Thunderbolt

This is a colored post-war propaganda documentary from the military. James Stewart reads a statement at the start. This follows the 57th Fighter Group in 1944 Italy flying the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. There is no holding back on the horrors of war. There are corpses. There are ruins. The destruction is awesome and devastating. It is all recorded. It does take a long time to get to the flying. We're all here for the aerial footage. I haven't seen most of them before except for the strafing runs against the trains. It's hard to tell if those are the same as the ones I've seen before. Even if they are, this version is in color and that is different.

It's an honest an informative documentary. Rather than telling people want they want to hear, this documentary does an excellent job of showing people what it was like for the pilots as they try to cut off food, supplies, and reinforcements to the German forces. The documentary shows great images of what is happening along with a narration to give you more information about what they are doing and why they are doing it. The narrator explains some of the thoughts ans feelings that the pilots have and what expectations people have of them. Overall, it's a solid non-propaganda documentary of the war.

This film is introduced by Jimmy Stewart and part of the narration is provided by Lloyd Bridges. It shows the duties of a fighter group-- P-47 pilots whose job it is to blow the crap out of railroads, roads and targets of opportunity in order to choke off supplies to German troops in Southern Italy.

"Thunderbolt" was made in 1944 or 1945 (the film says 1944 and IMDb says '45) but it wasn't released until 1947. You can actually tell it wasn't released during the war because some aspects of this documentary probably wouldn't have done a lot to stir up the folks at home with patriotic zeal. This is because the documentary shows a few things that might have discouraged the audiences--such as one of the American planes crashing and killing the pilot. Also, there were quite a few VERY grisly corpses--things that I doubt that they would have wanted to show civilians. For the most part, films shown to the public were pretty sanitized...and this one wasn't. Now this is NOT a complaint- -in fact it makes this a much better and more realistic film. My only complaint about the film is the terrible quality of all the color footage. It's very degraded and muddy and could use conservation.

As a private pilot, I really liked the aviation scene and the P47 is such an ugly impressive plane.

Great scenes to see in colour.

I am particularly shocked by the way the strafing was done. What's the point of shooting fields, cattle's or trains? There were probability civilians in it. Can't be Huns everywhere.

Often times film making from the war slips into propaganda and flag waving. This film instead shows the cold hard truth of a fighter group working out of Corsica in 1944. The personal, humanized glimpses of real men instead of lantern jawed actors as they go on about their days, living their daily lives worrying about who won't come back. The shooting style is from on board cameras from several points on the planes and shows so many real mission realities from a normal fighter sweep over Italy including coldly shooting up innocent farmhouses in search of one that's not so innocent and plowing any thing that moves in the daylight.

At some point as you watch this you go through so many emotions from the shock of realizing just how young these pilots are to being mystified about how they can be so cold as they light up the Italian country side to a sad understanding as director William Wyler shows you what would never be shown in a Frank Capra's "Why We Fight" movies, the charred body of a Jug pilot being pulled from the burning wreckage of his fighter with a hook. The end scene of the pilots and crews falling over drunk makes complete sense.

This film is much more poignant than Wyler's later film "Memphis Belle" which while good shows the touch of war time censors. Released in 1945, after the war in Europe was over, "Thunderbolt" drives home the very human

costs of war.