newsletter 0901-1.pub

1 www.war-eagles-air-museum.com

Editorial W e’re continuing to experiment

with the content and focus of Plane Talk to try to keep it

fresh, useful and enlightening to you, our readers. Our first tweak was in the Sec-ond Quarter 2008 issue, which featured an aircraft that not only is not in the War Eagles Air Museum collection, but that does not exist anywhere in the world—the Martin XB-51.

In this issue, we’re trying something else new and different. Rather than lead-ing off with a “Featured Aircraft” article covering a single airplane in considerable detail, we present a piece that we hope you’ll find equally interesting—a survey of great aviation films that offer real his-toric aircraft in real aerial action. We’re very pleased to welcome well-known El Paso film historian and movie expert Jay Duncan as the guest author of “The Air-plane as Cinema Star.” Be sure to read the “About the Author” profile of him on Page 3. Jay was involved in presenting the Classic Aviation Film Series that we sponsored at the International Museum of Art in 2003 to celebrate the 100th anni-versary of the Wright brothers’ first suc-cessful controlled powered flight. Jay’s knowledge of film is truly encyclopedic, and we hope you enjoy his article.

Speaking of cinematic aircraft and aerial action, the first of three volumes of the complete 1958-59 Steve Canyon tele-vision series on DVD, containing 12 epi-sodes, has been released. You’ll find the whole story of this exciting series in the Third Quarter 2008 Plane Talk.

Contents Editorial......................................1 The Airplane as Cinema Star.....1 From the Director.......................2 Guy Dority’s 90th Birthday ..........5 Membership Application ............7

The Airplane as Cinema Star

by Jay Duncan S eeing historic aircraft on static dis-

play at a museum is a real treat for enthusiasts. But it is quite another

experience to actually see these magnifi-cent machines in flight. Other than at air-shows, the opportunities for aviation fans to see and hear real flying warbirds are limited. But there are ways for “buffs” to gain such experiences—on the screens of their home television sets.

The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

First Quarter (Jan - Mar) 2009

Volume 22, Number 1

Robert Shaw (l.) and Richard Todd (r.) star as pilots of a Royal Air Force Lancaster bomber on a mission to destroy dams in the German Ruhr River valley using special “bouncing bombs” in the 1954 British film The Dam Busters. Shaw later became well known to American audiences as Quint in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster Jaws.

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From the Director

W e hosted the 5th Annual Land of Enchantment RV Fly-In in October, as always geared for

builders of the popular series of small home-built aircraft. Every time we’ve held this event, the weather has been bad, with rainstorms and high winds, and this year was no exception. Attendance was down 30 per cent, but even so we still at-tracted over 80 aircraft and more than 150 visitors from around the country. Al-though this year’s event was marred by the fatal crash of a Maule (not an RV) at the airport, we look forward to hosting the premier RV gathering again in 2009.

We’d like to welcome new Museum employee Chuck Faison, who works in

From the Director (Continued on page 8)

Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum First Quarter 2009

Plane Talk Published quarterly by:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

Author/Editor: Terry Sunday Chief Nitpicker: Frank Harrison Final Proofreader: Kathy Sunday

[email protected]

Historic aircraft fans need only pop a video tape or DVD into their player and they can vicariously place themselves in-to the cockpits of fighters, bombers, car-go aircraft—even rocket planes—as they battle the enemy on nerve-rattling com-bat missions, explore the boundaries of flight in dangerous experimental aircraft or test the limits of man and machine in a howling storm many miles from the near-est landing strip. Aviation films can show viewers what “it” was really like, and the films that best provide this experience have a common trait—they’re old. Really old. So old, in fact, that they were filmed when the aircraft that they feature were still in use. In short, we’re talking about classic films here. Let’s get started…

Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo

Many critics consider Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, released in November 1944, to be the finest World War II film ever made. The screenplay, by Dalton Trumbo (who, ironically, was convicted and im-prisoned in 1950 for contempt of Con-gress after refusing to testify about com-munist influence in Hollywood) was based on a 1943 book by Ted W. Law-son. Lawson was the pilot of Ruptured Duck, the seventh of 16 B-25s that took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, on the “Doolittle Raid,” a mission to bomb military instal-lations around Tokyo. Although techni-cally a failure, the strike, just four months after Pearl Harbor, was a strong

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morale booster for an America stunned by Japan’s seemingly endless string of Pacific conquests.

