a Hispano Buchon (you know, the Spanish 109, right?) pretending to be a Spitfire. Original you'll agree. But the clincher is the Spitfire painted up as a Messerschmitt.

Or the movie with the Buchon modified to look like a Mustang.

DazDaMan · **Posted:** Thu Mar 10, 2005 3:52 pm

bdk wrote:

JDK wrote:

This is the ONLY movie with a Hispano Buchon (you know, the Spanish 109, right?) pretending to be a Spitfire. Original you'll agree. But the clincher is the Spitfire painted up as a Messerschmitt.

Or the movie with the Buchon modified to look like a Mustang.

"Patton", believe it or not.

wendovertom · **Posted:** Thu Mar 10, 2005 6:24 pm

"Con-air" - it not a war movie but the way that the C-123 is portrayed as being as big as a C-141 on the inside is just insane.

Tom P

Chris Brame · **Posted:** Thu Mar 10, 2005 10:29 pm

Cockpit fun... Corsair cockpit as a Spitfire in "The 1000 Plane Raid"
Hellcat cockpit as a Zero in "Flying Leathernecks"
O-47 cockpit as whatever Fred MacMurray was supposed to be flying into battle in "Flight to Freedom"

Speaking of O-47s, here's a REAL trivia question for you all...
The Air Museum's O-47 appeared in the closing scenes of "Flight of the Phoenix". Years earlier, it was in a brief flying sequence in another movie. Name the movie!

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Worst movie for aircraft accuracy?

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