From the moment in 1908 when American nickelodeon patrons first viewed “moving” images of Wilbur Wright demonstrating the flying machine that he and his brother Orville had built, the movie-going public has been hooked on aviation films. By 1910, some of aviation history’s most important personalities were learning to fly from the pioneers of powered flight, the Wright brothers in the eastern United States, Glenn Curtiss on the west coast at San Diego, and others. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt had just experienced his first aeroplane ride, and in Europe film fans were thronging to see documentaries about the latest aviation achievements.
In the early years of the movies the notion of flying from the decks of navy ships and the concept of the aircraft carrier were beginning their take-off run.
Flying films really took off after World War One, thanks in large part to the involvement in the fledgling motion picture industry of the former wartime aviators William Wellman and John Monk Saunders, Howard Hawks and Dick Grace, all of whom had flown in the war and landed in what was becoming Hollywood. And with their involvement, as historian Alistair Cooke wrote, “the real flavor of what was to a whole generation of Americans the most overwhelming experience of their lives” came to the cinema.
Among the first and most impressive of the early aviation war films was Flying with the Marines, released in June of 1918. The New York Times movie reviewer wrote: “… Flying with the Marines is thrilling, and that’s all there is to it. The film begins with views of places and activities about the camp and then shows squadrons of airplanes rising in military formation, maneuvering in battle array and acting altogether like birds at home on the wing. Pictures of stunt flying follow, with loops, spins, dives and many eccentric, yet graceful movements pictured clearly. There are a number of views of airplanes taken from a camera itself in flight, which shows unusual close-ups of the machines above the earth. Never before, perhaps, have the camera and the airplane been brought together with such thrilling results …” Of another 1918 flying film, Washington’s Sky Patrol, the New York Times reviewer wrote: “The intermittent applause, quick exclamation and nervous laughter … in the house … were evidence of the sensations of the spectators. They held to the arms of their chairs and dizzily watched as the (Washington) Monument revolves beneath them and the Capitol spins around like a top.”
In the century-long history of naval aviation a considerable number of feature-length motion pictures have been made about navy and marine flying in war and peacetime. Many have been well-researched and imaginatively created, resulting in a relatively rewarding experience for moviegoers. Some have been less than that.
Many American and British film stars have appeared in or were involved in making movies about or including aspects of naval aviation. Many of them actually served in the Second World War as naval aviators, air crewmen, aircraft mechanics, or in other naval or marine corps aviation capacities, including Scott Brady, Fred Clark, Jeff Cory, John Ford, Bill Hayes, George Roy Hill, Rock Hudson, Brian Keith, Jock Mahoney, Ed McMahon, Kenneth More, Wayne Morris, Paul Newman, Tyrone Power, and Robert Taylor.
Here are examples of some of the notable motion pictures about naval aviation: Devil Dogs of the Air Filmed at United States Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay, this peacetime movie about Marine Corps flying in the mid-1930s was made as a follow-on to the successful Warner Brother picture Here Comes The Navy, (1934) which also featured the combination of James Cagney and Pat O’Brien. Written by a high-achieving WWI flier, John Monk Saunders (The Dawn Patrol), there is nothing new about the story. The older and more senior Lt Bill Brannigan (O’Brien), a Marine aviator in San Diego, persuades his Brooklyn buddy Tommy O’Toole (Cagney) to come out to the west coast and enlist. Cocky and brash, O’Toole arrives and instantly earns the wrath of the entire base by buzzing the parade ground during an official ceremony, crashing his plane, which bore a large logo WORLD’S GREATEST AVIATOR, and trying to move in on Betty, Brannigan’s girl (Margaret Lindsay). The rest of the story is Brannigan’s effort to tame the arrogant wiseguy O’Toole and turn him into an officer, if not a gentleman.
Easily the best aspect of the film are the flying sequences and especially the final third in which Vought 02U scout planes and Boeing F4B pursuit planes take part in a dramatic war game exercise, a simulated invasion with battleships, and the air fleet in tactical formations and precision aerobatics typical of the period. Of the film, critic Leonard Maltin wrote: “… a tiresome potboiler with Marine Air Corps rivalry between Cagney and O’Brien. Their personalities and good stunt-flying are the only saving grace.”
Of movies on a much higher plane, the 1954 film The Bridges at Toko-Ri was based on a novel by James Michener. U.S. Navy aviator Harry Brubaker (William Holden) had flown as a fighter pilot in the Second World War and begun his post-war career as an attorney when, as a naval reservist he was recalled to active duty for the Korean War in 1950.
Brubaker flies Grumman F9F-2 Panther jets from a carrier in the Sea of Japan and is returning from a mission when he has to ditch his battle-damaged plane in the icy water. Unless he is immediately rescued he will freeze to death. Help arrives as helicopter pilot Chief Petty Officer Mike Forney (Mickey Rooney) and AD2 Nestor Gamidge (Earl Holliman) rescue the pilot.
The carrier task force commander, Rear Admiral George Tarrant (Frederic March) had lost his son in the WW2 Battle of Midway and sees in Brubaker the qualities he had most admired in his boy. He likes Brubaker and respects the fact that the pilot is tired of war, resents having been recalled to this one and wants only to return to his family and career. He also appreciates Brubaker’s acceptance of the need to fight again.
