Flying Fortress (1942)

Director:

Walter Forde

Writers:

Brock Williams (screenplay) and
Gordon Wellesley (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

5 December 1942 (USA)

Genre:

War | Drama

Tagline:

Blazing from the screen... out of the Blazing skies!

Plot:

Plot Keywords:

Royal Canadian Air Force | Air Raid | Airplane Accident | Airplane | American Abroad

Cast

Richard Greene	...	James 'Jim Spence Jr.
Carla Lehmann	...	Sydney Kelly, reporter for Manhattan News Service
Betty Stockfeld	...	Lady DeBorah 'Debbie' Ottershaw (as Betty Stockfield)
Donald Stewart	...	Mr. William 'Sky' Kelly
Basil Radford	...	Captain Wilkinson
Charles Heslop	...	Herrington, Spence's butler
Sidney King	...	Lord 'Squeakum' Ottershaw

Runtime:

UK:109 min | USA:68 min

Country:

UK | USA

Language:

English | German

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound)

Certification:

Finland:S | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (PCA #8684)

Filming Locations:

Teddington Studios, Teddington, Middlesex, England, UK

Company:

Warner Brothers-First National Productions

Trivia:

The heroic engine repair shown in the movie was based on an actual event. A Royal New Zealand Air Force pilot, Sergeant James Allen Ward, earned the Victoria Cross after he climbed onto the wing of his airplane on 7 July 1941 to smother the burning engine.

The plane is the strongest character

This movie is a mixture of the B-17 Flying Fortress, an inane class struggle, and superficial love interests. The are some exceptional scenes of the damage caused during the first London blitz of World War Two, yet little more of interest. The real star of the film is the B-17, with a typical bombing raid over Berlin, a propaganda target for 1942. It is an interesting docudrama of the early B-17's use during the war, so early that the navigator uses celestial fixes. Don't bail out on this movie without seeing it first.