Featuring Van Johnson as Captain Lawson, Robert Mitchum as Lieutenant Bob Gray and Spencer Tracy as Lieuten-ant Colonel James Doolittle, Thirty Sec-onds Over Tokyo accurately portrays the raid. Director Mervyn LeRoy shot the training footage at Eglin Field, near Pen-sacola, Florida, which was the real base used for training the crews. The aircraft were U.S. Army Air Force North Ameri-can B-25C and D Mitchell bombers, very similar to the B-25Bs used in the raid. No aircraft carriers were available to the film makers, but a combination of good studio sets and original newsreel footage recre-ated the USS Hornet scenes faithfully.

Some critics saw the film as border-ing on propaganda (as did, in fact, most other wartime films), but their near-unan-imous verdict was summed up in the New York Times: “Our first sensational raid on Japan...is told with magnificent integrity and dramatic eloquence...” The Raiders themselves reportedly considered Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo a worthy tribute.

Twelve O’Clock High

Widely considered one of the best, if not the best, aviation films ever made, Twelve O’Clock High premiered in Los Angeles on December 21, 1949. While not actually made during the War, it nev-ertheless portrays, with superb accuracy and stunning cinematography, the story of U.S. 8th Air Force bomber crews who flew daylight raids against targets in Ger-many and occupied France from their ba-ses in England. Directed by Henry King and starring Gregory Peck as Brigadier General Frank Savage, Gary Merrill as Colonel Keith Davenport and Dean Jag-ger in an Oscar-winning performance as Major Harvey Stovall, Twelve O’Clock High had the full cooperation of the Air Force. The aerial battle scenes used actu-

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In this archive photo, General James B. Doolittle starts his takeoff run from the air-craft carrier USS Hornet on April 18, 1942, leading the way on a mission to bomb Japan.

Editor’s Note: All images are the proper-ties of their respective copyright holders, and are used without permission.

New Museum employee Chuck Faison shows off two of his super-detailed Japanese model aircraft, a KI–84 and an A6M2-N.


them hazardous to operate. There are no reports of unusual deaths among the crew and cast. As a side note, this was not true for Howard Hughes’ epic The Conquer-or, which was filmed in Utah in 1953 and starred John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The location was 140 miles downwind of the Nevada Test Site, where the U.S. det-onated nuclear weapons above ground. Of the 220 people at the location, 91 de-veloped cancer by 1981 (30 would have been expected statistically) and 46 died, including Wayne (who, ironically, had been offered the role of General Savage but turned it down). There is little doubt that the deaths were caused by fallout.

Principal filming took place at Duke Field in Florida and Ozark Field in Ala-

bama. In a scene sure to break the heart of any warbird fan, the crash landing of the B-17 early in Twelve O’Clock High is real—it’s not a special effect. Hollywood stunt pilot Paul Mantz, flying the big bomber solo, got $4,500 for destroying what would today be an invaluable historical ar-tifact. Mantz himself was killed in 1965 in the crash of the Phoe-nix, an unusual aircraft that he had built especi-ally for the James Stewart film The Flight of the Phoenix.

al combat footage (including some from German sources). The film shows how hard-nosed General Savage takes over the Archbury bomber base with orders to turn around the (fictional) 918th Bomb Group, which was suffering from high combat losses and low morale. Savage succeeds in his task, but at a great cost, as he himself becomes a psychological casualty of the war.

Many of the aircraft used in Twelve O’Clock High were ex-drone B-17Gs, re-fitted with turrets and repainted as 8th Air Force B-17Fs, on loan from the Air Force after being used in atomic tests. Presuma-bly their use in nuclear tests did not make


First Quarter 2009 Plane Talk—The Newsletter of the War Eagles Air Museum

The Dam Busters

The Dam Busters tells the story of the development and use of the legendary “bouncing bomb” in World War II. The brainchild of British inventor Dr. Barnes Wallis (played by Michael Redgrave in the film), this clever bomb was intended to destroy dams, ships and other hard-to-attack targets. The way it worked against dams was truly ingenious. Carried under a specially modified Avro Lancaster, the cylindrical, 9,250-pound bomb was spun up to 500 RPM by a hydraulic motor and belt drive. Release conditions were criti-cal—the aircraft had to be almost exactly 60 feet above the water of the dam’s res-ervoir at an airspeed of between 240 and 250 miles per hour. On release, the bomb bounced across the water, struck the dam and, due to its spin, climbed down the in-side face of the dam, where it exploded upon reaching a pre-set depth. The water pressure helped direct the explosive force against the dam’s structure and increased the resulting damage.

