Flying Tigers (1942)

Here is a movie straight out of the annals of World War Two. The Japanese Empire was sweeping through Asia and destroying large parts of mainland China. Few of their adversaries were able to stop them, but one unit made history, by encountering them over the skies of China. In 1940-41 General Claire Chennault formed a mercenary group of American Flighter pilots to combat the invading Japanese. The movie based on their exploits is called " Flying Tigers " and star's John Wayne as Capt. Jim Gordon. Although an America propaganda film, it was designed to stimulate America's involvement in the war. Later, it came to symbolize America's contribution to the multi-national effort to fight the Japanese. The movie is in Black and White, crude, coarse and blatantly patriotic. Still it gave a boost to morale at a time when things were not going well for the U.S. or China. As a result with the additional cast of John Carroll, Paul Kelly, Gordon Jones and Edmund MacDonald as 'Blackie Bales' the movie succeeds in creating a rousing yarn of heroic young men and the niche they created over the Asian skies. ****

I'm trying to identify the type of cargo/airliner plane that was used in the movie. Woody and Alabama were flying it when their characters were introduced and when Wayne and Woody ran the nitro bomb run, it was used again. It looked like a DC-3 with a "box tail" elevator. Anybody know what type of plane this is? it's worrying me to death! I'm familiar with Some of the Douglas transport aircraft of that period and the Curtiss C-46. This plane looks like a pre WWII model, but closer to the 1936-38 era. I've tried looking through the internet at the sites for Douglas, Lockheed, Beech, Boeing and other aircraft companies, but no luck in locating this plane. I really have to know what type of plane it is.

This film, made in 1942, is naught but a US propaganda film. This is an early John Wayne film and, unfortunately, his acting is absolutely not up to his later standards. The rest of the cast, quite frankly, isn't very good either. While the story is decent and it's quite well-written, I had to give it a pretty low score. It seems that most of the good actors were either already engaged or had joined the US Armed Forces by the time they filmed this. I don't think it was very well directed, either, or perhaps it was very hurried. I think they did everything in one take. It's sad, really, because the Flying Tigers story is epic and heroic. Instead, several of the pilots are shown to be nothing but money-hungry mercenaries whose only motivation is the bounty paid per aerial kill. Oh, well...sorry about that, but it wasn't even a very good try.

Several friends of mine flew with the AVG. One of them who attended the premiere (c. October '42) recalls that he and a couple other Tigers were so embarrassed by the film that they were caught sneaking out of the theater.However, the loathing of John Wayne contained in other reviews on this site demonstrates a total lack of objectivity. Wayne was 35 at the time of Pearl Harbor, and not even his friendship with then-Cdr. John Ford could get him accepted for military service. (according to one bio, his distinctive walk resulted from a football injury.) On one tour of the Pacific, Wayne got dead drunk with some fighter pilots in New Guinea. They placed his inert form on a cot and carried it into the middle of the compound and allowed him to awake with a hangover: stark naked. He rolled over and went back to sleep...Whatever anybody thinks of Wayne or the Vietnam War, he was still visiting troops in-country at age 63.