Briskly directed by Raoul Walsh, another of Hollywood's one-eyed Irishmen, this is the story of Edmund O'Brien as a cheerful lone-wolf ex-Flying Tiger who joins a squadron of P-47s in England. Their mission: Escort B-17s on raids over Nazi-held Europe. O'Brien is the kind of pilot who is interested in result and breaks all the rules.
Then, according to the usual formula, he's asked to take over the squadron. He does so reluctantly. It means he must crack down on his men and see that all the standing orders are obeyed. This disappoints the men.
But not for long. It's not that kind of movie. The conflicts, and there are several, are not lingered over. In this world, men speak their minds in public places and "get it off their chests." O'Brien not only has the men following the rules he himself has always disregarded, he influences the desk-bound generals running the program so that they modernize the fighter squadron's tactics -- drop those external fuel tanks when engaging enemy fighters, and send some planes ahead of the bomber swarm to harass German fighters on their own airstrips before they can get in the air. Ground attack is more dangerous but it works. The men rack up scores of enemy kills. The lines of swastikas painted on each fuselage grows, then a second line begins.
It hardly breaks new ground. Robert Stack is one of the pilots. He's completed not one tour but two, and then volunteers for a third, even though he's newly married. O'Brien allows him one more mission before he's transferred to a desk. Every perceptive viewer will know immediately that Stack is doomed.
The comedy -- or rather the attempt at comedy -- is provided by Tom D'Andrea, a master sergeant who connives to get leave and return cats to their owners, who are all beautiful young English babes. The device isn't funny but D'Andrea's characterization is so reasonable that it's effective.
Finally, D Day arrives, the big push, and the pilots can't wait to get at those Germans. Somewhere in his voluminous works, Stephen Ambrose characterizes the French citizens of Normandy as sullen, as contrasted with the sunny disposition of the residents of southern France, Ambrose treats it as a regional difference in temperament. What he doesn't seem to realize, and what this film illustrates, is that we demolished the northern coast of France and killed innumerable French citizens in the process. Whole towns disappeared under a torrent of Allied bombs. We see gun-camera footage of P-47s shooting up everything on the ground, from flak towers to locomotives. What is always left out of these sequences is one in which a French farmer in a small cart is trotting his single horse at top speed down a dirt road and cart, driver, and animal explode in a roiling cloud of .50 caliber dust. We don't object to seeing people die but animals are a different story. Somewhere in the ether a documentary is floating around, shown on PBS about twenty years ago, called "Fighter Pilot," narrated by Ken Aaronson of Minnesota, who flew P-47s on ground missions. If you can find it, it will give you a realistic picture of what life was like for the pilots we see having such a good time in this movie.
Walsh rushes them through their hours of relaxation. They're always shouting, laughing, insulting, cuffing each other, gambling, drinking. And they do it all vivacissimo. There's hardly a moment's pause in the speech or the action. The dialog is straight out of a World War II flag waver like John Wayne's "Flying Tigers." "Hold it, Fritzie, I got something for you." "Compliments of Lieutenant Ross." "I've been workin' on the railroad." "Hitler, you'll get a bang out of this." "No dice, Hardin. Tell Helen I was thinking of her." The German pilots, in contrast, are all angry, hunch over their controls, and curse furiously, "Ach! Du lieber Scheisskerln!" or whatever.
The Germans fly late-model P-51s painted gray with big swastikas. The Americans fly their huge P-47s, bright aluminum with vividly colored cowlings. RAF pilots used to joke about the "jugs" that they were so big that, under fire, a pilot could leave the cockpit and run around inside the fuselage to escape the enemy bullets. They were huge. But they were powerful too and heavily armed.
The combat footage is all from gun cameras and newsreels. At the time of the movie's release, this footage was still a novelty. Currently, CGIs are more effective, but that doesn't detract from the excitement generated by the scenes in the air. Once you get past the cartoon quality of the story itself, you may enjoy it. It's pretty colorful and undemanding stuff.