Most of The Dam Busters covers the two years that Wallis spent developing and testing his invention and training air-crews to use it properly. Operational use quickly followed the first test in Decem-ber 1942. The well-known “Dambusters Raid” (officially Operation Chastise) took place on the night of May 16, 1943, when 19 Royal Air Force (RAF) Lancas-ters of 617 Squadron attacked the Mohne and Eder dams on Germany’s Ruhr Riv-er. The raid destroyed two of the six tar-get dams and damaged four, but at a high cost—German anti-aircraft fire downed seven Lancasters, a loss rate that caused the RAF to discontinue the project.

The Dam Busters film was based on two books—Guy Gibson’s Enemy Coast Ahead (Gibson was a pilot in the raid) and Paul Brickhill’s The Dam Busters—and was Great Britain’s biggest box-of-fice success on its release in 1955. The RAF supplied four late-production Avro Lancaster B.VIIs, which had to be taken out of storage and specially modified. Flying expenses were £130 per hour per aircraft, and accounted for one-tenth of the film’s budget!


About the Author

Jay Duncan is an internationally recognized film historian, ar-chivist and collector. Holding a BA degree in Mass Commu-nications, he has taught accredited film history courses at the University of Texas at El Paso, and was instrumental in sav-ing the city’s magnificent 1930s-era Plaza Theater from dem-olition in 1974. He was Film Program Chair, guest speaker and panelist at many science fiction conventions, and he founded, co-edited and published SPFX Magazine, devoted to special effects in movies, in 1977. In the days before cable,

when local television stations aired local programs, he was Program Director, an-nouncer and writer-producer-host of “Jay’s Pix,” a popular weekly show in which he provided on-screen commentary and historical backgrounds to classic films. In 2004, Jay originated El Paso’s IT! Came From the ‘50s science fiction film festival.

Boeing B-17F Flying Fortress Piccadilly Lily taxies in after re-turning from a mission to bomb targets in Germany in the classic film Twelve O’Clock High. According to the Turner Classic Mov-ies website, many bomber crewmen regard this film as Hollywood’s only accurate depiction of their life during the war.



ture astronaut Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 was the first man to set foot on the moon, was a pilot aboard the Essex. It is not known whether Michener based any of his characters on Armstrong.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri offers all the suspense of a good air war movie, yet it is decidedly anti-war, with a story mod-est in scale but large in impact. William Holden stars as Navy Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, a former World War II pilot called back to active duty to fly and fight again in Korea. His reluctance to do so symbolizes Americans’ war-weariness. Grace Kelly plays his wife and Mickey Rooney is chopper pilot Mike Forney. A taut, honed and highly charged socio-pol-itical drama as well as an adventure tale, The Bridges at Toko-Ri won a Special Visual Effects Oscar and a well-deserved place among the finest combat movies.

The shipboard operation scenes were shot aboard the USS Oriskany (CV-34), an Essex-class carrier launched in 1945 but later modernized to handle the new jet aircraft entering service. The Grum-man F9F-2 Panthers, Douglas AD-1 Sky-raiders and the Sikorsky S-51 Dragonfly helicopter are treats to see in beautifully photographed aerial action as The Brid-ges at Toko-Ri powers relentlessly to-ward its controversial conclusion.

Strategic Air Command

The working title of this film was Air Command. Popular and respected ac-tor James Stewart, like the lead character


Director Michael Anderson used the Upper Derwent Valley in Derbyshire, England (the place where Wallis tested his actual bomb) as a double for the Ruhr Valley. The airfield used for the ground shots was RAF Hemswell, just north of RAF Scampton, which had been an op-erational base during the war but was not active when filming took place.

