P-51's in movie "Empire of the Sun"

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 13:10:07 -0500, Stephen Harding wrote:
Cub Driver wrote:

Great movie, by the way--Empire of the Sun, I mean. But did you notice
that the entire tail section of the "Zero" turned? Probably it was an
AT-6 with a pointy tail cone pasted on.

This makes me wonder just what sort of "modifications" are
typically done by Hollywood to create actual flying aircraft
no longer in existence, or just not available to fly.

Obviously, the main "trick" is simply paint the aircraft in
the correct national markings. Thus a P-51 becomes an Me 109,
an AT-6 a Zero (seems the most common role for a Texan in a
movie). Some F-86s can become "Migs", and I vaguely recall
a C-47 becoming a G4M Betty at one time.

The most famous modified aircraft of this type are probably the
faux Japanese aircraft used to film the 1970 movie "Tora, Tora,
Tora!" I recently saw the movie again on cable, and it looked
to me like pretty much all of the flying sequences used real
aircraft (as opposed to models -- CGI animation obviously
wasn't a possibility in the late Sixties.)

According to the web page of the Commemorative (nee Confederate)
Air Force's Gulf Coast Wing [1], which owns and operates 14 of the
aircraft that were used to film the movie, the Zeros were modified
AT-6 Texans, the Val dive bombers were modified BT-13 Valiants,
and the Kate torpedo bombers were combinations of AT-6 and BT-13
components "with lots of stretching and modifying both types."

The web page also mentions that the CAF is currently modifying
another AT-6 to look like a Zero to add to their airshow act.

... Addition of a tail cone to make an AT-6 into a Zero
seems more than necessary, but some directors are detail
focused.

The "Tora, Tora, Tora!" AT-6s were modified to change the
general shape of the wingtips and tail surfaces to match
the Zero's silhouette, and were fitted with replacement
canopies (the T-6 canopy looks nothing like a Zero's.)

On the other hand, some movie directors don't really care --
see, for example, "Iron Eagle II", which gets points for
using real aircraft and air-to-air photography, but loses
them big time for painting red stars on Israeli Air Force
F-4 Phantoms and calling them "MiG"s.

I think the BoB TV movie "Piece of Cake" used some dummied up
Spits for ground scenes as well. Didn't some
of them spin props too?

"Tora, Tora, Tora!" features a number of P-40s and PBYs
getting blowed up good on the ground during the attack.
I assume the P-40s were mockups. Dunno about the PBYs -
it might have been cheaper and easier to use real junked
PBYs from some boneyard somewhere than to build full-sized
mockups.

Of course with the increasing power of F/X in movies, you can
now film formations worth of Me 262s attacking B-24s or
whatever. The need for the actual warbird is pretty much gone.

Maybe, maybe not. The CGI animated flying sequences in
"Pearl Harbor" look pretty lame compared to the flying
sequences in "Tora, Tora, Tora!" While it's true that
you'd have no other choice than CGI if you had to have
a scene that showed large formations of B-17s and German
fighters all at once, real aircraft and air-to-air photography
still give you better looking footage (in my opinion, anyway.)

CGI sequences aren't cost-free, either. Look at "Pearl Harbor" --
they could have used CGI to produce realistic WWII destroyers being
bombed at anchor, but instead opted to set off a bunch of pyro effects
on the decks of several real decommissioned Spruance-class destroyers.


ljd

[1] http://www.gulfcoastwing.org/torapage.htm