Memphis Belle movie- revisions?
Don Stauffer in Minnesota
I remember seeing it at the theatre. When I first saw the movie, as I
recall, when they tried to crank the starboard wheel down, it still
would not come all the way down. There was a cartoonist on the crew,
and he drew a cartoon wheel down, and lo and behold the plane landed
on the cartoon wheel. A little flakey, but added something to the
movie.
In the version I saw last night the crew was able to crank the gear
all the way down.
Am I just remembering wrong, or was there a revised version of the
movie?
WmB
"Don Stauffer in Minnesota" <stau...@usfamily.net> wrote in message
news:193c3f1a-72db-4a3a...@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
That's an episode from Stephen Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" from around
1985. IIRC, the pilot of the B-17 was played by Kevin Costner. One landing
gear is shot up and they can't get the Sperry ball gunner out. If they land
wheels up, he's meat. When all attempts to get him free or get him a
parachute fail, in despair, on final approach the cartoonist crewman
fantasizes and draws a landing strut, that IIRC, was a giant candy cane with
a donut on the end for the wheel/tire.
WmB
willshak
--
Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
To email, remove the double zeroes after @
Enzo Matrix
nodnodnod wot 'e sed! :-D
There was a funny scene where Costner went up to the wheel and poked it!
Once all the crew were clear, the cartoonist (who had been the guy in the
ball turret) stopped believing in the wheel and it vanished. The aircraft
collapsed onto the deck, crushing the ball turret.
I believe there was a lot of inaccuracy in that. As far as I am aware, the
ball turret was by far the strongest part of the aircraft and, far from
being crushed in a belly landing, would have caused the aircraft to break
its back. If the turret could not be retracted for a belly landing,
procedure was to unscrew a *huge* nut secured the turret in its frame and
jettison the turret over the sea.
--
Enzo
I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.
cr...@earthlink.net
am aware, the
> ball turret was by far the strongest part of the aircraft and, far from
> being crushed in a belly landing, would have caused the aircraft to break
> its back. If the turret could not be retracted for a belly landing,
> procedure was to unscrew a *huge* nut secured the turret in its frame and
> jettison the turret over the sea.
(hopefully the door to the turret was pointed in such a position to
allow the gunner to get out first....)
maybe they could go in low and skip bomb the turret back to
England. :-)
Craig
>
>
willshak
> For those less fortunate, see below:
>
> http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/gunner/gunner.html
>
> Gordon McLaughlin
>
I see a pic of a remote controlled nose turret and a British tail gun
turret, but not a single picture of a ball turret.
> <cr...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:7962d3ab-6968-4c93...@d21g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
eyeball
trance.Costner slaps him,he wakes up and "poof" the wheels vanish,the
B-17 falls and crushes the turret.Now I have to hunt for that tape.It
would make a hell of a conversion...> > "Don Stauffer in Minnesota" <stauf...@usfamily.net> wrote in message
>
> - Show quoted text -
Pat Flannery
Don Stauffer in Minnesota wrote:
> AMC had Memphis Belle on last night. But the final landing wasn't as
> I remember seeing it at the theatre. When I first saw the movie, as I
> recall, when they tried to crank the starboard wheel down, it still
> would not come all the way down. There was a cartoonist on the crew,
> and he drew a cartoon wheel down, and lo and behold the plane landed
> on the cartoon wheel. A little flakey, but added something to the
> movie.
>
That's from the pilot episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" TV
series, not the movie.
Pat
Pat Flannery
WmB wrote:
>
> That's an episode from Stephen Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" from
> around 1985. IIRC, the pilot of the B-17 was played by Kevin
> Costner. One landing gear is shot up and they can't get the Sperry
> ball gunner out. If they land wheels up, he's meat. When all attempts
> to get him free or get him a parachute fail, in despair, on final
> approach the cartoonist crewman fantasizes and draws a landing strut,
> that IIRC, was a giant candy cane with a donut on the end for the
> wheel/tire.
That really sucked, just like that whole series.
Pat
Pat Flannery
willshak wrote:
> on 12/14/2007 3:14 PM Gordon McLaughlin said the following:
>> For those less fortunate, see below:
>>
>> http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/gunner/gunner.html
>>
>> Gordon McLaughlin
>>
>
> I see a pic of a remote controlled nose turret and a British tail gun
> turret, but not a single picture of a ball turret.
We studied that poem back in some literature class in High School.
Pretentious and silly little thing, isn't it?
Pat
WmB
"Pat Flannery" <fla...@daktel.com> wrote in message
news:13m63j3...@corp.supernews.com...
Well it featured Kevin Costner, so that goes without saying.
IMHO, "Memphis Belle" was pretty bad too.
Drug my girlfriend to see it - didn't blame her a bit when she dumped me
later. ;-)
She makes me see "Fried Green Tomatoes" - surprisingly, a movie I really
liked.