Island in the Sky

A true classic aviation film, Island in the Sky debuted on September 5, 1953. It stars John Wayne as Dooley, an ex-air-line pilot flying cargo for the U.S. Air Transport Command during World War II. On a routine flight over Canada, his venerable Douglas C-47 Skytrain ices up, and he is forced to make an emergency landing in uncharted wilderness near the Quebec-Labrador border. All five crew-men survive the landing, but their prob-lems have just begun. They are surround-ed by thousands of square miles of snow-covered pine forests and frozen lakes. There are no landmarks to aid search crews in finding them. Their provisions are limited, and temperatures dip down to more than 40 degrees below zero (F).

The script is based on a true story by Ernest K. Gann about a mission he flew on February 3, 1943, as a search pilot out of Presque Isle Airfield, Maine, looking

Cinema Star (Continued from page 3) for a downed aircraft. Island in the Sky accurately shows the challenges rescuers face in locating Dooley’s plane. This was long before the time of Global Position-ing Systems (GPS), satellite maps—at the time, areas such as that in which Dooley landed really would have been “uncharted”—and worldwide communi-cations. The only way the crew can con-tact rescuers is with an SCR-578 hand-cranked emergency radio transmitter, af-fectionately called a “Gibson Girl,” after artist Charles Dana Gibson’s iconic drawings of tightly corseted American women at the turn of the 20th century. The SCR-578’s “wasp-waisted” shape al-lowed the user to hold it between the legs while cranking it. It had to spin at 80 RPM to produce enough power to be usable, and it was very hard to crank.

The story of how the Air Transport Command, which had received Dooley’s final radio transmission that he was “go-ing down,” sends other pilots aloft on a round-the-clock effort to locate his air-craft before the crew perishes, is a sus-penseful tale of the highest order. The details of how search operations are con-ducted to find a tiny object in a trackless wilderness are especially well-done.

The Bridges at Toko-Ri

Coming so soon after World War II, the Korean War inspired few Hollywood films. Director Mark Robson made two

of them: I Want You in 1951 and The Bridges at Toko-Ri in 1954. Based on the novel by popular, prolific auth-or James A. Michener, The Bridges at Toko-Ri combines aspects of actual U.S. Navy mis-sions to bomb North Korean bridges at Ma-jon-Ni and Changnim-Ni in the winter of 1951–52. Michener was a correspondent aboard the aircraft car-riers Essex and Valley Forge, so he was able to tell a very accurate story. Interestingly, fu-

Island in the Sky dramatically showcases Douglas C-47 cargo aircraft in breathtaking black-and-white aerial photography. For much of the filming, Donner Lake, in the Sierra Nevada mountains near Truckee, California, stood in for the fictional Labrador emer-gency landing site of the aircraft piloted by John Wayne.

William Holden, as U.S. Navy Lieutenant Harry Brubaker, prepares for takeoff in a Grumman F9F Panther of Fighter Squad-ron VF-192 in The Bridges at Toko-Ri. The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany stood in for the fictional USS Savo Island.


Guy Dority Celebrates his 90th Birthday

by Cassandra Rodriguez

O n September 27, 2008, War Ea-gles Air Museum hosted a very special birthday celebration for

our dear friend Guy Dority. A World War II veteran airman with hundreds of missions to his credit, and the very first Museum volunteer, Guy turned 90 years old on that day. His family and a few close friends gathered in the Museum hangar on a pleasant Saturday afternoon for a little camaraderie, some “war stor-ies,” and cake and ice cream.

Guy’s daughter Mary, in from Hous-ton for the occasion, decorated the party area with yellow daisies and a display of mementos of Guy’s wartime career and accomplishments. The attendees started to arrive at about 2:00 in the afternoon, and soon the guest of honor himself walked in. As always, he was dressed impeccably, this time in a light blue suit and a crisp Navy blue tie. I greeted him


with a hug. With his marvelous, self-dep-recating sense of humor and a twinkle in his eye, he said “I’m here for that old man Guy Dority’s birthday. Boy, we nev-er thought he would live this long, but I know he is happy and very thankful.” I laughed with him and adjusted his tie, al-though it didn’t really need it.

