Tora! Tora! Tora!
 

Watching Tora! Tora! Tora! this morning and what a cracking film for pre CGI!
Lot's of Harvards/Texans around but also plenty of apparently original aircraft that don't look like models.
They got their moneys worth out of the exploding P40s though.
Anyway, won't spoil the ending for you.

All the Japanese aircraft were converted T-6s or BT-13s, some of which are still flying - Gary Numan had one of Zeros flying in the UK in the 1990s.

The P-40s and B-17s were real other than those aircraft blown up for the film, though the B-17 landing with one wheel retracted was a genuine accident; there were also some real Catalinas/Cansos used.

Tora Tora Tora was so much better than Pearl Harbour. I was nearly sick when the the American pilot was told that we would win the war quicker with a few more like him!
A Night To Remember was better than Titanic.
And The Longest Day was ten times better than that Private Ryan rubbish.

Even at age 12 when it came out I was very disappointed, blatantly obviously Harvards buzzing about, ridiculously unrealistic battle sequences, multi-repeated shots throughout for cheapness and filler, hammy acting and a lousy stroryline.
I didn't think it had any redeeming features at all until it got to the end of the credits.

It's not very vivid in my mind, but I remember the very early sequence of a civilian training flight in an open cockpit aircraft. They flying along sedately, until the instructor looks around and becomes aware that they are surrounded by military aircraft with unfamiliar national markings. I especially like the slight edge in her voice as she says "I have control" and GTFO. It's part of the quite nice pacing of the film from peace-time on Sunday to the middle of a war.

Just by editing a few of your words - that would be my summing up of Dunkirk (2018) LOL.

I thought Tora Tora was an OK war movie,I would certainly put in the top 20 of war films I have seen.

If you didnt like Tora tora tora what on earth did you think of the CGI dominated remake which made aircraft look like birds or insects when formation flying about a foot apart and pulling turns that would break a Zero into pieces with the G forces.

Its obvious in any war film that you cannot get a fleet of real period aircraft unless they are from the winning side and even then its hard . 633 squadron used real Mosquitos in 196X but today??? So using Havards was a decent idea after all few people today have ever seen a Zero or a Val whereas many have seen Spitfires and P51s.

The lead up with the dateline muddle and communications screw up are all very real as is the dilemma the politicians and diplomats find themselves in.

Dunkirk was disappointing-the aviation bits were rubbish especially the 1 for per ten miles glide ratio of the Spitfire and the entire Luftwaffe encapsulated in one He111 but as I said these rare warbirds are just that -rare. I think compared to earlier versions about Dunkirk it was good in focusing on some individual aspects but the cast do not look remotely military whereas the 1960s version was full of actors who had either been in the war, done national service and I think in some cases had actually been in Dunkirk-ie they looked and walked and marched like soldiers . I am never too sure why such a fuss is made of Dunkirk-import for sure but a pretty ignominious feat -Churchill himself made that point right after it and no doubt if the geography had been reversed it would have been all about the French running away (well at least in the Sun and daily mail versions)



All in alla decent film without too much Good ol USA nonsense

If you get the chance to see "303 Sqn", the Polish-produced film, go. I couldn't fault it, either the story, the CGI or the mock-ups. Sadly, it doesn't seem to be about much. My local cinema screened it for one night only. Over half the audience were Polish, and that's in the West Midlands, UK.

I think the Tora Japanese aircraft looked pretty convincing. Way better than the T-6s painted up as Luftwaffe fighters for several other films. It's a good film, bit long perhaps but then it avoids that breathless pace that seems to bedevil more modern films - and I can't bear CGI.

The 'Zekes' (Zeros) in the Tora film were heavily modified Harvard IVs with changes to wing, fuselage, canopy and tail profiles which achieved a reasonable reproduction of the shape of the original. These replicas were actually slightly larger than the original overall but, obviously, had much reduced performance. They maintained the original Harvard engine but had a three-bladed propeller from an Otter, run through a 2:1 reduction gearing. This gave them a significantly different sound to a standard Harvard but also more power. In a display you could enter a loop from only 150 KIAS and maintain looping energy throughout. However, rolling at low speeds in a half-Cuban 8 would generate very large sideslip angles for rolls in one direction (I cannot remember which). I know of one of the airframes that, at the time, was based at Kalamazoo which had the fin offset by a few degrees to improve the directional stability characteristics. On the ground, propeller tip clearance was not great so you had to always fly a three-point landing. In addition, the mainwheel oleo pressures were increased to give more prop tip clearance although the increased nose-up pitch attitude on the ground meant that you could not fill the fuel tanks quite so full.

