Fighter Squadron

1948 "If it had wings, they'd fly it! If it had skirts they'd fight for it!"
6.2| 1h36m| NR| en| More Info
Released: 27 November 1948 Released
Producted By: Warner Bros. Pictures
Country:
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

During World War II, an insubordinate fighter pilot finds the shoe on the other foot when he's promoted.

Genre

Action, War

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Director

Raoul Walsh

Production Companies

Warner Bros. Pictures

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Fighter Squadron Audience Reviews

Hellen I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.
Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.
Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
sol1218 ***SPOILERS*** Rip roaring war movie about the US Army Air Force in action over Nazi occupied Europe from the fall of 1943 up until the D-Day invasion on June 6,1944. It's during that period of time the fly boys naturalized the dreaded German Luftwaffe making it possible for the D-Day invasion to be successfully pulled off. With almost no German combat planes available to stop the invasion force from landing on the beaches of Normandy France countless thousands of allied casualties were prevented from occurring! Thus making the dangerous cross channel invasion a smashing success. But it was a heavy price that the US Air Force paid in achieving that: The lost of over 1,700 combat planes, shot down and damaged beyond repair, and almost 8,000 airmen killed wounded and captured.The movie centers around top USAAF Ace Maj. Ed Hardin, Edmound O'Brien, a former member of the legendary Flying Tiger who's going it alone tactics, in breaking formation to go after enemy planes, ended up costing his wing man's life. Threatened with a court martial for disobeying orders Hardin instead is put in command of his fighter squadron hoping that it would straighten him out. As expected Hardin, now a colonel, become the very company man that he resented when he was just a run of the mill combat pilot. In fact he becomes even more hard nosed then the hard nosed and by the books leader of the squadron Col.Bill Brickly, John Rodney,that he replaced!Great war footage taken by actual combat gunnery film cameras in both the European and Pacific theaters of war with the US Army Air Force fighter pilots blasting the enemy planes ships tanks and even locomotives sky high in vivid and deadly, not living, color. We also get to see Col.Hardin doing his thing as squadron leader in not only shooting Germen Me-109's out of the sky but getting his men, who really didn't need it, motivated to do the very same thing. The one mistake that Col. Hardin did that almost made him lose it, in telling his commanding officer off, was letting his good friend Capt. Stu Hamilton, Robert Stack, go on just one last mission after he come back from the states happily married to his childhood sweetheart Ann. In knowing that Stu wasn't exactly the same person that he was, brave gong-ho and suicidal, before he was married Stu with a German Me-109 on his tail thought of Ann for just a split second instead of thinking in how to get out of the German fighter's gun site! That's all it took to have Capt.Stu Hamilton end up being a dead instead of live US fighter pilot!Besides the great action scenes in the movie we also have some nice comic relief with the womanizing US Army air Force supply Sgt. Dolan, Tom D'Andrea, who uses a black cat,that spooks the airmen, that he himself snuck onto the air base as an excuse to get to the nearest town, by finding the cat a home, so he can keep up his fooling around with the local English female population! That's until his photo is printed in the local papers, with Sgt. Dolan's approval, and all the women that he promised to marry and later deserted storm the air base, shotgun & pitchfork in hand, gunning for him!P.S The film "Fighter Squadron" is also the first film to feature Jack Larson as US Army Air Force pilot Let. "Shorty" Kirk who was to later become Jimmy Olsen cub reporter in the TV hit series "The Advantures of Superman". And last but not least the film also introduced to the movie going public future Hollywood leading man the tall dark and raggedly handsome Rock Hudson as one of the member of Col. Hardin's fighter squadron. Hudson was so green in his acting ability at the time that it took some 38 takes for him to say the only line of dialog he had in the movie! "All that says he doesn't"!
billstrains I have read all of the other comments. Most (almost all) noticed the use of P-51D's for ME109's. While I am partial to P-51's (I actually flew one, I don't see anyone could mistake it for a Me109. In general it is an excellent flying movie but with lot's of tired dialog. I've known Generals like Gilbert. One thing that nobody seems to have noticed is that all of the aircraft during the D-Day landing DID NOT show the Invasion Markings, ah Hollywood research!! Of course I do like to see Edmund O'Brien, I've enjoyed him in several War movies, Also Rober Stack, there is one of his that I've been after but have not been able to find "Eagle Squadron". I also enjoyed seeing Superman's sidekick Jimmy Olson (Jack Larson). Henry Hull is always worth watching, and a very young Rock Hudson.
Gerald Asher With all the comments about Teutonic Mustangs, there should probably be some clarification. Obviously, in postwar America, we didn't have a plethora of captured MEs and FWs to operate - there were sufficient times when Mustangs were mistaken for ME-109s by gunners in the bomber formations that Hollywood's use of P-51s is forgivable. For the record: The "Luftwaffe" P-51s were from the CA ANG unit at Van Nuys; the P-47Ds were from an east coast ANG squadron. The film was shot primarily at Oscoda Army Air Field, Michigan (eventually re-named Wurtsmith AFB), with the grand finale airfield strafing sequence shot at Van Nuys. The belly tanks for one pivotal scene (jettisoned in defiance of orders to "stay with the bombers") had to be scrounged from a variety of surplus locations - hard to believe, considering just 3 short years earlier there had been in mass production. The aircraft carry 9th AF unit markings to match the only extensive color P-47 footage shot during WWII.For all this effort, the plot line is still reminiscent of most prewar or WWII-era "gung ho" propaganda films - right down to the recycling of the musical score from Errol Flynn's "Dive Bomber" (if I'm lying, I'm dying). All the hokey subplots are best enjoyed either with a case of your favorite adult beverage, or with the "mute" button activated - or both. Enjoy the airplanes, because you'll never see that many Thunderbolts in the air again.In the DVD-VHS department, I get the feeling the film is owned by Turner/TCM, as that's the only channel where I've ever seen it aired. You might try schmoozing Ted Turner to get him to release it...
JKwiat5787 I read a lot about the history of this campaign. I am pleased to see so many notice that the ME-109s in the combat sequences are actually P-51s in drag. Being a Mustang fan, I would have preferred it the other way around, with the P-51s as the good guys and the P-47s trying to impersonate Focke-Wulf 190s, something they probably wouldn't have been able to do. I always chalked the P-51s-as-109s to Hollywood trying to stay under budget. In those day there were plenty of National Guard P-51 units and any one of them would have been happy to be in the movies, I'm sure. Some of the one General's general orders ring true, like P-47s not being allowed to go below 18,000 feet, but that was because the FW-190 was better that earlier P-47s at those heights. If there was anything that I objected to, it was the idea of a 'test strike' on Berlin with 30 B-17s. Raids of that type are never attempted as half-measures. What actually happened is, the first time we tried for Berlin, the weather got too bad and the mission was recalled. That was March 3, 1944. The next day we tried again and the mission was recalled again, except that one group didn't get the recall message and 30 bombers actually unloaded over Berlin. I have no information as to whether they actually hit what they were aiming at or not. We finally hit 'em on March 6, and went back several times. It's said that when Hermann Goering saw B-17s with fighter escort over Berlin, he knew that Germany would ultimately lose the war.