Review of Flight from Ashiya

.....and a good example of depicting the Air Force at its best is FLIGHT FROM ASHIYA (1964), a co-production of Harold Hecht Films and Daiei Motion Picture Company, which makes it an American-Japanese movie....and a darned good one. Richard Widmark heads the cast as Lieutenant Colonel Glenn Stevenson, George Chakiris plays Second Lieutenant John Gregg, and Yul Brynner is in it as aircraft crew chief Master Sergeant Mike Takashima. They take off from Ashiya Air Base on a rescue mission; they have to recover survivors of a sunken cargo/passenger ship that exploded and later sank in the South China Sea, and it's in the middle of a typhoon! Each of the trio has a flashback: Lieutenant Gregg and then-Major Stevenson return to a mountainside church in a Sikorsky helicopter to pick up more victims just in time for an avalanche to bury those victims, which leaves him scared to fly solo; Glenn Stevenson's wife Caroline (Shirley Knight) passes away while they're in the Philippine Islands in 1941 and are prisoners of the Japanese Army, and at the time of the Japanese invasion Stevenson had been a civilian pilot; and Mike Takashima, who happens to be half-Japanese and half-Polish, falls for an Algerian babe named Leila (played by French actress Daniele Gaubert who later married Jean-Claude Killy) during World War II while he was an Army paratrooper, only to lose her to a bridge explosion that occurred while his unit was ordered to withdraw. Colonel Stevenson, Lieutenant Gregg, and Sergeant Takashima are crewing one of a flight size of two Albatross rescue seaplanes dispatched to recover the Japanese survivors, including a little boy. Unfortunately the other Albatross crashes, explodes and sinks, killing all aboard. Colonel Stevenson ditches his prejudice against the Japanese, allows Sergeant Takashima to parachute, lands his Albatross and breaks his arm in the process, the survivors are on board, and Lieutenant Gregg takes off with everybody all on board, using jet-assisted turbines for assist. This was a very well-done movie, with the accompanying special visual effects done by Daiei's own effects crew; serving as special effects supervisor was an uncredited Eugene Lourie. I came across FLIGHT FROM ASHIYA on YouTube's United Video channel. Give it a view.