Hacker Cinema
Strategic Air Command
1955 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Anthony Mann
Air Force reservist Lt. Col. Robert "Dutch" Holland is recalled into active duty at the peak of his professional baseball career.
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4 comments on Hacker News
Ah. The rumor is probably from this scene in Strategic Air Command, with Jimmie Stewart.[1] Stewart had been a USAF officer, and the movie was filmed with the full cooperation of the USAF. That's a classic SAC no-notice inspection.
(The movie is worth seeing just to see how much stuff the USAF had when the DoD got 40% of the US government budget. The whole takeoff sequence for the B-36 bomber is shown. The last of the huge propeller planes, just at the transition from props to jets. Six propellers, four jets, and 10,000 mile range. It looks like a scaled-up B-29, tail guns and all. Although this was a transition aircraft just before the jet age, there were 336 built. None still fly. Also in the movie is the B-47 bomber. This was another intermediate step. It looks like a jet fighter scaled up to heavy bomber size. Six jets plus rocket-assisted takeoff. Worked, but not a great aircraft. Over 2000 were built. None still fly. Then the USAF finally tried an an adventurous new design, the B-52, which was the first really good large jet airplane. About seventy still flying, three quarters of a century after first flight.)
[1] https://archive.org/embed/strategic.-air.-command.-1955.?start=1002.3
Strategic Air Command's cold war propaganda is pretty campy but the porn shots of the B-36 and B-47 are an aviation buff's wet dream. That youtube video is just a small taste.
Also that movie taught me the proper pronunciation of "Thule" (it's too-lee).
What's published in China is amusing. Current events are touchy politically, so there's a vast amount of wuxia. See any Chinese drama site. Novels about business success are popular.
China has explicit political movie censorship. The golden dragon logo at the beginning is the "passed by censor" label. The Chinese army even produces an occasional feature film. "Sky Fighters", is a ripoff of "Top Gun", but worse. The USAF, especially the Strategic Air Command, used to do stuff like that in the 1950s. See "Strategic Air Command"[1], with Jimmie Stuart (considered good) or "Bombers B-52" (not so good).
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGjyH2ulsCk
China is getting better at this, but it's not going well. Too many Chinese movies are period pieces, fantasies, or are not set in China, because the censorship on present-day topics is strict. China's movie censorship is explicit; at the beginning of a movie you'll see the golden dragon logo of the censorship authority. This limits the topics of movies.
There are feature films produced directly by the People's Liberation Army, such as "Sky Fighters". This is the Chinese version of "Top Gun". It's not very good, because the entertainment takes second place to the propaganda. It's possible to do a good feature film which is also propaganda; "Strategic Air Command" with Jimmy Stewart is one such. But China isn't there yet.