Steve McQueen's performance as a psychopath was chilling and very convincing.
The movie had 3 Air Force advisers who'd served on B-17s in combat and the movie staff listened to them. The result is a refreshingly accurate depiction of missions and the details of the procedures and what it was like. (My father was one of those advisers.) The director was initially told the "buzz job" in the movie could not be safely done, and so planned to do it with models. But my father convinced them that it could be done safely. A course was laid out, cleared of any wires or other obstacles, and the B-17 made repeated passes over it, each time a bit lower, with crew on the ground constantly advising them of their exact height. The result is a spectacular sequence unlike any other I've seen in aviation movies - a B-17 "cutting the grass" with its props and gear up. No CGI, no models, no trick photography, it's the real thing. The Air Force was unhappy the stunt was done, until after the movie was released and a lot of people said the buzz job was the highlight of the film.
The cockpit shots were done using a cockpit section of a real B-17, it was not a set. Atypically, the shots of the crew were done with oxygen masks on in their desire for accuracy. Normally, the masks are left off so the audience can see their faces.
The crews are woken up in the barracks with "grab your socks." This was a cleaned up version of the actual lingo, which was "drop your c**ks and grab your socks." The Air Force consultants provided a lot of the lingo used, and also helped the pilots with things like how to hold the control column and what the chatter was like. The mission maps in the preflight briefing were accurately depicted.
The film was done on an actual WW2 B-17 base near London.
In the movie, a live bomb was hung up in the bomb bay. During the war, there was a hatchet provided to make it possible to chop away any such problems.
The movie had 3 Air Force advisers who'd served on B-17s in combat and the movie staff listened to them. The result is a refreshingly accurate depiction of missions and the details of the procedures and what it was like. (My father was one of those advisers.) The director was initially told the "buzz job" in the movie could not be safely done, and so planned to do it with models. But my father convinced them that it could be done safely. A course was laid out, cleared of any wires or other obstacles, and the B-17 made repeated passes over it, each time a bit lower, with crew on the ground constantly advising them of their exact height. The result is a spectacular sequence unlike any other I've seen in aviation movies - a B-17 "cutting the grass" with its props and gear up. No CGI, no models, no trick photography, it's the real thing. The Air Force was unhappy the stunt was done, until after the movie was released and a lot of people said the buzz job was the highlight of the film.
The cockpit shots were done using a cockpit section of a real B-17, it was not a set. Atypically, the shots of the crew were done with oxygen masks on in their desire for accuracy. Normally, the masks are left off so the audience can see their faces.
The crews are woken up in the barracks with "grab your socks." This was a cleaned up version of the actual lingo, which was "drop your c**ks and grab your socks." The Air Force consultants provided a lot of the lingo used, and also helped the pilots with things like how to hold the control column and what the chatter was like. The mission maps in the preflight briefing were accurately depicted.
The film was done on an actual WW2 B-17 base near London.
In the movie, a live bomb was hung up in the bomb bay. During the war, there was a hatchet provided to make it possible to chop away any such problems.