The basis of the film is the mission of the naval aviators to destroy a group of important bridges on a vital supply route used by the communist forces. But before the carrier air group begins its attacks on the bridges, Brubaker learns that his wife Nancy (Grace Kelly) and their children have arrived in Tokyo on an unexpected visit. While with them during a three-day leave, Nestor comes to their hotel and pleads with Brubaker to get Forney out of the guardhouse where he is being held after a brawl with another sailor. Nancy is frightened by the signs of combat fatigue her husband is showing and thinks he may be about to crack under the strain. She expresses her concern to Admiral Tarrant who offers his support in the situation while recalling how his own daughter-in-law nearly went insane following the loss of his son.
The pilots are briefed for the initial strike on the bridges and told of the difficult, low-level approach they must make and the intensity of the flak in the area. Brubaker foresees his death in the raid, but determines to fly the mission.
The air group is to send two waves of planes in the attack, with the first wave led by the carrier air group commander, Wayne Lee (Charles McGraw), whose pilots do not complete the task. Lee orders in the second wave, commanded by Brubaker, to come in and destroy the last remaining bridge, after which Lee orders them to attack a secondary target, an ammunition dump. Completing his run on the target, Brubaker’s plane is hit by flak causing a fuel leak. Lee tries to escort Brubaker back to the carrier but the loss of fuel means that Brubaker will not make it back to the ship. He is forced to belly-land in a flat area and very soon his reliable friends, Forney and Gamidge, show up in their rescue helicopter to save him once again. But North Korean ground troops appear and machine-gun the helicopter. Nestor is killed and the helicopter is disabled. Brubaker and Forney scramble into a small ditch to defend themselves with a carbine and pistols. They are quickly overwhelmed by the enemy soldiers and both are killed.
The Bridges at Toko-Ri is easily among the best of naval aviation films. Author James Michener had served as a war correspondent aboard the aircraft carriers Essex and Valley Forge during the Korean War in the winter of 1951-52 and had based much of his novel on actual incidents in missions to destroy bridge targets in North Korea, and the rescues of two downed navy pilots. Michener believed that the men had been killed, but later learned that they had survived and been taken prisoner by the North Koreans.
Dive Bomber is an important film historically in that it is a pre-Second World War Technicolor record of some interesting historic aircraft like the Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bomber and the Vought SB2U Vindicator dive bomber, as well as featuring colour footage of the famous aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). Colour movies were still somewhat of a novelty in 1941 when Dive Bomber came out, and the picture was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Color Cinematography in 1942.
A U. S. Navy aircraft carrier is operating off Hawaii before the Second World War as a navy dive bomber squadron arrives over Honolulu. One of the pilots blacks out during a high speed dive and crashes. The pilot, Lt Swede Larson (Louis Jean Heydt) is in critical condition and may not survive. Navy doctor Lt Doug Lee (Errol Flynn) talks the senior surgeon into operating on Larson, but the pilot dies during the procedure. Lt Cdr Joe Blake (Fred MacMurray) blames the surgeon and Lee elects to become a flight surgeon. Lee undergoes training at NAS North Island in San Diego and one of his instructors is Blake. Rivals Blake and Lee are after love interest Linda Fisher (Alexis Smith).
After his training course, Dr Lee is made assistant to Dr Lance Rogers (Ralph Bellamy) on his project to prevent altitude sickness in dive bomber pilots. Lee flies on experimental flights with pilot Blake to observe Blake blacking out in dives. Enter Lt Tim Griffin (Regis Toomey), a naval aviator who is suffering from chronic fatigue. On a flight Griffin’s condition returns and he is killed attempting an emergency landing.
Blake volunteers to be a “guinea pig” pilot in aero-medical experiments with high-altitude flying. On the first flight the cabin pressur-ization fails, the aircraft ices up and Blake becomes unconscious, requiring Dr Lee, a trained pilot as well, to take over the controls.
Lee and Blake jointly develop a special pressure suit and then Blake learns that he will fail his next physical exam. Blake makes an unauthorized flight to test the new pressure suit on himself. The oxygen regulator fails and he blacks out, crashes and is killed. Luckily though, his notes of the flight are retrieved from the wreckage and mass production of the pressure suit can begin. The film ends with Drs Rogers and Lee being honoured for their pioneering aero-medical science achievement.
Dive Bomber was released only a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was generally well received by both the moviegoing public and the critics.
“Save for some fine, authentic Navy footage of planes in combat,” wrote a NY Times reviewer, “Flat Top holds nothing new or stimulating in the way of entertainment. If this Monogram offering, featuring Sterling Hayden and Richard Carlson, becomes increasingly familiar with each reel, indeed it should. For Steve Fisher’s scenario, full of hollow-sounding dialogue and clichés, focuses on a battered standby—the upper-echelon feud and its effect on a standard assortment of rookie pilots. And it adds up to a light variation of our worn old friend, ‘The Dawn Patrol.’
“Dull though most of the film may be below deck (inside the studio), Monogram has had the gumption to splice to a generous compilation of official Navy photography. These awesome shots of our Pacific fleet in action include some rousing battles by our dogfighters and the Japanese Zeros and a carefully technical coverage of the galvanized carriers in action. But they hardly lend credibility to the plodding histrionics at hand.
