This film is a war documentary produced by one of the "Hollywood Colonels,"
William Wyler, who joined the Air Force Film unit and recorded the sights
and sounds of the last mission of a B-17 bomber known as the Memphis Belle,
named after the girlfriend of the pilot.
A narrator told the story of the 10 crewmen as examples of simple average
American boys doing a tough job. The men and plane were filmed during the
bombing raid on the submarine plens in Wilhelmshafen, Germany, "just one
mission of just one plane and one crew in one squadron in one group of one
wing of one Air Force out of fifteen United States Army Air Forces." It
used handheld 16mm and 35mm cameras inside the plane to give the perspective
of the crew. Wyler in fact combined footage from several missions to represent
this last 25th mission of the plane, a mission that was actually a milk
run with no casualties and no difficult landing. He also used film shot
by the 8th AAF Combat Camera Unit. Wyler wanted to film a flak burst but
never was able to get one: "I could never get one explosion because how
the hell do you know where one's going to explode? Once the cloud is there
it's too late. All that flak so close to us, and I could never get the explosion."
From October 1943 to March 1944, Wyler edited in the U.S. the 20,000 feet
of film he shot in Europe, producing a 42-minute color film that was considered
beautiful and dramatic.
Director: William Wyler
Producer: First Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Corps
Production Company: Paramount Pictures
Audio/Visual: Sound, Color
Run time: 43:18
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