fortlist.312
From: "Terry Colvin"
Date: Fri, 19 May 95 16:47:23 EST
Subject: Hollywood -- and Skunk Works planes
I would like to contribute some less serious material to the list,
concerning our favorite aircraft and how they are featured in tv and the
movies -- not including documentaries like "The Secret Vigil", etc.
I have here a little list, sorted by aircraft type, with some remarks:
1) U-2 series of aircraft:
a) TV-series "Quantum Leap": in one episode (don't know the title), Sam
(Dr. Samuel Becker, the hero) 'leaps' into Edward Lee Oswald (the
_suspected_ assassin of John F. Kennedy), while Oswald is stationed at
Atsugi, Japan (!). He works in some sort of US Army radar operator room,
when a U-2 (a U-2R or TR-1A is briefly shown) comes in from "above
90,000 ft.", apparently from a CIA mission over the USSR or China. :)
b) TV-film "Call to Glory" -- apparently also a tv-series (?): the movie
recounts the events surrounding the 'Cuban Missile Crisis' from the
point of view of an USAF U-2 pilot and his family, including the shooting
down of Maj. Rudolph Anderson over Cuba. -- Very nice flying (T-38)
and U-2 (U-2R though) scenes. Best U-2 movie so far (if you ignore the
usual 'family drama' parts).
2) SR-71 series of aircraft:
a) Movie "D.A.R.Y.L." -- a "Data Analyzing Robot, Young Life form" :)
escapes after 'lots of adventures' and steals an SR-71A, which he
flies 'home', where he ejects, while the bad USAF guys remotely
destroy the Blackbird. Disney-style movie. -- The SR-71A appears to be
the 'Contractors Bird' (article 2006, serial '64-17955') taxiing and
starting from Palmdale. Cockpit shots etc. are of course pure Hollywood.
b) Movie "Final Approach" -- an SR-71 pilot, flying a very fast 'low level'
training mission (?) crashes. -- During the rest of the movie (99%) he is
dead and argues with a psychoanalyst (the devil ?) about what had
happened to him. -- Forget it!
3) F-117 series of aircraft:
a) TV-film "Night Rider 2000", part of the "Action Pack" series: some
sort of "Mad Max" environment in the US southwest. Includes a crashed
F-117A, not recovered by the USAF, because the land it lays on is a
sacred Indian burial ground. During this movie, a car, looking like an
F-117-cockpit on wheels, is also featured. -- The F-117A mock-up is
acceptable (but the car stinks).
b) Movie "Interceptor": Terrorists try to steal an C-5 Galaxy, transporting
two "mind controlled" F-117A, but are stopped by another F-117 pilot,
who is on board as a passenger, supported by the female C-5 pilot. --
This flick not only features F-117As with folding wings, starting out of
the back of the Galaxy, unfolding the wings in free-fall and then dog
fighting each other -- the real funny part is the way the terrorists
come on board the Galaxy! They crawl through the aerial refueling
boom of their fake tanker, cutting a hole through the top of the C-5.
-- Big joke!
c) Movie "The Philadelphia Experiment 2": Our hero, stranded from the
1940s 'Philadelphia Experiment' in the 1990s, is thrown into the
1990s of a parallel world, where the Nazis won W.W.II. The reason
they won is, because the son (?) of a German mad scientist in the
'real' 1990s repeated a modified 'Philadelphia Experiment' with the
goal of transporting things from one place instantaneous to another
place (beam me up Scotty). He chooses to use an F-117A, flying alone,
non-stop, and unrefueled from the USA to Germany (Wiesbaden!), carrying
a nuclear weapon, as a demonstration object. He succeeds in transporting
the F-117 to Germany, but also moves it back in time to the 1940s. So
the Nazis, presented with this gift from the future, sending the
F-117A, now called 'Phoenix' (with German W.W.II markings) back to the
USA to bomb Washington. They not only have fuel for the F-117, they also
find out how to fly it and how to detonate the nuclear device! (And of
course that ends the war in favor of the Nazis). The mock-up of the
'trans-continental-range, nuclear armed F-117A' is good, and looks
interesting with fake Wehrmacht Luftwaffe markings. But it gets blown up,
what ultimately restores the normal time line. -- Totally unrealistic,
but fun.
Any comments or additional information is more than welcome.
- -- Andreas
- --- ---
Andreas & Kathryn Gehrs-Pahl E-Mail: schnars@ais.org
313 West Court St. #305 or: gpahl@raptor.csc.flint.umich.edu
Flint, MI 48502-1239
Tel: (810) 238-8469 WWW URL: http://www.umcc.umich.edu/~schnars/