“Nevertheless, since the entire film has been shot in an off-beat color process, the over-all effect at least is one of picturesque respectability. And while Bill Phipps, John Bromfield, Keith Larsen and William Schallert lend only fair assistance in supporting roles, Mr Hayden and Mr Carlson, as the two opposed protagonists, perform with the sensible, hard-bitten air of job-doers rather than miracle workers. Director Lesley Selander, clearly hog-tied by the story and dialogue, obviously was more interested in what the Navy, the real one, had to offer. The paying customer can expect the same reaction.”
Flight of the Intruder is based on a novel by a former USN A-6 Intruder pilot, Stephen Coonts. The picture follows the experiences of Intruder pilot Lieutenant Jake Grafton and his bombardier / navigator, Lt Morgan McPhearson on their raids over North Vietnam in the 1960s war. They are operating from the carrier USS Independence (CV-62) and the picture was mostly made aboard the Independence in 1989. In the filming, the electrical equipment of the Paramount crew apparently caused a number of small electrical fires in the ship. And, a future United States Senator, Fred Thompson, played the part of a captain in the Navy Judge Advocate General Corps. Aircraft employed in the filming include the A-6 Intruder, USAF A-1 Skyraiders, an HH-3 Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter, the A-7 Corsair, the C-2 Greyhound, the F-4 Phantom II, and a North Vietnamese MiG-17.
Movie critics were generally harsh in their opinions of the picture. Roger Ebert referred to it as “a mess. Some scenes say one thing, some say another, while the movie develops an absurd and unbelievable ending and a final shot so cloying you want to shout rude suggestions at the screen.”
The role of Marine Major Dan Kirby, played by John Wayne in the film Flying Leathernecks, was based largely on an actual WW2 Marine fighter ace, Major John L. Smith, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his performance on missions over Guadalcanal in 1942. The film, made in 1951 by director Nicholas Ray, casts Wayne as the new commander of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-247 on Guadalcanal. The other pilots of 247 had expected command of the squadron to go to Captain Carl Griffin (Robert Ryan), and soon chafed under the iron rule and discipline of Kirby who demands a maximum effort from them, one of them being his own brother-in-law, Vern Blithe (Don Taylor).
The tough Kirby genuinely hates the hard decisions he is forced to make and having to send his men to their deaths, but must put the success of their missions ahead of their potential losses. Tension between Kirby and Griffon runs high throughout the film.
Kirby advocates low-level ground attack tactics not approved by the higher-ups. The tactics are eventually are proven to be correct. Kirby is shot down and injured. He must leave command of the squadron and must appoint his own successor. He appoints Griffin despite their differences and they part amicably.
The aircraft used in the movie are the Grumman F4F Wildcat and the Grumman F6F Hellcat.
The story goes that director Ray selected Robert Ryan for the role of Griffin, opposite John Wayne, because Ryan had been a very good boxer in college and was the only actor Ray knew of who could “kick Wayne’s ass.”
During the Second World War writers Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall produced a book called The High Barbaree which was made into High Barbaree, a motion picture released in 1947. The plot has Alec Brooke (Van Johnson) and Nancy Frazer (June Allyson) who were friends as children but separated when June’s family moved away. They meet again as adults, fall in love, but are again separated, this time by the war. Alec is a Navy aviator flying a PBY-5A Catalina flying boat on patrols in the South Pacific when he is shot down. He and his co-pilot are adrift in the disabled flying boat without any means of communication and are listed as missing in action—presumed dead.
Now, through flash-backs, the moviegoer learns about Alec’s childhood with June and how his uncle, a Navy captain, had told him about an uncharted, mysterious, enchanted island called High Barbaree, which by the injured co-pilot’s reckoning is practically right beneath their hull. Then the co-pilot dies, leaving Van to fend on his own, no food, no water, no hope. The poor guy is half-dead when he and the Catalina are finally found and his miseries are forgotten. The only problem is, there is no sign of the enchanted island.
For its time (1976) Midway was a long (132 minutes), big budget, all-star cast, blockbuster motion picture. It simply tells the epic story of the WW2 Battle of Midway, history’s first major naval air battle. It marked the first major defeat the Imperial Japanese Navy, which outnumbered the U.S. Navy four to one, had suffered in the war. Told from both the Japanese and American viewpoints, it follows the planning of the operation by both sides and carries on through the massive air battle.
The picture begins with Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s famous raid on Tokyo flown by sixteen B-25 bombers from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8). The carrier on-board scenes were filmed aboard the Essex-class USS Lexington (CV-16) in the Gulf of Mexico. The Midway Island sequences were filmed at the U.S. Naval Air Station, Point Mugu, California, which happens to have sand dunes similar to those on Midway. In the movie, the Lexington was used as both the American and Japanese aircraft carriers.
The plot thickens as, unknown to the Japanese, American signals intelligence personnel crack the enemy naval codes and learn of the planned Japanese naval ambush to take place near Midway. This enables Admiral Chester Nimitz (Henry Fonda) to send his only remaining carriers to the island in order to trap the Japanese task force with his own ambush. When the Americans prevail in the great battle, Nimitz is left with the question, “were we better than the Japanese or just luckier?”
