Bombardier

Plot synopsis:
In 1941, at a staff meeting in Washington, D.C., two officers of the U.S. Army Air Corps (and old friends) debate the importance of bombardiers. Major "Chick" Davis (Pat O'Brien) argues that a bombardier, using the top secret American bombsight will be the "spearhead of our striking force." After a year of observing the Royal Air Force fight the German Luftwaffe, Capt. "Buck" Oliver (Randolph Scott) is not convinced a bomber can get "so close that a bomb can't miss" and that new pilots are the priority. Davis challenges Oliver to a "bombing duel" to test their respective points of view. Oliver, using a dive bomber, misses the stationary target with all his bombs, while Davis, bombing from 20,000 feet in a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, succeeds in hitting his target with his first bomb.
Later, Oliver recommends that "Hughes Field", in "Almansor", New Mexico, the civilian flying school of a friend, be leased as a new Bombardier Training School. As the school's first class nears graduation, Major Davis arrives, with right-hand man, M/Sgt. Archie Dixon (Barton MacLane), to take command. Davis is discomfited by the presence of so many civilian women clerks, including the field's former owner, Burton "Burt" Hughes (Anne Shirley), the daughter of a respected Air Corps general and now a secretary under terms of the lease. Davis is brusque with Burt and she observes he could use some training in manners.
Buck Oliver arrives with the next cadet class, that includes Tom Hughes (Eddie Albert), Burt's brother. Davis is mildly disturbed to learn that Oliver and Burt have a romantic history, and the two friendly rivals continue to butt heads over the importance of bombardiers. Oliver, who heads the group of pilots flying bombers for cadet training, refuses to take them seriously because they will become sergeants upon graduation, not commissioned officers. Davis attempts to make up with Burt, and solicits the War Department to commission the bombardiers. Preflight ground school is intensive and with practice bombing, reveals many shortcomings: Tom Hughes has trouble with fear-induced air sickness, Joe Connors (Robert Ryan) with commitment issues, and "Chito" Rafferty (Richard Martin) with the lack of women on the base. Cadet Pete Jordan is not up to the complexity of the training and soon washes out.
Connors reveals to Davis that a spy wants to buy information from him about the secret bombsight, and helps Davis lure the spy into a trap where he is arrested. Cadet Paul Harris, brilliant in ground school and a hero for saving his bomber from destruction when a flare goes awry, is conscience stricken that his mother thinks he will be a murderer of innocent civilians. Davis reassures him with a patriotic pep talk. When a bomber develops mechanical problems and the crew is ordered to bail out, Tom Hughes panics in fear and refuses to jump. His friend (and another suitor of Burt Hughes), Cadet Jim Carter (Walter Reed), crash- lands the aircraft, claiming that he is the one who panicked, but Hughes confesses afterward. Facing an elimination board, he successfully persuades Davis and receives a second chance.
On a subsequent flight, Buck Oliver passes out from anoxia, nearly tossing Carter out of the opened bomb bay without a parachute. Tom Hughes falls to his death saving Carter's life. Oliver is subjected to a board of investigation but exonerated because his actions resulted from the failure of his oxygen equipment. Guilt-stricken and unable to face Burt, Oliver transfers out of the school. Shortly after, America is drawn into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Davis, promoted to colonel, becomes a B-17 group commander, and awkwardly proposes marriage to Burt who turns him down. The group (and new bombardiers Carter, Connors, Rafferty, and Harris) leaves for a secret island base in the Pacific, and Burt passionately kisses Jim Carter goodbye, revealing her choice.
At the base, Buck Oliver, now a major, joins the group just as it is about to fly a night mission to bomb an aircraft factory in Nagoya, Japan. Oliver's assignment is bomb with incendiaries to set the target on fire a half hour before the arrival of the group, which Davis will lead at high altitude. Joe Connors is Oliver's bombardier and Sgt. Dixon his tailgunner. Flying low, Oliver's bomber is shot down before he can drop his bombs, and Connors remains at his post, sacrificing his life to destroy the bombsight, fulfilling an oath he took upon entry into Bombardier School.
Oliver and the remainder of his crew, including Dixon, are captured. Their Japanese captors execute the other crew members to coerce Oliver and Dixon into revealing the location of their base, but Dixon overwhelms his guard and attempts to escape. The stretchers used to carry the dead Americans are stamped "USA Earthquake Relief 1923". He is machine gunned in the attempt, but the shots also set fire to a truck carrying barrels of gasoline. Oliver drives the burning truck throughout the factory, setting fire to its camouflage netting and fulfills his mission, knowing he will be killed by his own men. The B-17 group fights off Japanese fighters, is riddled by flak, but overcomes the reluctance of the bombardiers to bomb their compatriots and successfully destroys the target.