The Harvard Formation Team at North Weald operated one, N15798, in 1988 and 1989. Gary Numan's aircraft was a standard Harvard IIB, G-AZSC, painted in a Japanese colour scheme (white with red roundels) and was often flown as a pair with the 'Zeke' replica. That Zeke was a very reliable airframe which, 18 years after the film, said a lot for the standard of the modification. At the end of the 1989 season this Zeke replica went to New Zealand. Very happy memories of 'The Squadron' at North Weald in the 1989 season!

Rgds

'Harvard 5'

I forgot about Dunkirk. I downloaded it and it took me several weeks before I watched the whole film as it was so bad. There was no continuity at all and I couldn't empathise with the actors. It wasn't a patch on the old Dunkirk film with Kenneth Moore and think how much better cameras are available now.

I'm dreading any remake of the Dambusters. I suppose they will use B17s with American crews and the bouncing bomb will be designed by Tom Cruise, who will fall in love with some dozy Yank girl with fake body parts. Don't let them do it.

Kenneth Moore wasn't in Dunkirk - that was John Mills. Moore was good in Sink the Bismarck though.

I think Tora! Tora! Tora! is the best movie ever made about the Pearl Harbor attack - and by a considerable margin (especially when compared to "Pearl Harbor", which was total crap). It's documentary style never bothered me, although apparently left many other viewers cold. But it is historically very accurate (especially by Hollywood standards) - even most of the 'oh come on' scenes really happened (such as the band rushing to finish playing the "Star Spangled Banner" before running for cover, and the scene where the lady flight instructor finds herself in the middle of the Japanese formation). I took a vacation to Honolulu a few months ago, and a couple of my wife's family members joined us. One is a 30-something Swiss national who joined me for a day tour of Pearl Harbor. Due in part to his age and nationality, he didn't know much about the Pearl Harbor attack, so we watched Tora! Tora! Tora! the night before to educate him on the story.
As I recall, on it's original release Tora! Tora! Tora! didn't do well domestically (with many complaints about the slow pace and documentary style), but it did quite well in Japan (apparently they like it when their side wins :E)
That mirrors my reaction to Dunkirk almost exactly - the non-linear story line drove me up a wall, and I found it hard to really care about most of the characters.

Totally agree - worst war film since the Rambo nonsense. The one I do keep coming back to although it is not a film is the Pacific series by Tom Hanks and Spielberg. It is just outstanding film making.

T0RA Harvards
 

Training in Canada my Log Book shows I flew Harvard 4 20292.
According to Fletcher and Macphail s Bible of the Harvard became N2047 for Tora Tora Tora.

And 20292 is still flying with the CAF as a Kate AND flew in Pearl Harbour...

Cornelia Fort
 

The former Fighter Collection P-40C 41-13297, now flown by The Collings Foundation, is actually a Pearl Harbor survivor - it had been in a landing accident a few weeks earlier and survived the attack on Wheeler Field with no further damage. It then crashed early in 1942. Substantial wreckage was recovered in 1985 by the Curtiss Wright Historical Association along with major parts from two earlier P-40 accident sites on Oahu and the rebuild took place, all three airframes being acquired by TFC along the way. I believe TFC still owns the other two wrecks (39-285 and 39-287) which will perhaps reappear as flyers in years to come.

treadigraph,

To be a pedant, I believe that the aircraft to which you refer was actually a P-40B. I believe that it survived because it was in a hangar and only the flight line was bombed.

Rgds

L

You are right, it is indeed a B! :O

treadigraph Re20292 Thank you

And those modified aircraft were actually flown of a US carrier as well for the filming.....
And they flew the film formation in on the same route in as they actually did on Dec 7th.

And if I recall correctly, the two P-40's depicting those flown by George Welsh and KenTaylor taking off from Haleiwa airstrip was actually filming at Haleiwa airstrip.

I think Tora, Tora, Tora was one of those rare well executed Hollywood war movies....and certainly up there with the best.

With regards to the Pearl Harbor movie the scenes on the aircraft carrier were actually filmed aboard a real WW2 carrier - the USS Lexington which is a floating museum in Corpus Christi TX. Its well worth a visit if you are passing.

I've not seen it but would be interesting to compare with the 2001 Czech film "A Dark Blue World".

Kenneth Moore wasn't in anything, the actor's name was Kenneth More!

Mi culpa :O

Is Tora! Tora! Tora! the movie where they turned the film around because the Japaneses carriers had the island on the other side of the deck (relative to the US carrier they used for filming)? Or am I confusing it with another WWII move?

