aving read most if not all of the coments on everyons favourite film, no one seems to have mentioned the film 'Midway' if I am not mistaken
I suspect that no-one mentioned Midway because it's such an awful, awful movie. The initial sequences of the Tokyo raid you point to are actually from "Thirty seconds over Tokyo", a 1940s-vintage flick that should be added to the list [of good aviation movies]. Most of the rest of the flying in "Midway" is a combination of stock newsreel and out-takes from "Tora Tora Tora" and "Battle of Britain". Remember that one-wheel B-17 landing in TTT? It's also in "Midway". And the newsreel footage was assembled so ham-fistedly it's almost hard to believe. In the same sequence, aircraft turn from SB2U Vindicators into TBF Avengers and then into F6F Hellcats. A carrier crash sequence begins as an SBD Dauntless, turns into an SB2C Helldiver, before actually crashing as an F9F Panther! And of course the colors on the airplanes go all the way from early war light blue with the red dots on the stars to the late-war overall dark blue with the white bar extensions to the star, not to mention the Korean-era colors on that Panther, briefly glimpsed before it bursts into flame.
The amazing thing is, there is actual newsreel footage of VT-8's
TBD Devastators taking off from the Hornet that morning, filmed by none other than John Ford. THAT wasn't used.
And let's not even go into the silly love-interest sub-plot involving a Charlton Heston's F4F Wildcat pilot son and a Japanese woman.
Midway can only be considered a prime example of how NOT to make an aviation movie.
[edited for spelling]