I countered by dragging her to see "Memphis Belle".
Thud!
She makes me see "A League of Their Own" - another great flick pick, of what
is
now one of my all ime favorite movies.
I countered with "Basic Instinct" - yes, just for Sharon Stone's clam shot.
Thud!
She makes me see "Wayne's World"
I countered with "Star Trek VI: Undiscovered Country"
OK, we kind of broke even on this one, but it was clear from that point on
that we were incompatible.
WmB
Pat Flannery
WmB wrote:
>>
>> That really sucked, just like that whole series.
>>
>> Pat
>
> Well it featured Kevin Costner, so that goes without saying.
"Dances With Focke-Wulfs"?
>
>
> She makes me see "Wayne's World"
> I countered with "Star Trek VI: Undiscovered Country"
> OK, we kind of broke even on this one, but it was clear from that
> point on that we were incompatible.
A very strange girl I knew took me to see the musical "Popeye".
Around halfway through the movie I was called into lobby to take a
urgent phone call from my father.
My mother had just died instantly and completely quietly while sitting
four feet from him watching TV.
No greater love is there than a mother who would unhesitatingly lay down
her life to rescue her son from watching a horrible movie with a crazy
woman.
Thanks ma! ;-)
Pat
willshak
I have the William Wyler documentary "The Memphis Belle" on VHS. Even
then, the last mission of the Belle was a 'milk run', so they had to
throw in some other aerial fight scenes. Wyler lost one of his cameramen
who was on another B-17 that was shot down during the filming.
WmB
"eyeball" <eyeball...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:7d0d3b6a-a7d1-4724...@d27g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> I've got that on tape somewhere.The gunner/cartoonist was in a
> trance.Costner slaps him,he wakes up and "poof" the wheels vanish,the
> B-17 falls and crushes the turret.Now I have to hunt for that tape.It
> would make a hell of a conversion...
If you find it, I'm curious to see how my memory is doing - wasn't there a
scene where the guys topside reach a point where they decide shooting the
guy is preferable to him suffering the fate of a crashed landing. In my
mind I can see the senior NCO creeping up on the hatch to the ball turret
with a .45, before he thinks better of it.
WmB
WmB
Yee-ouch!
WmB
Bruce Burden
:
: That's from the pilot episode of Steven Spielberg's "Amazing Stories" TV
: series, not the movie.
:
The best part to "Amazing Stories" is that the opening
animation was rendered on the hardware of the company that
I was working for - Gould PowerNode 9000.
Impressive for the time. Now, just so much scrap.
Bruce
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I like bad!" Bruce Burden Austin, TX.
- Thuganlitha
The Power and the Prophet
Robert Don Hughes
Pat Flannery
WmB wrote:
>>
>> A very strange girl I knew took me to see the musical "Popeye".
>> Around halfway through the movie I was called into lobby to take a
>> urgent phone call from my father.
>> My mother had just died instantly and completely quietly while
>> sitting four feet from him watching TV.
>> No greater love is there than a mother who would unhesitatingly lay
>> down her life to rescue her son from watching a horrible movie with a
>> crazy woman.
>> Thanks ma! ;-)
>>
>> Pat
>
> Yee-ouch!
She'd had a heart attack around a month before, and was awaiting bypass
surgery, which of course made her very apprehensive, and probably led
directly to the second heart attack.
If you're going to go, then at least go very quick and painlessly.
And her timing was impeccable, because that movie really sucked from the
part I saw of it.
Pat
Pat Flannery
WmB wrote:
>
> If you find it, I'm curious to see how my memory is doing - wasn't
> there a scene where the guys topside reach a point where they decide
> shooting the guy is preferable to him suffering the fate of a crashed
> landing. In my mind I can see the senior NCO creeping up on the hatch
> to the ball turret with a .45, before he thinks better of it.
Up till that completely goofy last scene, it was a very good story.
It's like people are disappering off Martha's Vineyard after a giant
"something" is seen in the area, and so the "Orca" sets out to kill it.
But they find it's not a shark....but rather Cecil, The Seasick Sea
Serpent... and the people aren't dead at all...Cecil has taken them to a
wonderful undersea cave where they eat ice cream and candy canes all day.
Then Cecil pulls the Orca back to Martha's Vineyard, and gives all the
children rides on his back*.
Remember Spielberg's "Taken"? He did the same thing that time.
"The aliens are evil! The aliens are dangerous! No!....the aliens jus'
wanna' be ouw friends....the po' wittle aliens!
They can't wuv things wike we do."
This is the cinematic equivalent of kicking at that football Peanut's
Lucy is holding ready, time after time, year after year.