It was the USS Yorktown,not the Lexington, that was used for the real flying scenes,depicting the Japanese carrier `Akagi`. However the real Akagi `s `island was on the port side,but `Yorktown`s is to starboard...so unless YT could steam astern,at about 15-20 kts, and t/offs were from bow to stern,it would not be a true representation of the `Akagi`. It may have worked but I would bet the USN would have vetoed it...
None of the pilots were credited with the dawn t/o, where a cough/splutter from Mr Pratt or Whitney may have led to a dunking ,or a trampling from 30000tons would have spoiled your whole day...That was a real `one shot `take`......

I was living in Waipahu, Hawaii just down the road from Barbers Point when they were filming the movie. I used to see a lot of interesting formations overhead and went over to see the planes on the ground.

Just going back to basic impressions, Tora Tora Tora was light years in front of Pearl Harbour!

TTT at least tried to stick with the truth, using whatever hardware that was available to them at the time. In contrast, Pearl Harbour was a complete fantasy of the truth! making use of ships that were decades out of date, and fabricating a story line that was pure fantasy!

Pearl Harbour as a film purporting to represent fact was a film, so low brow, as to be completely impossible as a true representation of the truth In truth,! A simply dreadful film!

TF

Couldn't agree with you more. TTT was perhaps the most historically accurate WWII movie that I've watched. After I saw the trailers and clips of Pearl Harbour I decided it wasn't worth watching.

What is unfortunate though is that a number of other films were actually historically accurate, but pulled seemingly unrelated real events from a number of real occurences to weave into a movie that the paying audience would go to. That shouldn't take away from the events that happened. For example, the 1943 movie Air Force has a scene at Clark Field where the crew chief of the B-17 Mary Ann learns that his son was killed without ever getting into the air due to the preceding fighter on take-off hitting a loaded B-17 waiting to go. That event was real. The fighter taking off after that was piloted by my high school math teacher who had to take-off through that flaming wreckage. Those details are well described in action reports now in the National Archives. I hate to see individual events of heroism minimized which is precisely what I felt Pearl Harbour did in order to pacify a gloating public and over-paid 'actors'.

My sister gave me a DVD of the movie 'Pearl Harbor' as a Christmas present when it first came out. Watched it once and determined it was so ludicrous that it's never even been out of it's holder since.

While technically not a movie, "Band of Brothers" is outstanding and reasonably faithful to the true story (it certainly helped that several survivors of Easy Company were interviewed by Ambrose when he wrote the book on which the mini-series was based, and were consultants during filming).
As for real events incorporated into a movie, if perhaps somewhat out of context, I had an old college buddy who shared my historical interest in WWII - in large part because his father had also seen action in WWII. Mine had served in the Pacific, his in Europe. Shortly after "Saving Private Ryan" came out we sat around and discussed the movie - with a lot of focus on what they got right and what they got wrong (I still think the Omaha beach landing is some of the most dramatic war video ever filmed). Anyway, we both scoffed at the scene where a glider had crashed because they'd added a ton of armor to protect the general who was going to be on-board - but didn't bother to tell the pilot about it. Simply too unbelievable they'd do something that stupid. Found out later that it really happened - and it was during the D-day landings :ugh:

It's right up there with U571, The Imitation Game and Battle of the Bulge, but Midway isn't too bad and Band of Brothers is very good (especially the DVD version which has an extra disk of interviews with the surviving members of Easy Company). I think Pacific (made by the same producers as Band of Brothers) is pretty good as well, but it's based on an attempted merging of three separate books about people who never met rather than a single "family" like Easy Company, which makes the story a bit fragmented.

PDR

I for one think the Tora fleet of "Japanese" aircraft was an amazing achievement. To those upset about "obvious Harvards", what would you have done in the late 1960s to create that number of aircraft? I dread showing anyone who isn't a military/aircraft nerd the movie because of the way it's made and its pacing but I love it.

No one will "let them do" what you've said. It's ridiculous to keep harping on about an Americanised Dam Busters with B-17s when we know they've built a squadron of static Lancasters and one each Wellington and Mosquito for the production. It seems you can't mention the project on a forum or on social media without someone bringing up B-17s and Tom Cruise!!!

Not to mention the model B-17 "crashing" in some original cuts of "The Dam Busters" .

I agree the longest day is more accurate, histrorically and better, but when I saw 'Saving Private Ryan', I met a Frenchman the day after he had seen the film, who was very much moved by it. I had breakfast with him and he said he could have so easliy have been that little boy.

I much prefer historical accuracy, but where do you stop to capture the emotional accuracy?

Don't forget the dog.

Heavily modified? Strewth it reads like a new machine how ever did they get the thing certified

Don't forget the Battle of Britain (1967) 35th largest airforce in the world at the time.