Here are all the films that make
up this historical collection:
The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944)
  
  
  
  
This film is a war documentary produced by one of the "Hollywood Colonels,"
William Wyler, who joined the Air Force Film unit and recorded the sights
and sounds of the last mission of a B-17 bomber known as the Memphis Belle,
named after the girlfriend of the pilot.
A narrator told the story of the 10 crewmen as examples of simple average
American boys doing a tough job. The men and plane were filmed during the
bombing raid on the submarine plens in Wilhelmshafen, Germany, "just one
mission of just one plane and one crew in one squadron in one group of one
wing of one Air Force out of fifteen United States Army Air Forces." It
used handheld 16mm and 35mm cameras inside the plane to give the perspective
of the crew. Wyler in fact combined footage from several missions to represent
this last 25th mission of the plane, a mission that was actually a milk
run with no casualties and no difficult landing. He also used film shot
by the 8th AAF Combat Camera Unit. Wyler wanted to film a flak burst but
never was able to get one: "I could never get one explosion because how
the hell do you know where one's going to explode? Once the cloud is there
it's too late. All that flak so close to us, and I could never get the explosion."
From October 1943 to March 1944, Wyler edited in the U.S. the 20,000 feet
of film he shot in Europe, producing a 42-minute color film that was considered
beautiful and dramatic.
Director: William Wyler
Producer: First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Corps
Production Company: Paramount Pictures
Audio/Visual: Sound, Color
Run time: 43:18
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Mission Accomplished: The Story of the Flying Fortress (ca. 1942)
Experience an autumn 1942 bombing run of B-17s as they drop their deadly
load over occupied Europe.
Producer: U.S. Office of War Information, Bureau of Motion Pictures
Audio/Visual: Sound, Black & White
Run time: 10:42
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Armed Forces display U.S. Might On Observance Day, 1956/05/21 (1956)
1) Armed Forces Day at AFB in Michigan features new Redstone missile; Scorpion
attack plane fires rockets at old B-17 in Florida; crash landing of
jet on USS Essex, pilot rescued by helicopter (2) "France Digs In for Total
Algerian War" - 400,000 French troops pinned down by guerilla attacks -
armed depots dot Algeria landscape (3) 4 survivng Dionne quints open flower
shop in Ottawa (4) hospital workers carry small pagers (5) Preakness horse
race won by Fabius, not Needles who had won Kentucky Derby; Nashua wins
his race (complete newsreel)
Production Company: Universal Studios
Audio/Visual: sound, Black & White
Run time: 17:19
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Aviation In The News, 1944/06/22 (1944)
B-24 Liberator rolls off San Diego Consolidated "San Diego, CA: Off the
assembly line comes the 5,000th B-24 to go to war. The famed bomber, nicknamed
the Liberator, is ready to be off to the wars and further victories for
the plane." (2) First Movies Of Gen. Tito Of Yugoslavia "Somewhere in Yugoslavia:
For the first time, Marshall Tito is photographed by the motion picture
camera. His Partisans have been a thorn in the Nazis' side since the day
the Germans over ran the country."
Production Company: Universal Studios
Audio/Visual: sound, Black & White
Run time: 1:05
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