Many historical inaccuracies detract from the authenticity of Midway. As Robert Niemi wrote in History in the Media: Film and Television: “Midway’s clichéd dialogue and an overuse of stock footage lead the film to have a shopworn quality that signalled the end of the heroic era of American-made World War II epics … a final anachronistic attempt to recapture World War II glories in a radically altered geopolitical era, when the old good-versus-evil dichotomies no longer made sense.”
It’s not easy to be objective about the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor, directed by Michael Bay with a $140 million budget and a box office gross of nearly $450 million. It’s another very long (183 minutes), all-star epic that featured Ben Affleck, Josh Hartnett, Alec Baldwin, Jon Voight, Kate Beckinsale, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Dan Aykroyd, and more. The movie critics were mostly lukewarm to negative about the film. Roger Ebert: “The film has been directed without grace, vision, originality, and although you may walk out quoting lines of dialog, it will not be because you admire them. There is no sense of history, strategy or context; according to this movie, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor because America cut off its oil supply, and they were down to an 18-month reserve. Would going to war restore the fuel sources? Did they perhaps also have imperialist designs? Movie doesn’t say.”
Rolling Stone: “Affleck, Hartnett and Beckinsale—a British accent without a single worthy line to wrap her credible American accent around—are attractive actors, but they can’t animate this moldy romantic triangle.”
Entertainment Weekly: “Bay’s staging [of the Pearl Harbor attack] is spectacular but also honorable in its scary, hurtling exactitude … There are startling point-of-view shots of torpedoes dropping into the water and speeding toward their targets, and though Bay visualizes it all with a minimum of graphic carnage, he invites us to register the terror of the men standing helplessly on deck, the horrifying split-second deliverance as bodies go flying and explosions reduce entire battleships to liquid walls of collapsing metal.”
New York Observer: “Here is the ironic twist in my acceptance of Pearl Harbor—the parts I liked most are the parts before and after the digital destruction of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese carrier planes and felt that Pearl Harbor is not so much about World War II as it is about movies about World War II. And what’s wrong with that?”
Released in January 1942, the British production Ships with Wings found considerable favour with the popular press initially. Soon, however, its hype and lack of realism became apparent to much of the moviegoing public. The New York Times reviewer: “With all the goodwill in the world, one still cannot blink the fact that the British-made picture, Ships with Wings, is a large slice of mock heroics wrapped up in a technically inferior film. Especially is this disappointing, since producer Michael Balcon apparently had the cooperation of the British Navy in its making, the use of the late Ark Royal as a set and a story to tell of high adventure and deeds of courage in the Mediterranean fleet. Yet what he has produced is a fable which Americans will frankly recognize as ‘corn’ and a picture which tries such tricks with models as even a Hollywood ‘quickie’ producer would blush to own.
“In the routine ‘stout fella’ tradition, the story very clumsily tells of a flier with the Fleet Air Arm who is dismissed before the present war begins because of a fatal accident for which he is largely to blame. But later, when the war is raging and he is flying over the Mediterranean for a Greek line, he has a chance to redeem his honor by joining up with his old carrier and striking the knockout blow against the Nazis on a mythical isle.
“Except for a few undistinguished shots of battleships wallowing through the seas and a smattering of authentic glimpses of activity aboard an aircraft carrier, the entire action of this picture is played on obvious small-scale models and studio sets. Much, if not all, of the excitement of a Nazi attack upon the carrier, of a blazing flight deck and planes landing and taking off from it, is lost in the patent realization that the ship and planes are awkward miniatures. And the climactic scene, in which the hero pilots two planes (by locking his own with a Nazi’s) into a dam, is preposterously artificial. They did things much better than this at the World’s Fair.
“No more can be said for the performance. John Clements in the leading role and Leslie Banks, Basil Sydney and several other competent actors play extremely dubious naval men. And Jane Baxter and Ann Todd become involved in a romantic plot, to their embarrassment. Altogether, Ships with Wings suggests a banal adventure comic-strip. Even the name of its hero, Dick Stacey, is right in style.”
Those responsible for the picture were to suffer one further indignity when Prime Minister Churchill expressed his displeasure that the film showed so many British casualties, which he thought bad for morale.
Task Force arrived in 1949, the year in which Twelve O’Clock High, one of the finest war films ever made was released. Next to the latter production, and following a long series of pictures made before, during, and after the Second World War, Task Force pales. Retiring U.S. Navy officer Jonathan Scott (Gary Cooper), who had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1917, reminisces about his twenty-seven-year campaign to promote naval aviation and the advantages of the aircraft carrier. As one would on such a career path, Scott manages to make powerful enemies in Washington. He falls for and marries the widow (Jane Wyatt) of a naval aviator who was killed in a take-off accident aboard the first American carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1). A part of the film is devoted to Scott fighting the Japanese from his carrier. The film is black-and-white with the last fifteen minutes colour, mainly stock footage. Cooper is ably supported in the picture by his mentor and superior, Pete Richard (Walter Brennan.)