After the group sang “Happy Birth-day” and enjoyed the cake and ice cream, Museum Director Skip Trammell pre-sented Guy with a beautiful oil painting by Colorado artist Hal Bergdahl, showing Guy as an airman in World War II. It is the perfect companion piece to Mr. Berg-dahl’s earlier painting of Guy’s Boeing B-17E Flying Fortress “Jarrin’ Jenny,” which had the distinction of being the first American-manned bomber to arrive in Europe in July 1942. Guy was the ra-dio operator/gunner on the crew.

The new painting now hangs in the Museum’s gift shop near Guy’s other memorabilia. On Sundays, when he comes in to volunteer and tell his stories to visitors, Guy looks at his painting and says, “I still can’t believe that’s me. Do you really think it looks like me?”

“Dutch” Holland who he played in the film, had been a bomber pilot in World War II, and he remained active in the Air Force Reserve. He achieved the rank of Brigadier General in 1959, and retired in 1968 after 27 years of service. In the ear-ly 1950s, he persuaded Paramount Stu-dios to make a picture about the Strategic Air Command (SAC), arguing convinc-ingly that it would be a patriotic gesture and a financially sound investment. He also convinced the studio to appoint An-thony Mann, with whom he had worked several times, as director.

Strategic Air Command, Stewart’s vision of a film praising the people and mission of SAC, turned out to be a real boon for fans of Cold War aircraft in the cinema. Filming locations were MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Lowry AFB in Denver and Carswell AFB in Fort Worth. Paramount’s advertising claimed the film showed “previously secret installations for the first time”—a bit of hype that ap-pealed to the less-sophisticated moviego-ers of the time. It was Paramount’s sec-ond wide-screen VistaVision release, and there’s still something very potent in its stunning images of graceful aircraft of a lost-but-not-forgotten age taking flight in the “wide” blue yonder.

Two things keep Strategic Air Com-mand aloft for today’s audiences. First is the conviction and authenticity that Stew-art brings to a role he not only believed in passionately, but actually lived. Sec-ond is the spectacular aerial photography, seldom if ever equaled for its sheer lyri-cal beauty. Ubiquitous stunt pilot Paul Mantz did so much of the flying that he thought he deserved to share star billing with Stewart. He didn’t get his wish. Nor did aerial photographer Thomas Tutwil-



Plane Talk on the Web

A rchives of Plane Talk from the current issue back to the first quarter of 2003 are now

available in full color on our website.

World War II veteran and long-time volunteer Guy Dority, celebrating his 90th birthday at War Eagles Air Museum, displays the painting of him in World War II aircrew attire created by Colorado artist Hal Bergdahl. With him are (from left) his daughter Mary, his granddaughter Sarah and his great-granddaughter Emilia, all visiting from Houston. Photo by Chuck Crepas.



er, who had a unique way of charging static scenes with dramatic visual impact by placing his camera on a wing, or atop the landing gear or low in the cockpit looking up. His work is even more arrest-ing today, now that the airplanes that he so lovingly filmed carry a cargo of nos-talgia rather than nuclear bombs.

The American National Board of Re-view awarded Strategic Air Command a Special Citation in recognition of its ex-cellence. It is the film to see if you want to experience the sights and sounds of Convair’s massive B-36D Peacemaker intercontinental bomber in action. The largest airplane ever in Air Force service, and the only one that could carry the hy-drogen bombs of the day, the B-36D had a wingspan of 230 feet. Its powerplants were six 28-cylinder, 3,500-horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major ra-dial piston engines and four 5,200-pound-thrust General Electric J47 turbo-jets. In addition to filming real B-36s in the air, Paramount built a very accurate mockup, based on official Air Force sources and using many actual compon-ents, of parts of the fuselage to use for in-terior shots. In 1954, when Strategic Air Command was filmed, the Peacemaker


was nearing the end of its service life and about to be replaced by the new Boeing B-47 Stratojet, which also plays a prominent role in the film. Many government and military dignitar-ies, including General Thomas White, the Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, attended Strate-gic Air Command’s New York premier on April 20, 1955. The Air Force Association awarded Paramount its annual Citation of Honor for “distinguish-ed public service” in producing the film, and also recognized Stew-

art for “distinguished public service and outstanding artistic achievement.” The film was the seventh most profitable re-lease of 1955.

