Memphis Belle is an old favorite of mine, which I first saw as a kid in the early 90s. I was at the start of an obsession with aviation, history, and war, and this movie had it all. I knew several WW2 pilots in the autumn of their lives- one, a grandfather of a friend of mine, flew B17s over Europe. Another, who my Dad worked with, flew reconnaissance-configured F4Fs and F6Fs in the Navy, in the Pacific. I never asked their opinion about the movie (maybe they never saw it), but my suspicion is that they would have told me that it's bunk. That said, I imagine that moments of it capture some of the experiences that they had.
Let's get one thing straight- the plot is pure fiction. So are the characters. Several of the real Memphis Belle crew wrote memoirs, and none of them relate to the story here. In fact, elements of it are surprisingly similar to one of the missions described by Harry Crosby (a B17 navigator who became the command navigator of 100th Bomb Group) in "A Wing and a Prayer" (which I have just re-read prior to editing this review). Despite what some reviewers have said, many of the less-believable things that happen in the movie probably did really occur at some point. Aborting an attack run to try again a second time is an example- the air force had alternate targets for just this purpose so it would have been rare. That said, Crosby describes this occurring at least once when the 100th Bomb Group had a novice commander (he was shot down in the process). Other events may be borderline- would diving to put out an engine fire work? Crosby describes his own plane doing it twice in a single mission when they were badly shot up. Some of the antics in the plane? Well... maybe? Crosby reports an unpopular officer being convinced the plane was on fire and bailing out when his crew just wanted to get rid of him. The pilots even shook the wings to simulate that the plane had been 'hit'! Read some of the stories about what these teenagers and twenty-somethings did in real life and I'm not sure anything depicted here is completely out of the question. Those who survived might just have been too embarassed to talk about it when they got home, or they just chalked it up as normal compared to being shot at with a 20mm cannon by a BF-109.
Regardless of these controversies, what the movie does capture, in my opinion, is the experience. From the very beginning, you can taste the fear and anxiety these young men have about the job they have to do. The damage the plane takes, and the injuries the men sustain, are the kinds of things that would have happened. In my mind, few war movies capture this experience effectively- those that do are well-known. Memphis Belle isn't quite as good as those, but it's similar to Fury, a movie with a similarly preposterous story that nevertheless captures some kind of feeling of what it would like to be in a tank in World War 2. You can understand what these men went through. You can empathize with their experience. You can hope that it never happens again.
Let's get one thing straight- the plot is pure fiction. So are the characters. Several of the real Memphis Belle crew wrote memoirs, and none of them relate to the story here. In fact, elements of it are surprisingly similar to one of the missions described by Harry Crosby (a B17 navigator who became the command navigator of 100th Bomb Group) in "A Wing and a Prayer" (which I have just re-read prior to editing this review). Despite what some reviewers have said, many of the less-believable things that happen in the movie probably did really occur at some point. Aborting an attack run to try again a second time is an example- the air force had alternate targets for just this purpose so it would have been rare. That said, Crosby describes this occurring at least once when the 100th Bomb Group had a novice commander (he was shot down in the process). Other events may be borderline- would diving to put out an engine fire work? Crosby describes his own plane doing it twice in a single mission when they were badly shot up. Some of the antics in the plane? Well... maybe? Crosby reports an unpopular officer being convinced the plane was on fire and bailing out when his crew just wanted to get rid of him. The pilots even shook the wings to simulate that the plane had been 'hit'! Read some of the stories about what these teenagers and twenty-somethings did in real life and I'm not sure anything depicted here is completely out of the question. Those who survived might just have been too embarassed to talk about it when they got home, or they just chalked it up as normal compared to being shot at with a 20mm cannon by a BF-109.
Regardless of these controversies, what the movie does capture, in my opinion, is the experience. From the very beginning, you can taste the fear and anxiety these young men have about the job they have to do. The damage the plane takes, and the injuries the men sustain, are the kinds of things that would have happened. In my mind, few war movies capture this experience effectively- those that do are well-known. Memphis Belle isn't quite as good as those, but it's similar to Fury, a movie with a similarly preposterous story that nevertheless captures some kind of feeling of what it would like to be in a tank in World War 2. You can understand what these men went through. You can empathize with their experience. You can hope that it never happens again.