The Eternal Sea (1955) has much to commend it, not least being the thoughtful and understated performances of Sterling Hayden as Admiral John Hoskins, Dean Jagger as Admiral Thomas Semple, Alexis Smith as Hoskins’ wife, Sue, and John Maxwell as Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. Hoskins lost a leg in early war action, but carried on in command positions including commander of the aircraft carrier USS Princeton. He had a major role in the development of carriers for jet operations by the Korean War era. In addition to its other attractions, The Eternal Sea is gloriously scored with music by the excellent Elmer Bernstein who scored The Magnificent Seven among others.
The Fighting Lady was actually the USS Yorktown (CV-10), but wartime restrictions prohibited her being identified as such in 1944 when the picture was released. A kind of propaganda / documentary, it was directed by the great American photographer Edward Steichen who, at the age of 63, was asked by the U.S. Navy to run the Navy Photographic Unit in the Pacific immediately after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Captain Steichen and his staff photographed every aspect of Navy action in the Pacific theatre of operations during the Second World War. At the end of the war he edited the book U.S. Navy War Photographs which sold six million copies, a record for the time.
On 7 December 1941 Steichen was listening to the radio reports of the attack on Pearl. He thought, “I wish I could get into this one, but I’m too old.” Of his time at sea on U.S. Navy carriers, he wrote: “Everything about an aircraft carrier is dramatic, but the most spectacular things are the takeoffs and landings of the planes. In all the takeoff pictures I had seen, the planes looked as though they were glued to the deck. They gave no impression of the terrific onrush as the planes started their run for the takeoff. Nor did they suggest the noise, which is tremendous. Each thundering plane as it takes off emphasizes the contrast between the dynamic intensity of the moment at hand and the dreamlike memories of other places, other times, another life . There was nothing I could do in the photographs to reproduce the sounds, but I was going to try to give a sense of the motion of the rushing plane. Instead of making a fast exposure to stop the motion and get a sharp picture of the plane taking off, I made a series of exposures around a tenth of a second. One shows a Hellcat fighter plane taking off, its wheels just off the deck. Even the pilot is blurred, while the skipper on the bridge, in the upper left-hand corner, looks on like a benign Zeus.”
The Fighting Lady is life on board an American carrier on her way to war, and the first half of the film is devoted to the routine aspects of that experience. The balance is combat, from air strikes against Japanese bases in the Pacific, to a two-day raid at Truk in the Carolines, to the famous Marianas Turkey Shoot. Relatively short at just 61 minutes, The Fighting Lady is a splendid glimpse of a real aircraft carrier in action during a terrible, exhilarating time.
Among the more interesting and imaginative movies portraying carrier aviation is the sci-fi adventure The Final Countdown. Under the command of Captain Matt Yelland (Kirk Douglas), the nuclear-powered carrier USS Nimitz is preparing to depart Pearl Harbor in 1980 when a civilian observer, Warren Lasky (Martin Sheen), comes aboard. Lasky is an efficiency expert employed by Tideman Industries which had a part in designing the Nimitz.
At sea the carrier passes through a strange storm, after which Yelland, his executive officer, Lasky, and the rest of the crew gradually realize that the ship has gone through some sort of time warp and is now back in December 1941, on the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl. A reconnaissance aircraft from the carrier soon discovers the Japanese “attack” task force which is steaming eastward towards Hawaii. Uncertain as to what has happened, Captain Yelland launches a pair of F-14 Tomcat jets that spot a 1930s-era civilian yacht in the area. The yacht is being attacked by two Japanese Zero fighters that destroy it. The F-14 pilots down the Zeros and rescue helicopters from Nimitz arrive to pluck the one surviving Japanese pilot, and the yacht survivors, U.S. Senator Sam Chapman (Charles Durning) and Laurel (Katharine Ross), his assistant, from the water. The Carrier Air Group boss, Commander Richard Owens (James Farentino), an amateur historian who happens to be writing a book about the Pearl Harbor attack, recognises the Senator and knows that Chapman would have been Roosevelt’s running mate in the 1944 election and eventually president.
With all possibilities exhausted, Yelland and the others are finally forced to accept that they have actually moved back through time, that the Japanese fleet is poised to attack Pearl Harbor and he, Yelland, must decide whether to use the powerful air wing and weaponry of the Nimitz to destroy the Japanese fleet before it can attack Pearl, and thus change the course of history—or just let history take its course as before.
The issue is debated and Captain Yelland, on the basis that the duty of his ship and men is to defend America, past, present, and future, and obey the orders of the then-Commander-in-Chief, decides to launch a massive air strike against the Japanese fleet.
Cdr Owens tells the Senator, Laurel, and the rescued Japanese pilot, that Pearl Harbor is about to come under Japanese attack. The enemy pilot grabs an automatic weapon, kills a guard and then holds Laurel hostage, threatening to kill her unless he is granted the use of a radio to warn the Japanese fleet. Marine guards kill the Japanese pilot. The Senator demands to use a radio to warn Pearl Harbor of the impending attack, but when he contacts Pearl, he is not believed. Meanwhile, Cdr Owens and Laurel are becoming interested in each other.