* (Soon, we shall see a movie very much like this concept, except this
time you'll see the cuteness coming from frame one, so at least it'll be
honest: http://z.about.com/d/movies/1/0/w/8/Q/thewaterhorseposter.jpg
Now if it had been me writing that alternate "Jaws" script, they
wouldn't realize that Cecil was a _female_ sea serpent, and that ice
cream had tiny eggs in it. Eggs that would hatch in about a month, and
then the larva would begin consuming the people from inside, like in
"Alien". Soon the sea off Martha's Vineyard would be thick with
"Cecils", as desiccated corpses, riddled with holes from the emerging
larva lay thick on the beach like worm-infested driftwood...and they'd
have to bring in the navy with nuclear tipped ASROCS.
See, this should be the scene where the Water Horse eats the kid; snarfs
him down like a candy bar.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/07/Water_horse_poster.jpg
Can you imagine the effect on the little tikes in the audience when that
happens?
That'll give them a real ass-kick into today's reality, pronto! :-)
Pat
eyeball
couldn't do it.It turned pretty sappy then,the turret gunner had a
pregnant English wife waiting for him at the base etc...
Oh and for another poster,it was a special episode but not the
first.The first was the ghost train coming through the kids house to
take away grandpa.
I remember looking forward to that series and being very
dissappointed,I gave up by mid season.
On Dec 14, 10:15 pm, " WmB" <HELLinh...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> "eyeball" <eyeball2002...@aol.com> wrote in message
Enzo Matrix
> Yeap,one of the crew (Kiefer Sutherland?) was going to shoot but
> couldn't do it.It turned pretty sappy then,the turret gunner had a
> pregnant English wife waiting for him at the base etc...
> Oh and for another poster,it was a special episode but not the
> first.
Aha... I was in Germany at the time. When BFBS started to show the series,
this was the first episode they showed, so I assumed it was the first.
WmB
>
>
> WmB wrote:
>>
>> If you find it, I'm curious to see how my memory is doing - wasn't there
>> a scene where the guys topside reach a point where they decide shooting
>> the guy is preferable to him suffering the fate of a crashed landing. In
>> my mind I can see the senior NCO creeping up on the hatch to the ball
>> turret with a .45, before he thinks better of it.
>
> Up till that completely goofy last scene, it was a very good story.
> It's like people are disappering off Martha's Vineyard after a giant
> "something" is seen in the area, and so the "Orca" sets out to kill it.
> But they find it's not a shark....but rather Cecil, The Seasick Sea
> Serpent... and the people aren't dead at all...Cecil has taken them to a
> wonderful undersea cave where they eat ice cream and candy canes all day.
> Then Cecil pulls the Orca back to Martha's Vineyard, and gives all the
> children rides on his back
I had the same exact feeling at the end of "Spider-Man 3" - when all the
Sandman ever really needed
was just needed a big hug - and when he got it he just went off on his way
to live out his life as a tropical
beach resort somewhere outside of Quebec.
Uh... traditional superhero-supervillain climactic asskicking and defeat
please.
WmB
WmB
> Yeap,one of the crew (Kiefer Sutherland?) was going to shoot but
> couldn't do it.It turned pretty sappy then,the turret gunner had a
> pregnant English wife waiting for him at the base etc...
> Oh and for another poster,it was a special episode but not the
> first.The first was the ghost train coming through the kids house to
> take away grandpa.
> I remember looking forward to that series and being very
> dissappointed,I gave up by mid season.
Oh wow, that was Kiefer. Hell today, Jack Bauer would not only have shot the
gunner but the co-pilot
and three others to save weight and extend range.
"Dammit! I'm sorry Chloe, I have to"
POP! POP! POP! (only three shots - Jack taps last two with one round)
And a very Merry Christmas and tip of the egg nog to ol' Kiefer in or soon
to be in the brig for his 48 day stint.
WmB
Stanley Parker
not the Memphis Belle movie.
Stan Parker
"Don Stauffer in Minnesota" <stau...@usfamily.net> wrote in message
news:193c3f1a-72db-4a3a...@d4g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
som...@some.domain
Mad-Modeller
To the best of my knowledge, B-17 belly turrets did not retract. B-24
turrets did. Then again, B-24s weren't the best at belly landings
either.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
Pat Flannery
eyeball wrote:
> Yeap,one of the crew (Kiefer Sutherland?) was going to shoot but
> couldn't do it.It turned pretty sappy then,the turret gunner had a
> pregnant English wife waiting for him at the base etc...
> Oh and for another poster,it was a special episode but not the
> first.The first was the ghost train coming through the kids house to
> take away grandpa.
>
According to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories_(TV_series)
...it was the fifth episode broadcast, although I only remember that one
and the "Ghost Train" one.
I could have sworn that was the first one broadcast.
What's really a shame is that the pulp magazine "Amazing Stories" ran
some of the greatest sci-fi and fantasy stories ever written, and you'd
have thought they could have picked the rights to those up for a song.