Tags: romantic

Review:
There were a lot of films made by Hollywood during the war years that were designed to drum up support for our troops from the public.
This film is a pretty effective and entertaining example of the genre--having a pretty realistic script and good production values.
Pat O'Brien plays pretty much the same character he played in MANY other films (you know, the tough-talking, hard-driven but "swell guy").
Randolph Scott is, as always, competent and entertaining and the rest of the extras are excellent (look for a young Robert Ryan as one of the bombardiers in training).
While the story is reminiscent of several other movies about our pilots and crews, the film is well-crafted enough to make it interesting and not too far-fetched.
About the only serious negative, and this is mostly for nitpickers, is that some of the stock footage is somewhat sloppily integrated in the film and "nuts" like me who are both history teachers and airplane lovers will probably notice this--all others probably won't notice..
There is no question as to who is in command of the training of cadets in this film: Major Chick Davis (Pat O'Brien).
O'Brien plays an officer who adheres to military discipline in the creation of a new kind of soldier from his cadets--the bombardier.
He's tough when he has to be, yet at other times he is a clear mix of coach and pastor, roles he perfected in other films.
Two things help this movie: O'Brien's performance and the spectacular special effects ending..
I wasn't sure at first if I was watching a documentary, propaganda film or dramatic presentation.
But you had a sense that there would be some interesting scenes as the movie went on.
We were able to witness what appeared to be realistic training regimens and equipment.Where this movie came together for me was closer to the end.
This was mixed in with the usual problems of portraying passable Japanese soldiers at a time when you might think real Japanese actors would be somewhat scarce.The movie is excellent as a source of the state of the American mindset in 1943 as the war waged with Japan.
The scene that stands out vividly is when Robert Ryan walks into the church and yells, "The Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor".
Another interesting thing is the movie never uses the word Norton Bombsight.
I did like the picture because it shows the training the men received.
The part of the movie seems right in that the plane, pilot, ground crew, and everything else is there just to take the Bombardier to the target so he can push a button.
The Pilot and Bombardier is like playing golf.
This 1943 film by RKO is among several that Hollywood and/or the War Department put out during the early months and years of World War II.
The war action comes at the end.
A docu-drama style tells the story of the bombardier school and training.
Propaganda surely had its place in WWII – to help sustain public morale, build support for the U.S. cause and efforts, and give the public a picture of some of the troops, training, and campaigns.
"Bombardier" tells and shows us the early days of training for this new position in the Army Air Forces – precursor of the U.S. Air Force.
This film shows very well that detail, study and science that went into the training of bombardiers.
These men indeed played a critical role in destroying enemy armament production, fuel depots and major supplies – and in so doing, helped end the war much earlier than it would have otherwise concluded.
But films such as "Bombardier" add another value in educating and informing the public of what went into the readying of our nation for war, and our ability to win and end it as soon as possible.
People who approach war movies in a similar frame of mind will be much more likely to enjoy them.
I highly recommend "Bombardier" as an informative, action-filled and historical war movie..
Richard Martin first played Chito Rafferty in this movie World War 2 movie.
One wonders how a character that first appeared in a modern war flick ended up being a longtime sidekick in Westerns.
Interestingly, the second time Martin played his famous character was not with Tim Holt, but with Robert Mitchum in Nevada.
Pat O'Brien takes his Knute Rockne character and joins the Army Air Corps in Bombardier and he and Randolph Scott have a disagreement as far as air tactics go.
Fly in low and drop bombs and avoid being shot at.O'Brien is more interested in technology.
Develop and learn how to use an accurate bombsight so you can be up around 20,000 feet and only have to worry about enemy planes which presumably your fighter escort has to deal with.But since these guys are friends it's a good natured fight as both are in the business of training bombardiers.
Among the familiar faces they train are Eddie Albert and Robert Ryan before both went in the service themselves.
Film buffs who are air historians might like it though..
OK, if somewhat heavy handed, WW2 recruitment film disguised as entertainment.
Made in 1942, before the allies had the upper-hand in Europe, 'Bombardier' is part entertainment, part propaganda, and part recruiting film.
The film follows the establishment of a Bombardier Training School, championed by Major "Chick" Davis (Pat O'Brien), a firm believer in high-altitude precision bombing and criticized by his buddy, Capt.
"Buck" Oliver (Randolph Scott), a pilot-oriented proponent of low-level drops and dive-bombing.
Eubank extolling the critical role of the bombardier in the ongoing war, there is little doubt which of the two offensive strategies is going to win out.
Typical of the genre, the film follows a diverse group of trainees, from their arrival at the school to their baptisms in fire, with some romantic filler and dated comic-relief thrown in.
There is a particularly egregious sequence in which a trainee admits that he is uncomfortable with dropping high-explosives on targets where there may be non-combatants (including women) and that his mother had written him a letter expressing her concerns that he was training to be a murderer.
