"Paul Riley" wrote in message
news
"Dudley Henriques" wrote in message
...
Thanks for the heads up Paul. I actually have a copy of the film in my
library. Bob Scott was a close personal friend for many years.
The "inside story" on how the book was actually written by Bob is quite
interesting as he explained it to me. He was a wonderful fellow and we
miss him a ton. He was active right up to the last.
I actually think I've been exposed to the story for so long now, you
could probably quote me a single line from the film and I could nail the
scene in a few seconds :-))
Dudley

You are most welcome Dudley. I envy you your close friendship with Col
Scott. Sure wish I could have known him.

I have had the film in my library on video tape for many years. But, tape
does deteriorate over time, so I plan on recording the TCM broadcast to
the Sat Receiver Hard Drive, then put it on DVD. THAT should last for the
rest of my lifetime. :-))))

Paul

Just a bit of "trivia" for you on this.

Bob, being a fine author of many books on several subjects beside flying,
naturally gave many lectures on the rubber chicken circuit through his life.
He always laughed when he told me he spent the better part of that life
answering the same question time and time again about his "famous dogfight"
with Tokyo Joe. (Richard Loo, the wonderful character actor, played TJ in
the film as you probably know. )
Bob said that no matter where he was talking, in the questions afterward,
somebody would always ask him what it was like to have shot down Tokyo Joe.
He had to spend the following 10 minutes explaining how Warner Bros. had put
Joe in the film to make it more "exciting" for the movie goer. Bob could
never figure out why the actual events of the air war in China needed any
"extra" excitment. He said it was "darn near exciting enough as it was" :-)
Privately, he laughingly told me one night that shooting Joe down wouldn't
have been all that hard anyway, since somebody forgot to tell Joe that he
didn't have any guns on that AT6 he was flying at the time :-))
Dudley