My older brother had a huge collection of old issues of AS, and I'd sit
back and read those, and be downright awed by the caliber of work their
authors could crank out for 3ยข a word on a monthly basis.
Pat
Pat Flannery
Enzo Matrix wrote:
>
> Aha... I was in Germany at the time. When BFBS started to show the series,
> this was the first episode they showed, so I assumed it was the first.
>
That's the way I remember it to on American TV.
Was it some sort of a preview for the series?
Pat
Pat Flannery
WmB wrote:
>
> I had the same exact feeling at the end of "Spider-Man 3" - when all
> the Sandman ever really needed
> was just needed a big hug - and when he got it he just went off on his
> way to live out his life as a tropical
> beach resort somewhere outside of Quebec.
>
> Uh... traditional superhero-supervillain climactic asskicking and
> defeat please.
Shakespeare was one of the first people ever to realize that some people
really are completely evil, because they get a real kick out of being
completely evil.
Rupert Murdoch for instance.
I'll bet that SOB gets up ever morning and cackles like Ming The
Merciless with absolute joy at the thought of the harm he's going to
inflict on the world today.
Emperor Murdoch: "General O'Reilly...I'm bored...what plaything can you
find to amuse me?"
General O'Reilly: "An obscure body in the Sol system, your majesty...its
inhabitants call it 'Earth'. In what manner do wish it destroyed?"
EM: "Slowly, like a Aborian Toad set in tepid water that is slowly
heated...thrown into boiling water, the toad will immediately jump
free...but raise the heat slowly enough...degree by degree...over
time...and the toad will never realize its peril...till it's too late."
G O'R: "Most effective, your majesty!"
(Music cuts in)
"Al...Al...he'll save every one of us!
Just a man, a man like you and me...but a man who'll set our world free.
Who's the man...the man with the Noble Prize?
The man who'll defeat Earth's warming when it arrives?
The man who wrote "Love Story", and invented the Internet?
The one Hillary Clinton fears will run for president?
AL!....AL G...O...R...E!
He'll save every one of us!" :-)
Pat
The Old Man
> Enzo Matrix wrote:
>
> > WmB wrote:
> > Enzo
> To the best of my knowledge, B-17 belly turrets did not retract. B-24
> turrets did. Then again, B-24s weren't the best at belly landings either.
> Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.- Hide quoted text -
> - Show quoted text -
I don't think that retractig the turret was the issue, I think (but
could be wrong) that the access hatch to the turret was jammed when
the German fighter hit the bomber and they couldn't get the gunner
out. Added to the fact that one of the main gear was toast. I was told
once many years ago by a guy who was a tail gunner in a B-17, that a
lot of belly gunners died in this fashion.
Pat Flannery
The Old Man wrote:
> I don't think that retractig the turret was the issue, I think (but
> could be wrong) that the access hatch to the turret was jammed when
> the German fighter hit the bomber and they couldn't get the gunner
> out. Added to the fact that one of the main gear was toast. I was told
> once many years ago by a guy who was a tail gunner in a B-17, that a
> lot of belly gunners died in this fashion.
>
To get out of the turret into the aircraft, you had to rotate it so the
guns were straight down, as the hatch was on the opposite side from them.
In that episode the turret was jammed so it couldn't be rotated down to
expose the hatch to the interior of the aircraft.
I don't think he had a chute on in the episode so he couldn't open the
rear hatch and just fall out either.
There's info on it here:
http://freepages.military.rootsweb.com/~josephkennedy/sperry_ball_turret.htm
http://freepages.military.rootsweb.com/~josephkennedy/sperry_ball_turret.htm
(this does not look comfortable:
http://browningmgs.com/AirGunnery/Turrets/Ball/Section.jpg )
Cramped as it was, the thing did work; and was the only true manned
turret used on the underside of a bomber in the entire war, IIRC. Some
earlier bombers used a retractable "dustbin" turret on their undersides,
but those were usually only semi-enclosed, and therefore not suitable
for aiming forward into the airstream.
Pat
som...@some.domain
one, it was sheet metal and struts. i doubt you could have survived landing
one but you could climb/jumo out.
that was one odd duck aircraft. i like diesels. on wheels, thank you.
Mad-Modeller
His acquisition of the Wall Street Journal have you spooked?
The hysterics at the stock market will have to find another rag to go by
if they want integrity.
"King Midas In Reverse" indeed.
Bill Banaszak, MFE Sr.
Daniel
> If you find it, I'm curious to see how my memory is doing - wasn't there
> a scene where the guys topside reach a point where they decide shooting
> the guy is preferable to him suffering the fate of a crashed landing.
> In my mind I can see the senior NCO creeping up on the hatch to the ball
> turret with a .45, before he thinks better of it.
Keifer Sutherland, IIRC. And he doesn't think better of it. He just
can't bring himself to do it.