Best Aviation movie

Ad: This forum contains affiliate links to products on Amazon and eBay. More information in Terms and rules

Forgot to add Flight of the Phoenix some great acting and Jimmy Stewart was the perfect choice as the pilot, I thought Hardy Kruger was terrific
 
12 O Clock High
Great Story
Great 'collection' of true stories
Great acting
Great settings and props - real B-17s, real combat film, looked like Bassingbourn but not sure
Great Film - Academy Award as I recall.

Gives me goose bumps every time when the story starts and he feels and hears the ghosts of past B-17s rumbling to the threshold to start a long day to Germany in 1943...

Never has been matched for overall composition, acting, filming for realism and historically significance...Bernie Lay was THERE.

Often wrong, never uncertain

Bill

Never been matched for all the above criteria
 
meh.. there a litany of WW 2 flics with decent aerial scenes. "BoB" is one of the better ones, with original (Spanish built) Heinkel-111s and such.

For WW 1, the film "Wings" (1927) is very good. Nowadays, it makes one cry to see orginal SPADs and Gotha planes being crashed.

For jet-age, IMO nothing beats the French film "Knights of the Sky" (Les Chevaliers du Ciel). The story was so-so, good for the adolecents I suppose, but the scenes are fantastic. No CGIs and just totally awesome aerial cinematography. It is available here in the US on DVD.
 
Hi everyone,

It just occurred me: Did "Quax der Bruchpilot" ever find an audience outside of Germany?

Quax, der Bruchpilot (1941)

Not a serious movie, but well-wrought comedy with some good flying scenes. Seems to have been black-listed as Nazi propaganda by the Allies, but that's really a stretch ...

Regards,

Henning (HoHun)
 
Have to agree that 12 O'clock High is one of the very best. Gregory Peck was exceptional.

Although the film was made only a few years after the war the extremely atmospheric scenes at the beginning, with the Adj at the old airfield boundary, can still be replicated today. You can still go to half a hundred old USAAF and Bomber Command bases in Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and stand at the end of the now crazed and failing surfaces that are, oh so slowly, losing their battle against the encroaching weeds and fauna.

However, half close your eyes; try to ignore the modern distractions, and you can still easily transform sounds of motor traffic to lorries delivering the crews to dispersals; you can still – I swear - hear the whine, splutter and roar of Cyclones and Twin Wasps coming to life; the squealing brakes as the '17s and '24s taxi out and thunder into the breaking dawn while the cold, damp, English wind sweeps the noise away into history. Let your imagination run free for a minute and you can, too, still smell the exhaust fumes and the coke fires from the Pot Bellied stoves in the Quonsett huts. The old Flying Control building suddenly looks alive and has windows with people behind them; Aldis lamps flash and a signal flare cracks and breaks the windy silence……

But it's only the lowering winter sun glinting on a shard of glass in the rusting window frame and the Farmer taking a pot-shot at a rabbit. Reality returns. But the ghostly memories remain. Turn back to the car, pat the stone memorial erected by grateful people, whisper a 'Thanks Guys' and surreptitiously place a poppy on the memorial and drive off, after removing that damn piece of grit from one's eye. Look in the mirror and be startled to see, you are sure, a young man in a leather flying-jacket waving a good-bye.

Thanks Guys

Yes, a damn good film.
 
Best aviation movie(s), my favorite ones include;
Battle of Britain: "stay single"
30 Seconds over Tokyo: Mr. Lawson's no-flap takeoff from Hornet
The Hunters: stay single
Piece of Cake: "its a piece of cake"
Bridges at Toko-Ri: cool formation works. "I'll come aboard"
Tora Tora Tora: we had to???
12'o Clock High: "for the first time....you said!"
:rolleyes:
 
Thanks Ccheese; kind of you. (Wanna borrow a Kleenex?)

Knettishall, Shipden, Eye, Thorpe Abbots, Framlington, et al; they are all still there, decaying slowly (well not so much Shipden [GA flying] and Thorpe Abbots [Memorial Museum])..…but the ghosts remain and are remembered by many. Just wanted you guys across the Pond to know that, especially at this time of Remembrance.
 
Tora! Tora! Tora! 8)

Something like 50-60 warbirds were used; the Japanese replicas actually flew off the Yorktown (CV-10). Even the P-40 mock-ups that were blown up looked good. NO CGI, all real aircraft that made Pearl Harbor look sick.

TO
 
What was the WW-I movie with all the early British made
two wing trainers ? Can't think, brain dumb, inspiration won't come !

Does anyone remember "Captains of The Clouds" with Jimmy Cagney ?
It's about a bunch of Canadian bush pilots that enter the RCAF and
wind up ferrying Hudsons to the UK.

Charles
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 1 (members: 0, guests: 1)

Similar threads

BarnOwlLover
Best "general purpose" prop fighter also capable of best high altitude performance
2
Replies
31
Views
2K
PAT303
P
herman1rg
Best piston engined fighter of 1945?
5 6 7
Replies
130
Views
7K
GrauGeist
GrauGeist
A
Best Axis four engined bomber?
Replies
9
Views
1K
dedalos
D
tomo pauk
Best piston engine(s) for fighters of 1945?
4 5 6
Replies
106
Views
6K
drgondog
drgondog
Z
Weather limitations in carrier aviation in the interwar and WWII eras
2
Replies
22
Views
1K
Barrett
B
Back