User Reviews

Robert Preston narrates this RKO two-reel film. It's about the Defensive Early Warning Line, and the men who maintain it.... and the Air Force Reserve personnel who stand ready to do their part in the event of an actual emergency.

It winds up being a 15-minute advertisement for people to join the Air Force Reserve, talking about the training, the payment, the comradeship, and some of the individual men in Marietta Georgia -- then a small town -- who are reservists. Decently cut together, it's fairly typical of the sort of industrial film that went out under the RKO-Pathe banner in the middle 1950s.

This is a routine RKO Pathe short dedicated to the civilians of the Air Force Reserve who guard us against enemy attack with their radar detection training. Various phases of Air Force training are shown and participants in the studies are shown going about their civilian jobs when they're not on duty in the Reserve.

Narrated by ROBERT PRESTON, it's really not a very original concept and becomes a routine documentary about the Air Force Reserve operating in Northern Georgia.

It does give the viewer an appreciation for the efforts to keep our country safe from enemy attack and demonstrates that our Air Force Reserve was doing an important job in that respect then and hopefully now.

Unfortunately, it's overall effect is one of just moderate interest.

One of a series of self serving propaganda films made by RKO during the period it was owned by Howard Hughes. This was made circa 1955 (there is one 1956 Dodge seen on a dealers lot, all other cars are 1955's or earlier). It is a peon to the Air National Guard and emphasizes its importance in defending America- from what? The implication on the minds of audiences at the time was of course that Soviet bombers would penetrate US airspace and attack places like Marietta, Georgia, even though it was a 24 hour ride from the closest point in Russia.

At the time Hughes was making a fire control system known as the MA-1. This consisted of a radar and computer interface to direct intercepting aircraft equipped with Hughes' Falcon air-to-air missiles. It was in Hughes' interest to present not only the idea that a Soviet threat was a universally accepted idea, but that it would be met by ordinary citizen soldiers, one's friends and neighbors. In this case, the Air National Guard. So this is a tale of the ordinary citizens of Marietta and Cobb County, Georgia, responding to a drill as if Georgia was under attack. The fact that there was no real Soviet threat to Marietta, Georgia could be emphasized by the fact that the Air National Guard, flying out of Dobbins Air Base, were equipped principally, it seems, with F84 E's or G's, which were obsolete and never intended to be fighter/interceptors. They were used in the Korean War as fighter/bombers and replaced in the Air Force's fighter inventory by the swept wing F-84F. Of course it was the Hughes idea was that even inappropriate aircraft like the F-84 could be used in an interceptor role by the adaptation of the Hughes Fire Control system. Eventually it worked out for everyone as the Air National Guard had a neat rationalization to stay in business and Hughes would get the business of keeping them in business.

Early on the F-86 K, distinctive for having a black "parrots beak" above the front air intake, is seen. This was the post-war all-weather version of the fighter, so called because it had its own airborne radar. At the end the earlier, non-radar version, is seen flying in beautifully intricate formations, sometimes forming an outline eerily predictive of the silhouette of the B-2 stealth bomber.

If there is any irony it's that Martin Aircraft moved to Marietta from Baltimore, Maryland and became Martin Marietta and eventually a component of Lockheed Martin.

A little sidelight- the marquee on the Strand Theatre in the courthouse square has Jean Peters, Howard Hughes main squeeze at the time, billed above the film title 3 COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN, a summer 1954 release, even though she was billed third in the cast.

Another sidelight was the later use of another woefully obsolete and re- purposed aircraft, the Convair F-102, which was flown by the Texas National Guard, again to defend Texas against the ever-present threat of Soviet Bombers taking the 24 hour ride in the 60s. One such defender, at least for a while, was the so-called Champaign Squadron a member of which, for a while, was our own very dear fearless leader, George Bush. It was the F-106 which got the MA-1 Fire Control System.

The best thing about this little propaganda film was to see a cross section of 1955 cars, au natural for once.

Unfortunately the comments above are based on the erroneous belief that the film was about the Air National Guard in Georgia. It was not. The film was about the Air Force Reserves headquartered at Dobbins Air Force Base which, with its worldwide mission, had a much broader impact than the Air National Guard Unit at Dobbins. This Air Force wing was an important support to air defenses against foreign threats. The wing featured had missions to South and Central America, Vietnam, and Europe. The latter included sending activated reserve troops to serve at Mildenhall, England in the late 1960s.

The men portrayed in the film were actual reservists although they are credited under the names they were given for the film.

Sentinels in the Air (1956)

** (out of 4)

Bland RKO short is pretty much propaganda 101. The film starts off telling us Americans that we should keep a watchful eye to the sky as we never know when we might get attacked. We then visit a small town in Georgia where we're introduced to nearly a dozen men who are just doing their jobs. We then learn about the Air Force Reserves and why they're so important to the future. Finally, the men we saw doing their normal jobs, we then get to see them in the Reserves jobs. There's no question that the heart of this film is in the right place but the end result is rather bland and boring. The film takes way too much time to get started and Robert Preston's narration is a bit too dry for the material. I think the film has an interesting idea of introducing us to someone and then showing what else he does but the director just can't pull it off to make it entertaining.