Old movie review - "Air Force"

[RLM]

I watched this movie yesterday evening. I'd never heard of it until I ran across it on NetFlix. It came out in 1943 and had lots of vintage aircraft footage of early WWII US airplanes. When is the last time you saw a "shark tail" B-17 or a P-39? They are abundant in this picture. Also, the planes used to portray Japanese fighters appear to be P-35's, P-43s or possibly P-64s. There were also a few shots of Devastators, Dauntlesses and Wildcats, along with the ubiquitous P-40. The movie wasn't anything great, but did win an Oscar for the editing of the airplane footage. I'm going to see if I can find this for sale just for the rare airplane footage.

 

[Silver Dollar]

It used to be out on video. Check out the Turner Classic Movie website. They deal in a lot of old hard to find movies. I saw this one too. It wasn't too bad but I thought the flying footage was good. If you want to see another old movie, try Flying Tigers with John Wayne. The AVG vets hated that movie. The funny looking P40's on the ground were made of wood with electric engines. It was pretty entertaining and I liked it but don't expect to get any accurate history out of it. It's strictly fiction.

 

[Phantomfixer]

I liked Air Force ... the movie and the book. Anything with a B-17 in it awesome. One of the midwar hurry up and create a positive image kinda of movies but still fun to watch.

 

[cco23i]

I liked it too, at least the uniforms for the mechanics were halfway right.


Scott

 

[RLM]

Per Silver Dollar's suggestion, I looked at TCM's web store and they have the movie available. I also found it on Amazon for less, and since there are a few other things I want from them, and I have a gift card, I think I'll order it from Amazon.