The chaplain explains to him (and indirectly to the audience, which might include people of similar opinions to the fictional mother), that the bombardier is doing God's will by bombing the German military-industrial infrastructure.
During the war Americans celebrated "Rosie the Riveter", who represented the women who worked in the factories thereby freeing-up men to fight, and as there would be no reason to believe that women in the Axis powers weren't doing the same, people must have accepted the fact that women could be killed when the factories were bombed (as were, as was later discovered, forced laborers).
The rest of the special effects are hit and miss, there are some good pyrotechnic scenes as the bombs bullseye Japanese targets but the earlier B18 model work is substandard, even for the times.
The cast is fine in what is essentially a propaganda picture, there are lots of gorgeous, soldier-loving, dames to entice young men in the audience to sign-up, and a thrilling but typically far-fetched heroic climax.
OK for an unsubtle WW2 morale-booster/recruitment film (especially if you like planes) but not in the same league as the excellent "30 Seconds over Tokyo" (1944)..
Typical WWII propaganda film.
Basically a typical propaganda film for the last good war.
In two cases the Scott character mouths one, once at the beginning when he drops his bomb off target during the bomb-off ("dammit") and once when he is trying to sway a bombardier into being a pilot ("s*%t").
Given what we know about the LeMay's later strategy of firebombing Japanese cities into oblivion this scene plays with not a little irony.
terrible excuse for a movie, even considering the war.
We could start by pointing out that the premise of the story is wrong, namely, that bombardiers are about to become the most crucial people in the war and that with their wonderful, new, super-top-secret bombsite they will be able to hit their targets right on the nose from 20,000 feet.
Here is a good example of wildly inaccurate bombing was right to the end of the war, from the article on precision bombing in Wikipedia: "In the summer of 1944, 47 B- 29's raided the Yawata steel works from bases in China; only one plane actually hit the target area, and only with one of its bombs.
It took 108 B-17 bombers, crewed by 1,080 airmen, dropping 648 bombs to guarantee a 96 percent chance of getting just two hits inside a 400 x 500 ft (150 m) German power-generation plant." Early in the movie a cadet has moral scruples about bombing women and children.
Oh, but that's what the wicked enemy does, he's told; our side bombs only military targets and does it with wonderful precision.
Total nonsense again, on both counts.As for entertainment value, "Bombardier" has just about none.
There's a little bit of information about how bombing crews are trained and a few interesting shots of Flying Fortresses——on the ground——but nothing else.
As the film ends, a final shot is supposed to show a sky crowded with bombers in formation, but the artist who drew the scene has the sky so full of them, so jam-packed together that they're just about overlapping each other, like a flock of starlings.Or how about this for crappy writing?
Near the beginning, the air force brass are talking about Hitler's Stuka attacks in Europe and how the U.S. had better get prepared in case one day it has to fight him.
At the end our bombardiers are bombing Nagoya.
But at no moment in between do we hear about Pearl Harbor or the start of the war for the U.S. Forgot to mention that, I guess.Don't waste your time.
This war drama from RKO Radio can't help but appear dated, but is evocative of the mindset in the early '40s.
An entertaining piece of propaganda with just enough war action and actually features some good acting.
The two primary stars Pat O'Brien and Randolph Scott argue over methods of training for the war effort.
Buck Oliver, who is adamant about recruiting pilots; O'Brien stars as Major Chick Davis pushing the training of pilots in high altitude precision bombing.
Davis is surprised when Oliver arrives as a flight instructor and insists he complies with the program of bombing training.
Passable World War II propaganda film with a all-star cast.
Directed by Richard Wallace, with writing credits for Martin Rackin (story) and John Twist (story and screenplay), this World War II propaganda film focuses on the technical role of the title job.
It features an all star cast including: Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott, Anne Shirley, Eddie Albert, Walter Reed, Robert Ryan, Barton MacLane, and Russell Wade, who played a similar role in The Bamboo Blonde (1946).The film begins with a monologue (by Brigadier-General Eugene L.
Eubanks himself) emphasizing the importance of the bombardier, and the vision it took to create, train, and staff the job prior to World War II so that we were prepared to join the fight.
Major Chick Davis (O'Brien), with his "golden goose" sighting equipment, challenges dive bomber Captain Buck Oliver (Scott) to see whose method will be most effective in the conflict, should the United States choose to enter the war.
Though Buck misses the target, Chick hits it from 20,000 feet, convincing his critics to fund a training school (actually in Kirtland Field, Albuquerque) in New Mexico.The mythical site is reported to be an airfield owned by a former, and now deceased, dive bomber named Hughes, whose daughter Burton (Shirley) and son Tom (Albert) still work there.
Gruff Chick arrives to find an environment too cozy for the Army Air Force, because of Burton's woman's touch, and has Sgt. Dixon (MacLane) rough it up a bit.