Toward the Unknown

Another great showcase of Cold War aircraft is Toward the Unknown, released on October 20, 1956. It starred William Holden as Air Force Major Lincoln Bond and Lloyd Nolan as General Bill Banner. An exciting story of test pilots “pushing the envelope” at Edwards Air Force Base, Cali-fornia, in the 1950s, it features a reasonably good plot and outstand-ing aerial photography of aircraft that you will not see anywhere else. In the story by Beirne Lay, Jr., Bond is an ex-fighter pilot who had been shot down over Korea and carries the stigma of having bro-ken under the pressure of communist brain-washing while he was a POW. The steps that he

forces himself to take in order to prove to General Banner that he is mentally fit enough to fly the supersonic rocket planes then being tested at Edwards is an interesting and absorbing tale, if a bit drawn-out dramatically.

But the aircraft are the real stars of the show, and Toward the Unknown has them in abundance. For example, this is the only place to see actual footage of the Martin XB-51 bomber (see Plane Talk, second quarter 2008, for the full story of the XB-51), under cover as the fictional “Gilbert XF-120.” You’ll also enjoy see-ing Convair’s XF-92, which was ground-ed (and thus used in a crash rescue scene) at the time the film was made but which had, in earlier tests, been unable to ex-ceed the speed of sound despite calcula-tions predicting that it should. The “area rule,” developed by National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) en-gineer Richard T. Whitcomb, pointed the way to better performance. Using Whit-comb’s innovation, the XF-92’s succes-sors, the F-102 Delta Dagger and F-106 Delta Dart, easily exceeded Mach 1.

Another historic aircraft in Toward the Unknown is the rocket-powered Bell X-2. Carried aloft by a Boeing B-50 Stra-tofortress, the X-2 was designed to inves-


Although not taken from the film Strategic Air Command, this dramatic 1951 photo by famed Life Magazine photographer Mar-garet Bourke-White conveys the same sense of power and majesty as the film’s scenes of Convair B-36 Peacemakers.

Actors Lloyd Nolan (l.) and William Holden (r.), on location at Edwards Air Force Base, pose in front of Martin’s radical XB-51, re-designated “Gilbert XF-120” for the film Toward the Unknown.



tigate flight at speeds and altitudes far beyond those of the X-1, in which Cap-tain Charles “Chuck” Yeager first “broke the sound barrier” on October 14, 1947. Designed to reach Mach 3 (over 2,200 miles per hour), the X-2 had an advanced but temperamental Curtiss-Wright rocket engine. Bell built two X-2s. The first was destroyed in an explosion during a cap-tive flight over Lake Ontario on May 12, 1953. The second flew under power for the first time at Edwards on November 18, 1955. Over the next 10 months, it had reached Mach 2.87 and over 126,000 feet in altitude. On September 27, 1956, Air Force Captain Mel Apt took the X-2 to a new world speed record of Mach 3.2. But on turning back to return to Edwards, he experienced an aerodynamic phenomen-on called “inertial coupling,” which caused the X-2 to tumble wildly out of control. Apt successfully released his “escape pod,” but was knocked uncon-scious and never opened his parachute.


Membership Application War Eagles Air Museum

War Eagles Air Museum memberships are available in six categories. All memberships include the following privileges:

Free admission to the Museum and all exhibits. Free admission to all special events. 10% general admission discounts for all guests of a current Member. 10% discount on all Member purchases in the Gift Shop.

To become a Member of the War Eagles Air Museum, please fill in the information requested below and note the category of mem-bership you desire. Mail this form, along with a check payable to “War Eagles Air Museum” for the annual fee shown, to:

War Eagles Air Museum 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, NM 88008

NAME (Please print)___________________________________________________ STREET ____________________________________________________________ CITY ______________________________ STATE _____ ZIP _________—______ TELEPHONE (Optional) _____—_____—____________ E-MAIL ADDRESS (Optional) ___________________________________________ Will be kept private and used only for War Eagles Air Museum mailings.