The Senator then demands to be flown to Pearl. Captain Yelland agrees and sends him and Laurel, accompanied by Cdr Owens, off by helicopter—but not to Pearl; to an uninhabited Hawaiian island instead. The angry Senator then tries hijacking the helicopter but ends up destroying it with him in it. Cdr Owens and Laurel are left stranded on the deserted island and Laurel discovers that Owens and the others are from the future.
The striking force is launched from the Nimitz to hit the attacking Japanese squadrons, but before they can engage, the carrier is again overtaken by the strange storm and is returned to the 1980s. Captain Yelland recalls the strike force, the planes return safely to the ship, and history is unchanged.
On the return of the Nimitz to Pearl Harbor, Warren Lasky is met on the dock by a limousine. Seated in the back are Mr and Mrs Tideman—a much older Cdr Owens and Laurel. “Mr Lasky, we have a lot to talk about.”
Back now to the silent film era with The Flying Fleet, a romance from 1929 with Ramon Navarro and Ralph Graves as naval officers who are after the same girl, Anita Page. The graduating class of the U.S. Naval Academy includes a group of six friends who all want to be naval aviators. They go to sea with the fleet for a year and then to San Diego for flight training. Attrition has the old group down to four who move on to Pensacola. More attrition, and they are down to two, Tommy (Navarro) and Steve (Graves). Back then to San Diego where they are reunited with two of the old group, on the Navy’s first carrier, the USS Langley.
Romance, intrigue, and a lot of silliness before Steve and three others are lost in a storm at sea on a flight to Hawaii. Aircraft from the Langley are ordered out on a search for the missing fliers. The search seems fruitless and is finally called off, but Tommy persuades the admiral to let him try just once more. He spots the survivors, loses his engine, sets his plane on fire as a signal to the carrier, and bails out. When they all get back to San Diego, Anita is waiting for him.
NY Times film critic: “The story is sometimes quite a bit too melodramatic, but [there were some] thrilling stunts and some splendid sequences devoted to an airplane carrier.”
In April 1942 Lt Col Jimmy Doolittle led a flight of sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers from the deck of the carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) in the first retaliatory strike at the Japanese home islands after the surprise attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor the previous December. The film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, was adapted from the 1943 book of the same title, by Captain Ted W. Lawson, one of the pilots who flew the raid. The picture was made during the war and released in 1944. It took the form of an eye-witness account, including the training of the crews, the preparation, the mission itself, the results and aftermath as Lawson, his crew, and the other Doolittle crews had experienced it.
In February 1942 Doolittle (Spencer Tracy) is asked to help plan a raid in retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack. He agrees and goes to work on the problem. He asks to lead the mission and assembles his crews and trains them to take heavily-loaded B-25 bombers off in 500 feet or less from a simulated carrier deck.
Hours before the strike force is to take off, the Hornet is sighted by Japanese fishing boats and, with the timing of the mission now compromised, the bombers are forced to take off several hours earlier than planned and at or beyond the limit of their range. The attack succeeds, but all the bombers except one exhaust their fuel before reaching their Chinese airfields. The crews have to bail out or crash-land on or near the coast. Lawson’s plane, the Ruptured Duck, ditches in the surf in the darkness and heavy rain. The crew survive but suffer considerable hardship as they make their way back to American lines, with the help of Chinese peasants. Lawson, who was seriously injured in the crash-landing, has to have a leg amputated while in China. At the end of the picture, he is reunited with his wife in Washington.
True, this is not a naval aviation movie in the strict sense, but it is carrier aviation.
Now considered by many critics a classic war film and the finest aviation film of the period, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo was praised by the NY Times film critic Bosley Crowther: “our first sensational raid on Japan in April 1942 is told with magnificent integrity and dramatic eloquence.”
As one who knew General Doolittle, I can attest that he was an extraordinarily high-achieving, extraordinarily modest man. Because the Doolittle Tokyo raid was assessed as doing little actual damage to the enemy, and because all sixteen of the bombers were lost in the effort, Doolittle felt in the aftermath of the mission that he and it had failed. But in high places others thought differently and Jimmy was awarded the Medal of Honor for his achievement.
“I feel the need … the need for speed.” Director Tony Scott and producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer went for all the marbles in their 1986 release Top Gun, a handsome, ultra-macho action vehicle for a still boyish Tom Cruise. The numbers worked pretty well too. Budgeted at only $15,000,000, the picture grossed a worldwide box office total of $353,816,701.
Wrapped around a lot of F-14 Tomcat flying in the 1980s when the U.S. Navy was still operating the aeroplane, the story has Lieutenant Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell (Cruise) and his RIO [radar intercept officer], Nick ‘Goose’ Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards) sent from their fleet carrier assignment to enroll in the Navy’s Top Gun course at NAS Miramar near San Diego. Maverick is the son of Duke Mitchell, a Navy F-4 Phantom pilot who was killed in the Vietnam War in 1965 flying from the carrier USS Oriskany (CV-34). Maverick is just that, reckless, flaunts authority, does things his own way, not much of a team player. But he’s a good guy and a true friend to his RIO, Goose.
Into the picture marches Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Blackwood (Kelly McGillis) who Maverick tries to put a move on in a bar off the base, only to find the next day that she is the instructor in the Top Gun course. The course continues through a lengthy series of combat simulations in which Maverick commits more than his share of violations, drawing the unwanted attentions of ‘Jester’ (Michael Ironside) and other instructors, and of the chief instructor, Cdr Mike ‘Viper’ Metcalf (Tom Skerritt).