Buck arrives to help, as one of the pilots for the bombardiers, and is greeted by Burton, who he evidently has been dating.
Apparently Tom has enlisted as a bombardier too, based on the fact that his best friend, a star football player, Jim Carter (Reed) had joined.The film then spends quite a bit of time giving an overview of the education, which begins with extensive classroom and other ground training before the students are ever taken up in a plane.
Besides Tom and Carter, some of the other recruits include Joe Connors (Ryan), Chito Rafferty (Richard Martin), and Paul Harris (Wade).
Scott's character Buck serves the function of the skeptical pilot trying to "steal" the best of Chick's recruits and as one who must be convinced of the bombardier's value.Shirley's character, as the lone credited female in the film, is not only a romantic interest for the competing Buck and Carter (and even to the smallest degree, Chick) but also serves to "soften up" the tough Chick a bit, acting as his sounding board, loyal employee, and voice of reason.
The most dramatic, and character revealing moments in the film, revolve around Arnold's character, who must justify why Chick and the Army board should keep him given his fear of jumping out of a disabled plane AND later is doomed to a tragic fate.The final phase of the film is the realization of all the extensive training, after it is learned that the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor.Though this film received an Academy Award nomination for Special Effects, they are vastly inferior to those in another film nominated film that same year, Air Force (1943).There is, of course, a moment late in the film when Buck sees the light and appreciates the role of the titled soldier.
The film ends, oddly enough for the time, with its credits..
This time by training and later blasting the enemy-Japanese-to kingdom come with their loads of bombs from their B-25 bombers flying into the teeth of massive Jap anti aircraft fire.
We also have the women that they left behind at the airbase or home rooting them on but because of restrictions against women in combat, which have since been lifted, back then in 1943 unable to join them on their combat missions against the Japanese Empire.There's also a bit of a conflict between fly boys Major Chick Davis, Pat O'Brian, and his good friend Captain Buck Oliver, Randolph Scott, not just how to drop the bombs at either low or high altitude but over the girl Burton "Burt" Hughes, Anne Shirley,who because of her late hero in WWI father is in charge of the airfield-Hughes Field-as well as of her two suitors.
We also have a number of side stories here with the afraid of bailing out of a falling plane Tom Hughes, Eddie Albert, Burton's brother later saving a fellow airman hanging on to the planes cargo door and them falling to his death 12,000 feet below without a parachute!***SPOILERS*** The big scene in the movie after almost 3/4 of it having nothing to do whet we, the audience, came to see we finally get to see the boys in action bombing-as Donald Trump likes to say-the sh*t out of the Japs by blasting the Japanese city of Urgoya as as Captain now Major Buck Oliver is captured by the hated and sadistic Japs and threatened with death or ever worse if he doesn't talk!
Setting fires all over the city's industrial district Buck makes it possible for his friend Major Chick Davis and his crewmen to bomb the Japanese war making factories out of existence!
P.S Buck never lived to see the end of the movie since he was killed by Chick's planes bombardment but as a final note got to read a letter, that the evil Japs stole from him, from the girl Burton that he and Chick were both fighting over that it was him that she really was in love with!.
This semi-documentary war drama is a face paced look at the lives of the pilots whose job it is to measure distance from the air to make sure the bombs they drop hit their targets.
It even starts off like a documentary with no real credits (those are held off until the end) and explains in good detail of what these extremely brave men do, at great risk to their lives, but at even greater risk to their country if they didn't.
That sequence had me riveted to my television in total awe to the technical impressiveness of it all and the horror of these men's situation.But no matter how much their own lives are in peril, they get the goods on the enemy, never once giving into the tortures and utilizing a popular children's story in giving away American "secrets".
The cast is superb, and includes Pat O'Brien (as the trainer), Anne Shirley (well utilized as the only major female character in a men's story), Robert Ryan, Randolph Scott (who gets a great final moment) and Eddie Albert as a trainee who meets a most horrifying destiny in the most shocking moment of the film.
Flag-waver about the training and tsuris of bombardiers during World War II.
It's kind of interesting to hear about the motives of these cadets and informative to learn about their training program.
The movie seems a slapdash affair with some miscasting and a weak script.Pat O'Brian is not a hard-nosed disciplinarian of a commanding officer.
It's made manifest at the beginning of the film that most of the office staff will be women because "they're more efficient at it than men." But everybody's after this one babe.
Before the board, he explains that he keeps thinking of the people who will be under his bombs.
Something very much like that, no kidding.One of the more exhilarating moments is near the end.
I've watched it two or three times now and find much of it enjoyable, particularly the scenes of action aloft and training below.
For effective propaganda from our side, delicately blending training, romance, and action, see "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." Still, as I say, the kids may enjoy "Bombardier" from beginning to end.