Membership Categories

Individual $15

Family $25

Participating $50

Supporting $100

Benefactor $1,000

Life $5,000

The War of the Worlds

The War of The Worlds (the original version, not the odoriferous 2005 remake with Tom Cruise) was released in Octo-ber 1953 by Paramount Pictures. Most fans of this outstanding film fully appre-ciate the magnitude of Producer George Pal’s monumental cinematic effort in re-locating (from England) and modernizing author H.G. Wells’ 1898 literary science fiction classic. Countless articles and en-

tire book chapters have been dedicated to this groundbreaking, Academy-Award-winning (for Best Special Visual Effects) Technicolor motion picture. Indeed, in 1977, I was the co-editor and publisher of a 32-page magazine devoted to the mak-ing of The War of the Worlds. Its publi-cation coincided with the 25th Anniver-sary of the beginning of filming at the Paramount Studios.

With all of its state-of-the-art techni-cal wizardry, however, one sequence did not rely on any type of special effect or visual trickery whatsoever. George Pal had decided to have Northrop’s YB-49 “Flying Wing” drop an atomic bomb on the Martian war machines in a last-ditch effort to destroy the interplanetary invad-ers as they lay waste to southern Califor-nia. Mr. Pal told us: “We did use a few stock shots from the Northrop and North American Aviation Companies which had to be submitted to the Department of Defense, but it was minor.”


Northrop’s incredible, futuristic YB-49 flying wing bomber put on a brief but im-pressive performance in the classic 1953 sci-ence fiction film War of the Worlds.


War Eagles Air Museum Doña Ana County Airport at Santa Teresa 8012 Airport Road Santa Teresa, New Mexico 88008 (575) 589-2000

political problems, far beyond the scope of this article, that caused the Govern-ment to cancel Northrop’s innovative de-sign in favor of its competitor, the more-conventional Convair B-36.

The original War of the Worlds gave mass audiences a rare glimpse of Ameri-can aeronautical ingenuity at its best, and an appreciation for an aircraft design that was far ahead of its time but that would (temporarily, at least) soon fade into avi-ation oblivion. John K. “Jack” North-rop’s vision of a highly efficient aircraft without a fuselage, a true “flying wing,” is a reality today in the B-2 Spirit “stealth bomber,” which, interestingly, has exact-ly the same wingspan—172 feet—as the YB-49. High-speed computers and digi-tal fly-by-wire controls eliminate the in-stabilities inherent in an all-wing aircraft, and make the B-2 a capable and stable bomber, and the most recognizable air-craft in the world. Even if you never see one in person, you can get some sense of the power of this awesome aeronautical triumph from The War of the Worlds.

Still, as minor as it was in the whole production, the visual impact of the shots of the “Flying Wing” taxiing, taking off and gracefully maneuvering in flight on the big theater screen thrilled 1953 audi-ences. Even today, with viewers more so-phisticated and far more jaded than back in the day, the footage of the YB-49 re-mains powerful and evocative. The “Fly-ing Wing” even resembles the Martian war machines, which have been gliding over the countryside spewing deadly heat rays and disintegration beams and are un-affected by the atomic blast.

The YB-49 had a host of technical problems, including poor aerodynamic stability, and its bomb bay could not ac-commodate the primitive, large, heavy nuclear weapons of the time (which, of course, makes the nuking of the Martians by a YB-49 a case of “artistic license”). Some of these problems could have been fixed with further development. Howev-er, it also suffered from insurmountable


the Gift Shop most weekdays and pitches in on any other projects that need a hand. Chuck was in the Air Force from 1959 through 1963 as a Crash Rescue Special-ist at James Connelly Air Force Base, in Waco, Texas, Headquarters of the 5th Air Force and a training base for navigators and Radar Intercept Officers. While he was there, he managed to log some jet time in a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star and also got a ride in a Northrop F-89 Scorpion—one of the most fascinating, and today rarest, aircraft of all time. He worked at a manufacturing plant in El Paso for 10 years, transferring to San Diego in 1996. After he retired in 2001, he eventually returned to El Paso, by way of Rapid City, South Dakota, in 2008. He has been building 1/48-scale model air-planes for 40 years, specializing in super-detailing World War II Japanese types. Welcome aboard, Chuck! Skip Trammell

From the Director (Continued from page 2)

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