Bombardiers en piqué

Legendary Michael Curtiz directs this exciting, well paced aviation drama about two naval officers(Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray)who put aside their personal differences to work together conducting experiments to understand and prevent pilots from suffering altitude blackouts. Visually exciting pre war flick filmed at Pensacola that in turn led to accusations that in real life Flynn aided Nazi agents.

MacMurray and Flynn have very different acting styles, but work well together...of course Flynn seems to always be the focus. Alexis Smith is the rose among the thorns so-to-speak. The cast also features: veteran actor Ralph Bellamy and Regis Toomey, Robert Armstrong and Craig Stevens. After all these years DIVE BOMBER can still hold your attention.

Other posters have discussed the supposed 'spy' story behind this film: That Errol Flynn attempted to get it made in Pensacola rather than San Diego because the Nazis wanted to see the layout at Pensacola. They've pointed out that in the studio days, an actor, even one with Flynn's stature, could hardly have dictated such a thing. Also the buildings shown appear to be in San Diego. Finally, the airplanes used in the film were already obsolete in 1941. The Pentagon would hardly have allowed anything the Nazis and Japanese didn't already know about to be presented in the film, (and we probably didn't have any such thing at that point anyway).

And that last point intrigues me. This film allegedly presents the cutting edge of aeronautical medicine. Yet, if that's the case, the Pentagon would surely not have allowed Hollywood to present that, either. If the film had been made after the war, it would be more believable that this represented in some way the efforts of the heroic doctors and flyers to conquer black-out and high altitude sickness. But in 1941, the only thing that could have been presented was old science, speculation or Hollywood hokum, which this is surely a mixture of. That makes the film, which is certainly entertaining, rather meaningless as a semi-documentary on the subject.

On the subject of Hollywood's obsession with comic relief, this is something that mars old movies to modern eyes. I'm sure there are things in our films today that will someday be considered an embarrassment but these moronic 'sidekicks' are about as funny these days as a minstral show. In this film, the constant return to Allen Jenkins and his problems with his wife are a maddening intrusion into the drama of the film. Particularly inexcusable is the interruption of the scene where Regis Toomey is about to be told that he can no longer fly and we seque to Jenkins again, then go back and pick up Toomey's story. Did 'Spig' Wead really write Jenkins' part into the script? I doubt it. (See my review of 'Hell Below' for another example of this type of cinematic butchery.)

This film is beautifully shot with incredible Technicolor photography of pre-WW 2 Navy aircraft in all their glory. (Note- Navy planes were purposely painted in bright colors to facilitate rescue at sea.)

Unfortunately there are a lot of annoying factors to the plot such as Allen Jenkins' alleged comic relief and some pretty unbelievable dialogue. Errol Flynn and Fred MacMurray spend a lot of time on manly stiff-upper-lip dialogue that is unbelievably stilted. There is a lot of real aviation medicine mixed in with some bogus movie baloney (the pressure suit they come up with is kind of a steal from round-the-world pilot Wiley Post). Navy pilots never used anything like that suit or the pressure belt in that time period. The film was actually shot at NAS North Island on Coronado island with the cooperation of the Navy.

If you want to see the kind of planes the Navy was flying in the late 30's, though, there is no better film. Look for the Consolidated Coronado 4-engine flying boat in one scene- a flying dinosaur!

Taken by itself, DIVE BOMBER is a routine tale of the efforts of Navy doctors to find solutions to major issues facing aviators (countering the effect of G-force on pilots, and functioning in a high altitude environment), written by Naval aviator Frank ('Spig') Wead (who would, himself, be the subject of a later film, John Ford's THE WINGS OF EAGLES), photographed in glorious Technicolor, and teaming top WB 'draw' Errol Flynn with two legendary actors, Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy. Filmed at the eve of the war, the film was one of many military-themed pictures Hollywood's studios were producing, to generate public acceptance of an inevitable U.S. involvement.

While the movie was successful when released, the passage of time has dated it, and the issues addressed; as a result, DIVE BOMBER has not retained the luster of Flynn's swashbucklers. But in the seventies, the film took on a new significance, as allegations were made that Flynn had committed treason, working for the Nazis at the time of the shooting.

