10. The Great Santini (1979)
Robert Duvall plays Marine Lt. Col. “Bull” Meechum, a hard-charging F-4 Phantom pilot caught between wars in 1962. With no enemy to dogfight, Meechum takes out his aggressions on his family, and especially his emotionally sensitive, teen-age son, played by Timothy Hutton. Blythe Danner poignantly plays his wife and the mother struggling to keep her family intact amid Bull’s at-times frightening, alcohol-fueled irascibility. Based on the novel of the same title by Pat Conroy, The Great Santini is a family drama with a few flying scenes thrown in, but it’s a damn fine, well-acted story from start to finish. Duvall has never been better.
9. 633 Squadron (1964)
The plot of this movie bears many similarities to Top Gun Maverick. The Germans have constructed a plant in Norway during World War II to fuel their deadly V-2 rockets. Pilots of the Royal Air Force’s fictitious 633 Squadron, led by Wing Commander Roy Grant (Cliff Robertson) must destroy the plant in their twin-engine Mosquito fighter-bombers before the rockets can become operational. Issues of predictability and campy special effects aside (the movie was, after all, made more than 50 years ago), this is still a good, solid World War II flick bound to satisfy anyone who enjoys watching Nazis get thumped. Also, the movie’s soaring theme music rates right up there with Star Wars. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Frederick E. Smith, a former RAF officer.
8. Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
This movie is based on a daring, top-secret mission in April 1942, when 16, land-based, B-25 Mitchell bombers led by Lt. Colonel Jimmy Doolittle took off from the aircraft carrier, USS Hornet, to strike the Japanese home islands. The raid came less than six months after the Japanese Imperial Navy’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and helped lift American morale in the dark early days of World War II, when things weren’t going so well for the Allies. Spencer Tracy does a fine job portraying the iconic Doolittle, whom I had the honor of interviewing 34 years later as a young newspaper reporter. The man earned the Medal of Honor for his heroics that day in 1942 and was widely regarded among America’s greatest aviation pioneers. I’ll admit I was starstruck, yet he couldn’t have been more gracious. For that reason alone, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo makes my Top Ten list. Based on the book of the same title, written by Army Air Corps Capt. Ted W. Lawson, who was one of the pilots who flew with Doolittle.
7. The Great Waldo Pepper (1975)
Robert Redford is Waldo Pepper, a dashing barnstormer haunted by his having missed out on fighting the Germans in World War I. Pepper flies around rural America in his yellow Curtiss JN Jenny biplane, giving rides to farmers and having various adventures. Eventually he ends up dogfighting a famous German ace in their two unarmed aircraft. The finale requires considerable suspension of disbelief but, hey, has there ever been a better-looking movie star in a leather helmet, riding boots, and silk scarf? The aerial photography is first-rate and there are no studio takes. Virtually all of the flying scenes are real.
6. Airplane! (1980)
I’m a sucker for cornball comedies, and Airplane! delivers plenty of it. The plot: a neurotic taxi driver and ex-fighter pilot named Ted Striker (actor Robert Hays), whose wartime exploits left him terrified of flying, must land a commercial jetliner after the flight crew comes down with food poisoning from eating bad fish. This classic parody of a disaster film has virtually nothing to do with actual aviation and everything to do with cracking rapid-fire jokes, which is fine by me. The autopilot scene featuring flight attendant Elaine Dickinson (Julie Hagerty) nearly gives me a hernia from laughing every time I see it.
5. Air Force One (1997)
President James Marshall (Harrison Ford) must swing into action and save the day after terrorists take over Air Force One in mid-flight. The terrorists are totally over the top and the plot takes a decidedly preposterous turn when President deftly orchestrates his entire staff parachuting to safety from a rear ramp on Air Force One (no such ramp in real life), after which he battles the bad guys single-handedly. These, however, are minor blemishes in an otherwise exciting action-thriller. If you liked Die Hard, you’ll enjoy this iteration of Die Hard at 37,000 feet.
4. The Bridges at Toko Ri (1954)
Based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James Michener, this powerful, all-but-forgotten masterpiece, with its subtle, anti-war message, venerates Navy aircraft carrier pilots tasked with destroying a series of heavily-defended river bridges during the Korean War. William Holden turns in an unforgettable performance as a brooding Lt. Harry Brubaker, who realizes the mission is virtually suicidal, but carries out his duty regardless. The movie offers fine bits of casting in Grace Kelly as Brubaker’s wife, and the diminutive Mickey Rooney, portraying a helicopter rescue pilot who tries to save Brubaker after the lieutenant is shot down behind enemy lines. The Bridges at Toko Ri features some terrific scenes of the Grumman F9F Panther in action, the Navy’s first carrier-based jet fighter.
3. Twelve O’Clock High (1949)
There’s surprisingly little flying in this compelling, highly accurate drama set in England during 1943, when the U.S. Eighth Air Force struggled to prove the effectiveness of daylight precision bombing. The story, drawn from the bestseller novel of the same name by Sy Bartlett and Beirne Lay, Jr., centers on hard-as-nails, do-or-die Brigadier General Frank Savage (Gregory Peck), who must whip the combat-weary B-17 crews of the fictitious 918th Bomb Group into an effective fighting force. Twelve O’Clock High has always held special personal meaning for me given that my cousin, a B-17 copilot with the 96th Bomb Group, was killed along with the rest of his crew when their Flying Fortress was shot down over France shortly before D-Day. The 8th Air Force sustained more casualties in its bombing campaign against Adolph Hitler than any other major American combat command during World War II. This movie does those brave men justice.
2. Top Gun (1986)
Yes, the plot is totally cheesy. Yes, Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis display zero on-screen chemistry. And, yes, you don’t need a fortune teller to figure out early on how the story will end, but this movie features one of the most bad-ass strike fighters ever built—the Grumman F-14 Tomcat—and hands-down the best opening montage of any feature film ever made. Maverick and Goose rock! When a movie makes you consider almost quitting your job, cutting your long hair, and joining the Navy, you know it’s worth watching. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the sequel to Top Gun—Top Gun Maverick. (See next week’s bog post for My Least Favorite Aviation-Themed Movie).
1. The Right Stuff (1983)
Granted, this classic film, nominated for eight Academy Awards (it won four), is about America’s first seven astronauts. But flying is flying, whether through the air or through space, and every one of those seven studs was an experienced military jet jockey before being selected to NASA’s pioneering Project Mercury. For that reason alone, The Right Stuff (adapted from Tom Wolfe’s book of the same title) more than qualifies as an aviation flick, but there’s a lot more going for it than that. The writing, the cinematography, the editing, the directing—all of it works splendidly. While the acting may be uneven at times, two performances stand out. Sam Shepard is famed test pilot Chuck Yeager (who I also had the pleasure of once meeting) and Ed Harris is astronaut John Glenn. The film chronicles a magical, more innocent time in America, when everything seemed possible and the ultimate ambition was to become an astronaut. Elementary school classes were let out so kids could go home and watch the latest rocket launch with their parents, broadcast live on their black and white television sets. Returning spacemen were feted with tickertape parades, medals from the President of the United States, and the adulation of an entire nation. The Right Stuff captures it all. It transcends mere filmmaking, rising to the level of art. The movie speaks not merely to the inspirational wonders of aviation, but also what it means to be American.
I’m sure my list doesn’t include many other fine aviation movies. If you have any suggestions for any I may have missed, please let me know!