I watched this last night; never saw it before.

The plot is very hokey, it was done in the early 50's and was obviously little more than propaganda for SAC, but it had some great airplane scenes in it. I've never seen that many B-36's in one spot before - and they were all REAL! Early on in the film a civilian DC-3 declares an emergency and we see it making a single-engine approach to a SAC base, the left engine feathered. After landing, while taxiing to the ramp, the dead engine starts up and the plane intrudes into the B-36 flight line. As it comes to a stop, the door opens and out jump a bunch of 'agressor' soldiers, who are quickly surrounded by Base security. Then a cigar-smoking 4-star (GEN Hawke(s)!!!) emerges to tell all concerned it was just a security check.

Anyway, the photography is outstanding, including a B-47 RATO take-off, an tour through the interior of the B-36 and 9 B-47's in formation. A good view of the last of the piston engine bombers with the first all jet bomber, neither of which ever dropped a bomb in anger. If you get a chance to watch it, it is well worth it.

A pretty good period propoganda piece. Can't go much wrong with Jimmy Stewart, June Allyson, and baseball.

Hell ya! I always thought the same thing.

I inherently liked Jimmy Stewart as a kid, but he really went up in my estimation when I read about his war record and retirment as a USAF Reserve Brigadier General. He could have done his own flying in that movie!

I think he did.

I believe he was checked out on both the B-36 and B-47 but any flying scenes were either film footage of aircraft on excercise or in a mockup cockpit.

Great footage and a favorite.

Another movie with great footage though story is weak is Jet Pilot with John Wayne. Janet Leigh is nice to watch too. Howard Hughes made it in 1950 but didn't release it until 1957.

As an aside, the B-47 had to be one of the most supremely graceful aircraft of all times, especially for a relatively large bird. There's one on the side of I-95 outside of Savannah, GA (8th AF Museum) that still is stunning every time I drive by.

After some not-so-cursory search, seems you're right..

Stewart's Recruiting film Winning Your Wings:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2...Wings&hl=en

It would have worked on me.



Jimmy Stewart Bomber Pilot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoY8Cj1larg

This is a narrative done by Stewart about is flight training and WW2. It shows several takes of a news real that he filmed.

This movie has some of the most stunning air-to-air-photography I have ever seen. The scene of the fighter escort crossing over the B-36 just above the cumulous clouds, with everyone dragging contrails is a 10++++ in my book! On a big screen, it had to be incredible

Where do I find this movie?

A great piece of propaganda and a classic period piece. My father (SAC KC-97G navigator) always got a thrill out of the aerial refueling shot.

Apparently only available on NTSC VHS tape.

Here is a small bit of it I found on You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wvEzhyY9F4...55&index=93

And another small bit I found:

http://www.livevideo.com/video/3124B90491A...stewart-at.aspx

Here is one more from the beginning of the film:

http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&...art&start=0

And just for fun here is an appearance on the Old Whats My Line TV show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADQpyXEIFtM

FWIW, Stewart later flew at least on mission over North Vietnam as an observer.

Here you go. Be sure you are seated and relaxed before you click the link; carefully look at the price:

http://www.warshows.com/Detail.bok?no=2234

It is a cool movie, for the plane shots alone. Both types are being restored at the Strategic Air & Space Museum (formerly the SAC Museum) just west of my location.

http://www.sasmuseum.com/

Thin plot, I don't know. It wasn't drama'd up like most movies about real peace time service is. If Hollywood made that movie today, there'd be a Female Officer in command, she'd be banging some enlisted guy on the flight line, and there'd be some sort of love triangle thing going on, expose how airforce pilots were involved with the tailhook scandal ( ), a bunch of criminal actions by various officers and the overall story would twist around the fact that the Air Force is a bunch of racist war mongers.


I consider SAC a good movie, dry, but technically accurate as can be. Heck, when the B-36 is taxing out to the flight line you get the squealing of the VERY large brakes as the pilot presses one brake and then the other to turn the big bird. I've heard B17s make the same noise. It sends shivers down my spine when I hear it though.

SAC is a movie made when hollywood was still under the right impression that the military defends it along with the rest of the nation.

If you can get Turner Classic Movies mark your calenders!

April 19, 2009, 1:00 PM EST

http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=4246

You forgot sexist, homophobic and Islamophobic.

It took Stewart's personal influence to get it made and made well. Basically he called in his markers to get one good film. Most of the national policy films of that period are absolute dreck, juiced up with the 1950s versions of all of the extraneous plot complications you mentioned.

They ran it about once a month, on average, last year, sometimes two or three times a month.

If you like 1950's jet action, The Hunters is also worth a look, and a fun flick although, it has a lot more Hollywood BS than SAC. It's is worth a look if you like F86's, and F84's in action (it is hard to imagine the USAF repainting a squadron of jets just for Hollywood now days).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQAVbujz9Ng

It is on DVD in the USA.

I wonder if that TCM is the same as the TCM I have on cable, and not a "Asian" or regional version like HBO Asia, Discovery Channel Asia, or History Channel Asia.

If the same, what is 1:PM EST in GMT?

Thanks for the notice, looking forward to it (if the same TCM).

EST = GMT-5 so 1:PM EST would be 6:PM GMT

Wasn't Rock Hudson's "A Gathering of Eagles" basically a remake?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Gathering_of_Eagles

Had some cool B-52 footage though. My local Wal-Mart had both "The Hunters" and "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" for less than $10 each.

