2015-04-17

1944 — Thursday, April 13 Menphis Nelle

Forwarded message -From: Louis Nève

This is history ! The video is excellent .

From: Jean schoefs

Subject: 1944 — Thursday, April 13

1944 — Thursday, April 13 - On this day 71 years ago, Paramount Pictures, in conjunction with the First Motion Picture Unit, released 'The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress'.
Directed by legendary Hollywood perfectionist William Wyler while the director was serving in the United States Army Air Forces and shot in striking 16mm technicolor, The Memphis Belle for the first time brought actual combat-shot aerial battle footage to audiences at home in the United States. The 'William Wyler' film Memphis Belle premieres in Hollywood, documenting and immortalizing 'Morgan's Crew' and the B-17 Flying Fortress of the same name, the first crew of the 8th Air Force to complete 25 missions.
The in-flight audio in "The Memphis Belle" was created and implemented in the film afterwards. You can see this at the monotonous sound of the engines which always sounds the same regardless of the perspectives the camera shows. The intercom conversation of the crew was also recreated and included afterwards, because the engines of the B-17 would have been far too loud to use original conversation.
1943 - The Memphis Belle flies its 25th bombing mission

May 17, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes the first B-17 crew to complete 25 missions over Europe.

'The Memphis Belle' performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle's crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.

The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months,

Click below to watch The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress in its entirety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm1_D5crgPk
This is really a good "documentary" even though it hast some aspects of propaganda included. But that was the normal way to handle that topic during the war time. The Office of War Information was responsible to let the film makers include aspects and topics in their movies which "help to win the war" during 2nd world war.

1944 — Thursday, April 13

MEMPHIS BELLE - B-17 Flying Fortress and her crew - World War Two Documentary

Though the film alleged to document the 25th and final mission of the crew of the B-17 in its title, filming between January and May of 1943 was actually conducted aboard a number of different Flying Fortresses of the 8th Air Force. Employing revolutionary filming techniques which included cameras mounted in the plane's nose, tail, right waist and radio hatch positions, the results of Wyler's work clearly showed both the dangers and heroism of America's daylight bombers.
Despite the great risks associated with bomber missions, for the entire duration of the filming, Wyler and his crew personally oversaw the project aboard and alongside the B-17 crews; Wyler himself would lose much of his hearing due to the concussive explosions of anti-aircraft flak. Both critically and popularly acclaimed at the time, The Memphis Belle proved a huge hit and today is preserved for its cultural significance within the 'National Film Registry'.

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.

The crew of the B-17 "Memphis Belle" back from its 25th operational mission. All of the crew hold the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal. It all started with this Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. In all of its missions, there was only one casualty, a leg wound to the tail gunner, June 1943. (U.S. Air Force photo)

At that time, flying one of these had an 82 percent attrition rate, which meant 18 guys came back for every 100 that went over."

Col. Robert Morgan, who piloted a B-17 bomber that soared into history and Hollywood movies as an icon of World War II, died May 2004 in Asheville, N.C., after breaking his neck in a fall, said his wife, Linda. He was 85 and lived in Asheville.

William Wyler filmed on the B-17 bomber Memphis Belle, pictured here at Bassingbourn