After WW2 there were thousands of tons of unused war fighting material and equipment that were dumped on the civilian market as war surplus, at bargain basement prices, just to get rid of it.
I guess the Warner Brothers wartime propaganda film machine had exactly the same problem... they had tons of perfectly good, unused clichés that they didn't need anymore because the war had ended. So they wrapped them all up and dropped them like a huge blockbuster bomb into the script of FIGHTER SQUADRON, in one last explosion of silver screen bravado! Somehow I get the feeling that this barrage of badinage was something that they'd had left over from that other great collection of wartime wisecracking, GOD IS MY COPILOT. Tokyo Joe and Colonel Robert Scott hadn't used 'em all up, and this stuff had a definite shelf life... so it was a case of Use it or Lose it.
The flying sequences are first rate... much of it is actual combat footage and gun camera film, liberally supplemented by footage of postwar Air National Guard pilots flying their beloved Jugs for one last orgasm of wartime glory before the cameras.
As somebody else pointed out, you'll never see that many Thunderbolts in the air again. For aviation buffs like me, that's a saving virtue... the P-47 was a hell of a fighter plane design which, in my opinion, was robbed of it's share of recognition by the much more flashy (but also quite capable) P51 Mustang.
There's no need to yet again go into the Whys and Wherefores of the "Messerschmidts" that came rolling off of North American's P-51D assembly lines. Those California Air National Guard flown Bad Guys can take their place in cinematic history alongside the British built Hawker Hurricane that ALSO played the part of a Messerschmidt in Jimmy Cagney's CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS... a film which, by the way, was ANOTHER Warner Brothers firing range for unloosing tons of large caliber clichés.
The music in FIGHTER SQUADRON is also a collection of beloved wartime leftovers.
The film's main musical theme was recycled from the Erroll Flynn/Fred MacMurray prewar epic DIVE BOMBER.
During the sequence where the Thunderbolts supplied ground support for the Omaha Beach invasion forces, the theme music for the ground troops was lifted directly from the "Over the Top" sequence in Gary Cooper's SERGEANT YORK!
The film's plot and subplots are, to say the least, weak... the script is another Clearance Sale of hackneyed plot devices that had to be used up before they turned rancid on the shelf.
The result of all of this is a film that's something of a parody. I would have expected better of Raoul Walsh, but His was not to Reason Why.
FIGHTER SQUADRON is a lot of fun to watch, especially if you've got a couple of cold beers handy, if you can turn off reason and reality for the duration. Suspension of Disbelief is is the order of the day.
Just view this one as Hollywood's Postwar Victory Lap.
I guess the Warner Brothers wartime propaganda film machine had exactly the same problem... they had tons of perfectly good, unused clichés that they didn't need anymore because the war had ended. So they wrapped them all up and dropped them like a huge blockbuster bomb into the script of FIGHTER SQUADRON, in one last explosion of silver screen bravado! Somehow I get the feeling that this barrage of badinage was something that they'd had left over from that other great collection of wartime wisecracking, GOD IS MY COPILOT. Tokyo Joe and Colonel Robert Scott hadn't used 'em all up, and this stuff had a definite shelf life... so it was a case of Use it or Lose it.
The flying sequences are first rate... much of it is actual combat footage and gun camera film, liberally supplemented by footage of postwar Air National Guard pilots flying their beloved Jugs for one last orgasm of wartime glory before the cameras.
As somebody else pointed out, you'll never see that many Thunderbolts in the air again. For aviation buffs like me, that's a saving virtue... the P-47 was a hell of a fighter plane design which, in my opinion, was robbed of it's share of recognition by the much more flashy (but also quite capable) P51 Mustang.
There's no need to yet again go into the Whys and Wherefores of the "Messerschmidts" that came rolling off of North American's P-51D assembly lines. Those California Air National Guard flown Bad Guys can take their place in cinematic history alongside the British built Hawker Hurricane that ALSO played the part of a Messerschmidt in Jimmy Cagney's CAPTAINS OF THE CLOUDS... a film which, by the way, was ANOTHER Warner Brothers firing range for unloosing tons of large caliber clichés.
The music in FIGHTER SQUADRON is also a collection of beloved wartime leftovers.
The film's main musical theme was recycled from the Erroll Flynn/Fred MacMurray prewar epic DIVE BOMBER.
During the sequence where the Thunderbolts supplied ground support for the Omaha Beach invasion forces, the theme music for the ground troops was lifted directly from the "Over the Top" sequence in Gary Cooper's SERGEANT YORK!
The film's plot and subplots are, to say the least, weak... the script is another Clearance Sale of hackneyed plot devices that had to be used up before they turned rancid on the shelf.
The result of all of this is a film that's something of a parody. I would have expected better of Raoul Walsh, but His was not to Reason Why.
FIGHTER SQUADRON is a lot of fun to watch, especially if you've got a couple of cold beers handy, if you can turn off reason and reality for the duration. Suspension of Disbelief is is the order of the day.
Just view this one as Hollywood's Postwar Victory Lap.