The Thousand Plane Raid

World War Two had many facets which claim to have been the pivotal point of the conflict. Regardless, it took the whole industry of several countries to group themselves into the Allied cause, which eventually destroyed the Nazi dream of world dominance. This is one of the key elements which was essential towards that goal. The film is called " The Thousand Plane Raid " which was directed by Boris Sagal and penned by novelist Ralph Barker. It purports to tell the story of Col. Greg Brandon (Christopher George) who proposed to group together a thousand allied B-17 Bombers to destroy a specific target producing German fighter planes. He finds that he is troubled by both the British high command as well as his own men. In addition, those closest to him realize that he is obsessed with his idea and is losing touch with everyone. A good movie, though a bit melodramatic. Nevertheless, a solid action oriented story. A fine cast which includes J.D. Cannon, Gary Marshal, Michael Evans, Gavin MacLeod and Bo Hopkins as Capt. Douglass. Recommended to War buffs. ****

A fairly average B-grade movie that is pulled up by a sequence of low flying that is used on more than one occasion throughout the movie for different story line progressions. To see a B-25 coming over the trees and then missing the ground with the right wing by only a few feet is amazing to say the least. Most of the footage in the battle scenes is from war footage and low budget (nowadays) SFX but given the age and being made about the same time as "the Battle Of Britain" it puts up a reasonable performance. Aircraft buffs will like the flying sequences as they always will and for an afternoon diversion it is not too bad. Look out for the maintenance crew chief, Sgt Kreuger a few years before commanding his well known ship the Love Boat.

If you want to watch real WW2 planes in real WW2 footage, this is a good movie. You won't see these beautiful planes flying again without CGI. The movie gives a pretty accurate depiction on life aboard a WW2 bomber. Movies today will have to use CGI to show these beautiful planes. Sadly, there are too few of these aircraft available today to duplicate the airplanes in this movie. Appreciate these beautiful airplanes and the bravery of the young pilots and crew that were able to keep these beautiful airplanes flying.

Pretty good movie that uses real WW2 footage and new footage.

The acting is okay with a pretty good cast.

I would say the best part of this movie is Gary Marshall as a British fighter pilot attached to an American bomber group for mysterious reasons... Christopher George is a professional scowler, and he is over the top as an hardass commander who cares so much he convinces everyone he doesn't care at all.

The low budget is almost tolerable except the over use of stock footage leads to major continuity errors, like when a b-17 crashes and they cut to a burning b-29 which looks nothing like the b-17. That was a bridge too far.

But I watched the whole movie which means it wasn't that bad... when I researched the topic turns out the British had already tried thousand bomber night missions prior to this so it wasn't a big deal and this is revisionist history. Oh well.

"The Thousand Plane Raid" is a fictionalized account of an actual raid that occurred using 1000 American bombers. It also is in many ways like the movie and TV show "12 O'Clock High"....and focuses only on the B-17, which is odd, as in reality the US built and used even more B-24s which are never shown in movies. I assume part of it might be that there were just more B-17s in flyable shape for films.

Christopher George plays Colonel Brandon, a humorless and intense bomb group leader. He's very tough on his men...presumably because not quite good enough would mean death. In so many ways he's like General Savage from the "12 O'Clock High" film and show...a tough guy who knows what needs to be done and is willing to do it...and do it along with his men.

Overall, this is a pretty exciting and well made film. My only complaint is a common one...the use of stock footage. Now I would NOT expect them to blow up real planes and risk stuntmen's lives...but sometimes stock footage just is bad. In this case, when the Colonel's B-17 crashes later in the movie, it suddenly becomes a B-29 bomber...a much larger and different style plane...and it's obviously NOT a B-17.

Oh, and if want to be more picky, IMDB says 'US Air Force'....but that term was created AFTER WWII. At that point the air service was part of the US Army and was called the US Army Air Corps.