elijahbailey

This film, with the merest of story lines to hold it together, is really just an excuse to cobble together stock combat footage, both American and German, of a mixture of American bombers, mostly B-25 Mitchells, but also B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators, and an occasional B-26 Marauder, all of which get intercut without regard to any sense of continuity. All cockpit interiors are of a B-25, interior fuselage shots appear to be B-26s, and in the latter half of this so-called "film", on a mission in B-24s, the close-up of the cockpit is a B-26. High-level B-24 group footage is mixed with Ploesti low-level training and mission footage without any regard to believability. Several crash sequences created for the movie are hokey-looking models. What little new-shot footage of flying done is all of training B-25s in a southwestern U.S. location without unit markings or tailcodes, intercut with stock footage of flying formations in combat paintschemes. The same stock shots of German 88 mm. anti-aircraft guns are reused several times.

When the main pilot's "B-24" is hit, the long-shot of it going down is a Boeing B-17, followed by a cheesy Liberator model crashing. Cut to five "survivors", supposedly down in Yugoslavia, who are repatriated within minutes, with the film wrapping up almost immediately thereafter.

As for a plot, there really isn't one. Bad acting, poor script - stay away from this stinker unless you just want to see combat film.

In Woody Allen's mockumentary "Zelig", a historical error creeps in during the new-shot footage of Leonard Zelig with his psychiatrist, Eudora Fletcher, when they visit with an aviatrix at an airport. In one shot they are walking towards the camera and a pair of fabric-covered wings are seen stacked against a wall in the background. The partial registration number visible on the surface of one wing is N15. If this were the 1930s as the footage purports, the civil registration would have begun NC15. The Bureau of Air Commerce, later the Civil Aeronautics Authority, and then the Civil Aeronautics Administration, would not drop the "C" portion of the United States national registration until 1948.