Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!bu.edu!att!cbnews!cbnews!military
From: voa3!ck@uunet.UU.NET (Chris Kern)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: Memphis Belle + 25 Mission Crunch
Message-ID: <1990Oct25.151139.1512@cbnews.att.com>
Date: 25 Oct 90 15:11:39 GMT
References: <1990Oct22.035513.17273@cbnews.att.com>
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From: voa3!ck@uunet.UU.NET (Chris Kern)

In article <1990Oct22.035513.17273@cbnews.att.com> yee@edison.seas.ucla.edu
(John Yee/;093091;eegrad) writes:
>. . .
>Question: Judging by the looks of the movie's Memphis Belle, it looks to
>          be a pretty late style plane, did none of the many planes before
>          it make it to 25 missions.

The _real_ Memphis Belle supposedly was the first B-17 to complete 25
missions over Europe.  Or so the War Department told Willy Wyler when he
was making the documentary on which (I gather; I haven't seen it yet) the
current feature film is based.  However, I doubt that the producers of
the feature film had the luxury of specifying the specific aircraft to
be used to portray the Memphis Belle.  As others have pointed out, there
aren't that many surviving B-17s.

(Wyler flew with the crew of the Memphis Belle as an observer on at least
one combat mission to get film for the documentary.  He even recorded the
interphone conversations on a wire recorder to acquire realistic sound.
Unfortunately, the results were both too difficult to understand and too
obscene to be used in the sound track, and the dialogue had to be recreated
during the final production.)

-- 
Chris Kern			     Voice of America, Washington, D.C.
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