According to 'secret' documents that an author said were made available to him, Flynn aided two known Nazi agents, helping them perform espionage by demanding DIVE BOMBER be shot 'on location' at Pensacola Naval Air Station. While the spies were arrested and deported, Flynn went unpunished, and his participation 'covered up', for morale reasons. The revelations were published in a Flynn biography, and the actor's already tarnished reputation became the butt of a new round of derision (a thinly-veiled version of Flynn served as the Nazi villain of the 1991 film, THE ROCKETEER).

Many of Flynn's surviving co-stars, and his official biographer, Tony Thomas, came to the long-dead actor's defense, and research into the extensive, now declassified file the FBI kept on the rowdy actor (files were kept on virtually everyone of importance in the entertainment industry) reveal no more than a social involvement with the agents (the pair socialized with many 'movers' in the film industry, and Flynn was a major 'party animal' in the forties). The idea that the actor could have 'demanded' and gotten a location to be used would have been unlikely (the studio carefully budgeted each film, and actors were only rarely involved in the production end). Had the charges been true, no studio would have ever hired Flynn, again (this was a very patriotic period), and Jack Warner would have PAID, if necessary, for Flynn's one-way ticket to Germany!

Despite the lack of any real evidence, there are still people who cling to the belief that Errol Flynn was guilty (he was far from the noble cavalier that many of his early films portrayed him as, and his critics would love to add treason to his long list of sins). DIVE BOMBER has become the cornerstone of one of Hollywood's great mysteries...

I have to side with those who have said the real stars are the pristine U.S. Naval aircraft of 1941, most still wearing the colorful prewar markings. But Flynn is always enjoyable, especially at this stage of his career, and he does a great job of playing off his cool Navy doctor personality against Fred MacMurray's hard bitten naval aviator.

There are some interesting Hollywood shortcuts in the film. As Swede Larson's Vindicator dive bomber goes into its fatal dive over Hawaii, the air gunner is seen in the rear seat. The crash is convincing, probably done with a large scale model, but the wreckage appears to be cobbled up from bits and pieces (Lockheed Vega tail) and doesn't even vaguely resemble a Vindicator. The fate of the air gunner is not addressed - maybe he was smart enough to have bailed out? Anyway he conveniently disappeared. The role of the enlisted troops in Naval Aviation is conveniently ignored, except for the hospital corpsmen.

I think the comedic interlude with Nazarro double-talking "Lucky's" wife is quite charming and reminiscent of Ronald Reagan's double talk with Raymond Massey's Nazi in DESPERATE JOURNEY. To the critics of this I say it was a 1940's thing; THEY thought it was funny. People today will already find Kelly McGillis's character with her seamed stockings and leather flight jacket already dated and corny in 1980s' TOP GUN. That's show biz; let it go.

Several shots aboard the USS ENTERPRISE show TBDs catching the wire on landing but the camera is angled up for "security" to avoid showing details of the Vindicators' arresting gear. So to answer those who talk about security obviously the Navy did throw in a few restrictions.

The "diving suit" high altitude gear is pure fantasy. But then, it's a movie.

Note for the "rough landing" by the bit player flight surgeon where a plane goes bouncing all over the field, a U.S. Navy N3N trainer is NOT abused in that way. A civilian biplane (possibly a Great Lakes) is repainted to resemble an N3N (and they got the national insignia too small).

For those who claim the film was NOT shot at North Island in San Diego, please note Flynn flies past the Del Coronado Beach Hotel. I knew two old men who were in the Navy and USMC and were stationed there and have fond memories of the movie. After the filming was complete, the film crew staged a big beer bust for all of the men who took part in helping make it. I was stationed there 30 years after the movie was made and a lot of the base still looked that way.

One puzzling thing, at the "Graduation" from Flight Surgeon School, the Navy band plays "SEMPER PARATUS," the U. S. Coast Guard march. The "Dive Bomber March" by Max Steiner, used throughout the movie, was good enough to be re-used later for the Robert Stack P-47 movie FIGHTER SQUADRON, as well as John Wayne's WW-2 sub flick, OPERATION PACIFIC

In many respects, this film is really a documentary of U.S. Naval Aviation in 1941 with a superficial film plot thinly superimposed. But it's a treasure!