The irrepressable Maverick keeps on doing things his way, in pursuit of the coveted number one pilot award in the class. In doing so he incurs the wrath of others in the class including Lt Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky (Val Kilmer) who thinks Mav is “dangerous.” And while all this is going on Mav is also going after Charlie.
In the film, Viper is described as the finest fighter pilot in the world, and on one of the course hops Maverick engages him in simulated air combat. Mav’s plane suffers a flameout of both engines and goes into a flat spin. He cannot recover control and he and Goose have to eject. Goose is killed and Maverick appears before a Navy board of inquiry which clears him of responsibility in the death, but Mav feels guilt and is not responsive when Charlie tries to console him. He seriously considers leaving the Navy and talks with Viper about it. Viper reveals to Mav that he had flown with Mav’s father in VF-51 on the Oriskany, and shares the details of his father’s death, which puts to rest some long-standing concerns of the pilot.
The Top Gun pilots graduate from the course and Maverick and Iceman are ordered to report to the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) at sea to provide air support for a stricken U.S. Navy warship that has drifted into hostile waters. Iceman is worried about Maverick’s state of mind, and in the ensuing action, Maverick’s aggression and confidence seem to have left him, but somehow he miraculously finds them again in time to join Iceman in downing four MiG fighters before returning triumphantly to the carrier. Later, Mav is offered the assignment of his choice. He chooses to be an instructor at Top Gun and returns to San Diego where he is reunited with Charlie.
It is rumoured that a sequel to Top Gun is in the works with Tom Cruise returning as Maverick in the role of a test pilot. It is believed that the aircraft appearing in the new film will be the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.
Yet another blockbuster effort, Tora! Tora! Tora! (Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!), a 1970 American-Japanese movie about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, opens with the change-of-command ceremony on the Japanese battleship Nagato, the flagship of Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (So Yamamura) who is relieving Admiral Zengo Yoshida (Junya Usami). The American embargo of strategic materials against Japan dominates their conversation and they agree that war with the U.S. would be disastrous for Japan. But the militant Japanese government has entered an alliance with Germany and Italy and is beating the drums for a war. Threatened by the presence of the U.S. Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbor, the attack is ordered and Yamamoto plans a preemptive strike hoping to eliminate the enemy fleet in a single massive blow.
Much of the Japanese attack plan is built on an assault by torpedo planes on the U.S. battleships at anchor in the harbour. The U.S. Navy believes it is largely invulnerable to torpedo attack in the shallow depths of Pearl, but the Japanese have a new torpedo designed to beat that factor. In their favour, though, the Americans have cracked the Japanese code used for their most secret transmissions and U.S. intelligence personnel are monitoring all the enemy moves. Japanese Air Staff Officer Minoru Genda (Tatsuya Mihashi) is masterminding the air attack while Mitsuo Fuchida (Takahiro Tamura) will lead it. Lieutenant General Walter Short (Jason Robards) and Admiral Husband E. Kimmel (Martin Balsam) try somewhat ineffecually to shore up their local defences in Hawaii. Meanwhile, the Japanese envoys in Washington continue to search for peace through various initiatives with the U.S. Secretary of State and in Tokyo Army Gen Hideki Tojo (Asao Uchida) expresses his intense opposition to such efforts. A series of messages from Tokyo to the Japanese Embassy in Washington begins and it will end with a declaration of war on the United States. The Americans, however, are translating the intercepts faster than the Japanese envoys and know of the Japanese intent before they do. American intelligence people learn that the final message in the series is scheduled to reach the Japanese envoys at precisely 1 p.m. on 7 December, telling the envoys to destroy their code machines. The final message fails to reach the key American military commanders in Hawaii.
U.S. military intelligence errors, delays, inertia, miscommunication and the lack of communication continue through the morning. The Japanese envoys are slow in completing their code translations. The Japanese government intends to end diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. at 1 P.M. Washington time, thirty minutes before the start of the attack on Pearl. A final attempt at warning the Pearl Harbor command of the imminent attack fails when bad atmospherics and administrative bungling interfere. The telegram is not marked urgent and as such, is not received in Pearl until after the attack. As the Japanese squadrons round Barber’s Point and approach Pearl, they are relieved at the complete lack of anti-aircraft fire ahead. Clearly, the facility has not been alerted. Unopposed, the air leader, Fuchida, radios the code ‘Tora! Tora! Tora! commencing the surprise attack.’
American personnel at Pearl watch the enemy aircraft in disbelief as the Japanese pilots methodically destroy the aircraft on the ground, and the dive-bombers, horizontal bombers and torpedo bombers make run after run on their capital ship targets in the anchorage southeast of Ford Island. Two American fighter pilots at a remote airstrip manage to get airborne to go up against the enemy force.
The long raid continues and all of the U.S. Navy battleships are either sunk or badly damaged. Huge fires burn out of control around the harbour. There is chaos in Washington as word of the surprise attack slowly filters in.
