Thunderbolt

The setting is the Italian Campaign in World War Two. More specifically this is about a series of planned air strikes carried out using the P-47 Thunderbolt bombers launched from Corsica in 1944 that went under the codename Operation Strangle. The idea was to destroy the bridges, train tracks and vehicles on the roads at the narrowest section of the Italian peninsula, which in effect would cut off supplies to the German army located in the South of that country, allowing the Allies to advance big distances north.

Like other wartime documentaries such as Attack in the Pacific (1944) this film shares similar strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, it's obviously very raw, one-sided and propagandist to an extent. But on the other hand, it has a lot of fascinating real footage. This included planes fitted out with multi-camera set ups involved in the missions. We witness attacks on various targets which show pretty clearly the dangers involved. This also includes some indiscriminate bombings, where farmhouses seem to have been routinely blown up in case they were holding explosives, etc. We also see footage of the real men involved which adds an extra poignancy. You will get a more detailed overview of events in a documentary made nowadays but there is still some invaluable footage here. And it was a very important campaign to the overall war effort, so it's good to see it being documented for that reason alone.

Thunderbolt is a film by William Wyler that suffered basically the same fate as the Frank Capra film "Here Is Germany", meaning that it was released at a time when everyone was eager to forget world war 2. Originally recorded in 1944 during the allied campaign in italy, Thunderbolt is a kind of documentary that follows the US 12th Air Force and the methods they use to destroy nazi supply routes responsible for enforcing the Gustav Line and the city of Anzio. The Gustav Line was a series of defensive structures and machine gun nests built across italy by the germans in order to prevent american forces from moving north. This made it very difficult for the US forces to do anything because the mountainous spine that runs through the italian peninsula made a perfect natural defensive barrier. The film goes over one of the most effective weapons the americans had during the campaign in italy, which was the Republic p-47 Thunderbolt. When it first flew, the p-47 was the largest and heaviest single engined plane in the world, and contains an insanely powerful pratt and whitney r-2800 engine. It may be large, but the plane was deceptively fast, and was superior to most german planes at high altitudes. It was also better in a dive because of its weight. With its eight .50 caliber browning m2 machine guns, it could rip its way through any plane it was likely to encounter. Lloyd Bridges narrates the film, which is essentially a bunch of clips edited together that detail how the p-47s flew mission after mission against the germans, and all of it is in technicolor. This is important because color footage of world war 2 aerial combat is not as common as you think. You can fully appreciate the paint schemes on the various planes as well. The film doesn't have much in the way of a storyline. It's the second world war and that's all you can really say. They do however go over how cameras were installed in many areas of the planes, such as in the cockpit, under the wings, and even the small recesses the wheels retract into upon takeoff. Before all this takes place, the program begins with an intro featuring James Stewart, who had to contextualize world war 2 for the audiences by calling it "ancient history." This film was released only 2 years later in 1947, but many people were (understandably) sick of the war by then and James had to take that into account. It's also interesting to note that he commanded planes during the war as a colonel and is the highest-ranking hollywood actor who was in the military. In addition to its portrayal of actual p-47 missions, Thunderbolt also shows how the pilots live at their base, located on the island of Corsica off the coast of italy. Even crashes are shown. The film ends with the allies liberating Rome two days before d-day on June 4, 1944. The war in italy comes to an end, and the surrender of Hitler's ally doesn't take him by surprise. For what it is, Thunderbolt is an interesting film simply because it is real and none of it is staged. Sadly, this was the film that marked the beginning of the end for Wyler's hearing, as it didn't return one day after he returned from filming footage for a plane mission. Before this film could be edited, the war was over and the public lost interest in films relating to it. Two years later, the film was finally released by a company called Monogram. If it was distributed earlier, it would have been much more successful. If only it were that easy.

William Wyler began work on this film during 1944 as a counterpoint to his better-known film about the 8th Air Force, "Memphis Belle". While the latter concerned the strategic bombing campaign carried out by long-range, multi-engine bombers, the subject of "Thunderbolt" was tactical missions flown by single-engine, single-seat fighter-bombers. This was a very different war from that depicted in "Memphis Belle". For one thing, while strategic bomber crews could expect to be rotated home after completing 25 missions, the fighter-bomber pilots were flying literally hundreds of missions, frequently carrying out several during the course of a single day.

The film chronicles a brief period with one of several fighter-bomber groups based on the island of Corsica, about 60 miles west of the Italian mainland. Incidentally, this was the same island where Joseph Heller was based, and which inspired him to write his famous novel, "Catch-22". The only difference is that "Thunderbolt" was not filmed with a Medium Bomber Group, such as Heller served in, but with a Fighter-Bomber Group.

The fighter-bombers featured in the film are P-47s, to which the Army Air Force gave the emotive name of "Thunderbolt". However, to those who flew them, the P-47 was invariably known as "The Jug", partly due to it's rotund shape, but more especially as a contraction of the word "Juggernaut". For a Juggernaut was precisely what the P-47 was. The Jug was the largest single-seat fighter to serve during WW-II. It carried eight 12.7-mm machine guns along with a heavy load of bombs or rockets, and was capable of bringing it's pilot home after absorbing a considerable amount of battle damage. Unlike any other fighters of that time the Jug had an air-cooled engine, which meant that it's pilot did not have to worry about a liquid cooling system that was vulnerable to damage from enemy fire. Because of those characteristics the Jug came into it's own in the sort of low-level ground-attack missions shown in "Thunderbolt". In fact years later, when they began flying similar ground attack missions in Korea, a lot of veteran pilots regretted the fact that the Air Force had seen fit to scrap all of it's Jugs after WW-II ended.

"Thunderbolt" does not glamorize the lives of these fighter-bomber personnel. The narration is as terse as the subject matter. It was a brutal war, and that brutality is not watered down. To the men of the Fighter-Bomber Group this was merely a day-to-day job, with the difference that the working men shown in the film did not always live to see the next day. However, the film does go out of it's way to explain exactly what it was that they were trying to accomplish, and why it mattered. It is interesting to reflect that The Big Picture was something many of the members of the Fighter-Bomber Group probably did not entirely understand at the time. In short, these aircraft were engaged in cutting Italian road and rail communications in order to prevent the movement of war material to the German Army, so that the Allied Armies could break the stalemate in the mountains of Southern Italy. The mere fact that the stalemate was broken is proof of how effective the air campaign shown in the film actually was.

Thunderbolt (1947)

*** (out of 4)

WW2 documentary directed by John Sturges and William Wyler with an added introduction from James Stewart. The documentary covers the P-47 Thunderbolt pilots whose mission was to knock out all the train tracks and bridges throughout Corsica, Italy so that the German's couldn't get any supplies. Sturges and Wyler put twelve different cameras on the planes so there's a lot of terrific ariel footage of the bombings, which is quite impressive. I don't think the documentary plays out too well today because we see things getting bombed even though the pilots aren't sure if it's the Germans or perhaps civilians. There's also some footage of what the pilots do when they're not working but the documentary ends on a downnote as some of the men in the crew never made it back home. The film's biggest problem is the narration, which is so slow that it can't keep up with all the action going on in the movie. Lloyd Bridges provides the voice of one of the pilots.

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.