Do you use NTSC or PAL in the Philippines?

Thanks Dave. I have always been confused with Eastern, Pacific, Central US time zones. SAC will be at 2am 20 April then (Manila = +8 GMT).

Evan: Wikipedia says we use NTSC.

What was the lineup this morning at right around breakfast time for you? We had A Tree Grows in Brooklyn followed by Moonstruck.

My friend has cable and a DVD recorder, he might be able to burn a copy for you. (He does have to fight his three daughters, wife and mother for the remote control though.)

I've got a DVD recorder but no cable.

Give me a few weeks and I might have enough points for another free Rapidshare Premium Account and you can probably find a DivX/XviD rip online somewhere. Not that I'm advocating the theft of intellectual property.

I love the film. Even the 50's special effects in the B-36 crash are cool, and when I first saw it as a kid, it looked real. We also were living in a place where B-36's and 47's were flying directly overhead almost every day at the time ( Ft. Bliss, under the takeoff and approach pattern of Biggs AFB).

I have that one. It was written by a combat veteran F-86 pilot, and based on personalities in his squadron. The Osprey book on Korean War aces goes into the details. It has footage of an F-100 crash ( most likely a prototype) with fatality, when the USAF was willing to let Hollywood use such things.

September 2008. The museum is well worth the visit.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/cg0...A/M8thAF-16.jpg

Lucky you. My dad loves to tell horror stories about going to Bliss on Nasty Guard exercises with 90mm AA guns.

For those of you on this side of the continent, there's a good example at the Hill AFB Museum north of Salt Lake City, UT. They also have a B-52 and B-1.

Thanks for the link, Al. Wright-Patterson AFB OH also has a B-36 on indoor display. Last time (c.1995) I rode AMC through San Antonio, the sole XC-99 was still parked on the side of the runway at Kelly AFB. I wonder if it can be saved.

The XC-99 has been moved to the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton, OH: http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/exhibits/...ation/index.asp Blurb at the bottom of the page.

Douglas

I know of one guy that has a rip of the movie. Details by PM.

When I was at Kelley in '63, the XC-99 was on static display out in the base boonies. Just drive up, park, clinb a ladder, and you could spend as much time as you had/wanted clambering around the interior. Impressively big for it's day...

Did I hear the Col Sherman T. Potter (Harry Morgan) from MASH?

Yes. He plays a B-36 flight engineer.

There was a later movie called "Bombers B-52" that I have seen once a long time ago, but it wasnt half as good.

"The Bridges at Toko Ri" has lots of great aerial scenes of 1950s era naval fighters (and Grace Kelly!!!).

The best air movies are still "The Blue Max", "The Battle of Britain", and "12 Oclock High". The last is even used from time to time as a teaching tool for how a commander has to act in many situations (I saw it in class at Ft Benning).

Speaking of General Stewart, if you check out the video on the B-58 Hustler, that's him climbing out after a flight in the tail end of the video clip over on Sonic Bomb. Sonic Bomb has some great Aviation videos too.

A few years back Parameters (I think -- I could be misremembering) ran a monograph about the use of that movie as a leadership teaching tool. Unfortunately, some of the techniques explored in the film are the hardest ones to achieve success with. Inspiring loyalty through tough love isn't for everybody.

Another movie I like is Command Decision. It doesn't have hardly any aviation action in it, but it's a good case study in having the courage of your convictions.

The Bridges at Roko-Ri, another good film.

"Where do we get such men?"

It was a great place to be a kid. By the time I was in first grade, I could identify just about every aircraft in the US military inventory, as it seemed that everything flew in and out of Biggs on training missions, even the Navy stuff. Also, my dad was a Nike Hercules instructor, and brought home aircraft recognition manuals for me and my older brother, and sometimes took us to work with him when he was in a Herc battery. While we were there, a B-36 crashed into the Franklin Mountains in view of town, a Navy jet went down, and my dad drove us over to see it while it was still a smoking wreck ( I think it was a Skyray, but it was hard to tell ), and an F-100 crashed into a fuel storage facility ( very spectacular ), so military aviation in the 50's wasn't for lightweights. All of this happened in plain view of our home.

As kids, we didn't appreciate just how hot it was, most of the time. In retrospect, it would have been an ugly place to spend time in the field as a working troop of some sort.

The B47 shots with Stewart and his uncooperative shoulder were shot in a cut-away B47 forward end that is on display indoors at the museum at March AFB. I have my pics around someplace, but they won't be hard to find on the internet.

I was going to say that you probably couldn't shoot that in a B-47, but looking at photos of real cockpits and not the cutaway, it looks like you could. You'd have crap for sound though.




The observers station down and forward of the pilots feet looks 'cozy'.





The guys in the ECM pod though. Talk about a station that's tantamount to being cargo.

An old Cajun manager of mine said " There I was 19 YO and just out of the swamps and they had me being resposible for keeping a B-47 flying ".

Crappy view of the B-47 cutaway from "SAC" nose section here:

http://www.marchfield.org/collect.html

Several good views here:

http://flickr.com/photos/wbryan/2675599942/

Alas, I didn't check out TCM yesterday morning and I do not know. Usually set the tv to our local news channels in the morning before going off to work. I'll check yesterday's papers if they have any schedules on TCM (they usually have for some of the more popular channels like HBO and Discovery). Thanks.