Afraid that by remaining in the area and launching a third wave of attack aircraft against Pearl, he will endanger his six aircraft carriers, the Japanese fleet commander, Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (Eijiro Tono) decides against the extended attack. Admiral Yamamoto realises that his forces have not totally eliminated the American fleet and that the Americans will be enraged and furious at the Japanese action. “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
The critics were mixed in their opinions of the film. Roger Ebert: “… one of the deadest, dullest blockbusters ever made.” Vincent Canby: “… nothing less than a $25-million irrelevancy.” Charles Champlin: “… the careful recreation of a historical event.”
Wing and a Prayer is a curiously impressive 1944 black-and-white film about the pilots and crew of an American carrier on the defensive in the early days of the Pacific war. It is realistic and well made, if, like many of the war films of the time, a bit heavy on propaganda. It is true that, in the first weeks and months after the Pearl Harbor attack, a lot of Americans were wondering “Where is our navy? Why doesn’t it fight?” With few ships remaining in the U.S. fleet, a clever secret plan is developed using one American carrier that then shows up in various locations to hopefully make the Japanese believe that several American carriers are operating around the region. The Americans want to lure the Japanese fleet to a major confrontation near the island of Midway.
On our lone carrier, Commander Bingo Harper (Don Ameche) is hard as nails with the pilots of his air wing. A strict, by-the-book disciplinarian, Harper brooks no open-field running from his charges. When Lt Cdr Edward Moulton (Dana Andrews) and his squadron arrive for duty aboard the carrier, it is apparent to Harper that one of Moulton’s pilots, Ensign Hallam Scott (William Eythe) has a rather cavalier attitude and Harper warns Moulton about him. Scott was a movie star before the war and still receives great stacks of fan mail from females in the States. Another of Moulton’s pilots, Ensign Breinard (Harry Morgan) is grounded by Harper when the pilot endangers the ship by dropping a bomb too close to it during a training exercise.
In the course of the planned deception, the carrier is ordered deep into Japanese territory in the Solomon Islands chain, to “be seen” there by the enemy. The pilots and crew are under strict orders not to fight if they encounter any Japanese aircraft or warships. On a patrol Moulton’s torpedo bombers do sight some enemy planes but are required to follow orders and retreat. Two of their number are lost in the encounter, and, uninformed about the grand plan of deception, Moulton’s pilots are angry and disgusted with the order not to fight back. Similar incidents occur and the tension heightens as morale drops. But the plan is working and the Japanese believe that their sightings of the carrier have actually been many different U.S. carriers.
Deceived into the belief that U.S. carriers are scattered in various locations across the western Pacific, the Japanese fleet is caught and surprised near Midway by the aircraft of the Americans. In the great air and sea battle that ensues, many aircraft are lost, but the major victory goes to the U.S. Navy.
Returning to the carrier after the battle, Ensign Scott, very low on fuel, is having trouble locating the ship in the thick cloud cover. Aware of the situation, Lt Cdr Moulton pleads with Harper to shine searchlights up through the murk to guide Scott to a safe landing. Harper refuses to chance the possibility of the carrier being spotted by enemy submarines that may be in the area. Soon, Scott’s engine is heard sputtering and he crashes near the carrier. Harper and Moulton quarrel but they then learn that Scott has been rescued and is safe. Harper tells the crews that he cares about them, but it is also part of his job to be willing to sacrifice some of them for the sake of the mission.
The origin of the title Wing and a Prayer is the 1943 song Coming In On a Wing and a Prayer, by Harold Adamson and Jimmy McHugh.
The 1957 motion picture The Wings of Eagles is the story of Frank ‘Spig’ Wead, as well as the story of U.S. naval aviation from its beginnings through the Second World War. The movie director John Ford was a friend of Wead and made the picture in tribute to him. Wead was an early navy aviator who devoted much of his career trying to prove the value and importance of naval aviation. On the evening of his promotion to squadron commander he tumbles down the stairs in his home, suffers a broken neck and is paralyzed. His wife Min (Maureen O’Hara) consoles him but he rejects her and his children. Only his navy friends can influence and help him to get through his depression, learn to walk again and begin a new career writing screenplays in Hollywood. After achieving considerable success writing for films, Wead is finally able to return to sea duty and develops the concept of the small escort or ‘jeep’ carrier to supplement the aircraft carrier force. Then he is felled by a heart attack and is returned home before the end of the war.
The pre-Second World War period is represented in Wings of the Navy, a 1939 effort from Warner Brothers, always an important maker of aviation-related motion pictures. Another heavy piece of propaganda in which submarine officer Jerry Harrington transfers to flight cadet training at NAS Pensacola, Florida. Love finds him in the form of his brother’s girlfriend, Irene (Olivia de Havilland). Cass (George Brent), Jerry’s brother, also a naval aviator, is badly hurt in a crash and has to leave the navy. Jerry’s flying career takes off in San Diego where he pilots flying boats while Cass is now designing new planes for the navy. One of Cass’s planes is an experiemental fighter that Jerry wants to test, even if he has to quit the navy to do it. The new fighter has already claimed the life of one test pilot. Irene is left having to choose between Cass and Jerry.
The Navy gave this picture a lot of support in the making and saw it as an important recruiting asset, as it has with a number of naval aviation films from Hollywood.