Its not an original idea for a post, but what WWII movies or shows featuring air combat are your favorites?

For me, Black Sheep Squadron on TV was great.

And Midway is probably one of my favorite WWII movies.

Tora Tora Tora was a great movie, but I don't like watching us lose. I never saw that Pearl Harbor movie that was released a few years back.

Well, I liked McHale's Navy, too. Not that there were a lot of airplanes in that show.

sepayne7l said:

Hmmm, I'd have to say that my favorite movie would be The Battle of Britian. Great aerial sequences, with Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Robert Shaw and Edward Fox to name a few of the stars.

TV series...hmmm. When I was about 8 or 9, maybe younger, there was a TV series based on the award winning Movie 12 O'Clock High, with Gregory Peck ( a fantastic movie, although not many aerial sequences), called aptly enough... 12 O'Clock High. Now we're talking this was on back in the days when Combat! with Vic Morrow was on as well. Talk about jumping in your way-back machine!

Some other movies that I dig are Thirty Seconds over Tokyo with Van Johnson, Spencer Tracy and a very young Robert Mitchum. Outstanding aerial sequences. In fact, they were the same sequences you see in the begining of Midway , the Doolittle opening shots. They just borrowed them for Midway .

The one that had me hooked as a kid had to be the Flying Tigers with John Wayne. The Flying Leathernecks with John Wayne was also one of my childhood favorites.

One you don't see or hear much about recently, but another fantastic flick, although on the dark, dark side of humor, Catch-22 . Ton's of stars in this one, with Alan Arkin in the lead role of Yossarian; great book too. Some good sequences with B-25s.

Yossarian: Is Orr crazy?
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Of course he is. He has to be crazy to keep flying after all his close calls he's had.
Yossarian: Why can't you ground him?
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: I can, but first he has to ask me.
Yossarian: That's all he's gotta do to be grounded?
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: That's all.
Yossarian: Then you can ground him?
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: No. Then I cannot ground him.
Yossarian: Aah!
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: There's a CATCH?
Yossarian: A catch?
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: Sure. Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat isn't really crazy, so I can't ground him.
Yossarian: Ok, let me see if I've got this straight. In order to be grounded, I've got to be crazy. And I must be crazy to keep flying. But if I ask to be grounded, that means I'm not crazy anymore, and I have to keep flying.
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: You got it, that's Catch-22.
Yossarian: Whoo... That's some catch, that Catch-22.
Dr. 'Doc' Daneeka: It's the best there is.

Memphis Belle was a pretty good flick. Kinda all "HollyWood"ed up, but a good flick none the less. One of my favorites is A Story Of A Flying Fortress , featuring the crew of the Memphis Belle; a 45 minute War Department documentary with actual footage of the Belles last mission, made during the war. I first saw this at The United States Air Force Museum in Dayton with my Dad and Grandfather when I was a kid. Talk about being awestruck.

Tuskegee Airmen with Lawrence Fishburn was another good recent one. Lots of P-51s.

The best on TV right now has got to be, hands down, Dogfights on the history channel. If you want to keep it strictly WWII, they have plenty of episodes just on WWII. I recently saw one of my favorites, The Battle for Y-29 , or something like that. That series is freakin' awesome!!!!

Don't get me started on books on WWII air combat....

You both mentioned some of my favorites. I won't rate them, but I definitely prefer the Battle of Britain movie to the Midway movie, and Tora Tora Tora is better than Pearl Harbor. And Dogfights is the best thing since sliced bread - too bad it was canceled

A few that haven't been mentioned yet:
The Blue Max
Flyboys
Piece of Cake
Dark Blue World
Dive Bomber (awesome footage of pre-WWII US Navy planes)
Der Rote Baron (German only, if you have a DVD player that can play European DVDs, you can buy the video from amazon.de)
633 Squadron
The Dambusters

In upcoming movie news, we have Redtails by George Lucas and a remake of the Dambusters by Peter Jackson to look forward to.

I haven't seen a bunch of those, or even heard of some, but I want to check them out now.

Another one I remember seeing in theaters is Force 10 from Navarone. As a teen I thought it was one of the best movies EVAR! Yeah, no planes so I'm off topic a little, but I still liked it. Rat Patrol was good, too.

bsmith13 said:

Yes, agreed!

bsmith13 said:

CANCELLED!!??!!

I didn't know that, too bad....

bsmith13 said:

I can't believe I forgot 633 Squadron with Cliff Robertson!! Great flick. I liked the Mosquitos so much, that I caught another movie with Gregory Peck that had some Mossies in it, called the Purple Plain .

The remakes you mention sound interesting! I'll keep an eye out for them.

The Battle of Britain is an all time favourite. There was also a movie biography about R.J. Mitchell that I remember enjoying (although not technically a war movie, I think it's close enough ) I also vaguely recall seeing a movie about Douglas Bader (no recollection about whether it was any good though).

TV = Piece of Cake... a BBC show about a Spitfire squadron, although I also have fond memories of Pappy Boyington and the boys.

I'm not sure if it counts but Sink the Bismark had some Swordfishes.

Wow, I was just browsing through this thread again, and I thought of another decent WWII "air war" type flick. I used to see this one all the time on Turner Classic Movies, The War Lover with Steve McQueen in the lead as an over the top, waaay tooo Gung-Ho B-17 bomber commander. I would imagine, from what I remember about the flick, that it may have come out sometime on the heels of 12: O'Clock High . I haven't seen much of it in the past several years though. If I remember right, it served up the aerial combat sequences people probably felt were lacking in 12: O'Clock High.

sepayne7l said:

It's worth watching if nothing more than just for the aerial sequences. They are very good in that flick, I must say.

I forgot about The War Lover! Thanks for reminding me. It has some incredible aerial footage.

I think the movie about R. J. Mitchell is "Spitfire, also known as "The First of the Few". And I think the one about Bader is "Reach for the Sky". Haven't seen either of them in ages; time to go update my netflix queue.

Can anyone remember any others?