tamarenne Just saw it today for the first time, and I really loved it. I don't care if its labeled "propoganda" and I don't care if a bunch of guys here don't like it because its not some boring war movie with hours of flying sequences. I especially loved the review that mourned the fact that we didn't get to see more planes refueling. Honey, it's not a documentary!It's charming and Grable's musical numbers are so fun! (And this is the first time I have ever liked Grable).. The tunes are fantastic. Today's Hollywood on its best day couldn't put together a movie have as cohesive or fun.Best of all, it's got Tyrone Power who, along with Errol Flynn, are the two best looking, most charming male actors ever. Love love love it!

ejewett1 On the one hand we have Tyrone Power and Betty Grable, and they make a great couple.On the other hand we have the typical 1940s disregard for anything remotely resembling accuracy about airplanes and the military. As an example, an early scene involves a leaflet drop over Berlin from Lockheed Hudson coastal patrol bombers, which sported four (or five) .30 cal machine guns - two fixed firing forward, two in a dorsal turret, and (MK II on) one firing down and aft.The Luftwaffe would have had the airliner-derived patrol bombers for lunch, as they were pretty much defenseless from below except from behind.

sol **SPOILERS** Being released some two months before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor "A Yank in the R.A.F" is hampered by having the movie take sides with a combatant, the UK, at war with a neutral, at that time , country Hitler's Germany. Obviously made to drum up support for a US entrance into the war against Germany & Italy which was barley 10% in many US public opinion polls taken at that time among the American people. It was the air force and navy of the Japanese Imperial Empire by it's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that did more to turn US public opinion around to an entrance into the war then all the pro-war films coming out of Hollywood from 1939-41 combined.The film itself is anything but a war, pro or con, movie with young wise-cracking American mail pilot Tim Baker, Tyrone Power, ending up in the UK just weeks after it together with it's far flung empire declared war against Germany. Tim seems to have absolutely no idea of what's going on between the allies, Britian & France, and the Germans and is only in London to rekindle his love affair with pretty and leggy all-American girl Carol Brown, Betty Grable, who somehow got herself a job as a chorus girl at London's Regency Club.Tim it seems joins up with the R.A.F only to impress Carol and nothing else his feeling for or against Nazi Germany are left only to the viewers imagination. The only time Tim showed any antipathy against the Germans was after he lost a number of friends, fellow R.A.F fliers, in the war which is very understandable but had nothing at all to do with what Hitler's Germany stood for or did. Tim would have felt and acted the same way if he had joined the German Luftwaffe, if his girlfriend Carol decided to live in Germany instead of the UK, and lost a number of his German pilot buddies to the R.A.F.The movie drags along for almost an hour until we finally get to see what's happening on the front lines with Tim and his fellow pilots shot down and landing in neutral Holland only to find out that it's been invaded by the German Army. Hiding in a windmill Tim together with Group Cmdr. John Morley, John Sutton, and Cpl. Baker, Donald Stuart, are confronted by this German officer Frederick Glermann who unknown to the three English-speaking pilots knows and speaks English. Acting like a real jerk as you could already see here, even before the US entrance into WWII, that with soldiers like Glermann in it's ranks Germany didn't stand a chance. Glermann instead of just waiting for the German troops coming to relieve him of the three R.A.F guys blows his cover by talking English to them showing Tim & Co. that he's on to them it's then that the three RAF men overpower and kill Glermann. All that Glermann had to do was to just keep his big mouth shut instead of trying to show the downed airmen what a great linguist he is and just let the German Army come to his rescue.The movie also has a love triangle in it between Tim and his R.A.F commander John Morley vying for the hand of the drop dead gorgeous Carol Brown, incidentally this was the only movie where Tyrone Power and Betty Grable were in together.It seems like Tim was winning over Carol who then later found out that he was cheating on her by playing abound with one of the nurses who was looking after him. This new romance on Tims part happened after he was rescued, together with thousands of British servicemen, during the retreat from the French port city of Dunkirk.The really best part of "A Yank in the R.A.F" comes in the last few minutes of the film with the battle and evacuation of Dunkirk. Thats where Tim finally shows what he's made of by, after being hospitalized for exposer, going back into action over the skies of German occupied France with his Spitfire taking the war back to the advancing Germans and shooting down a number of Luftwaffe Me-109 fighter planes. Tim ends up getting shot down himself and is missing in action until the movies final, and very unsurprising, ending sequence.

blanche-2 Darryl F. Zanuck paired his two superstars, Tyrone Power and Betty Grable together just once, and it was for "A Yank in the RAF." Power plays a cocky American know-it-all who, for money, flies a plane from Canada to the British forces and sticks around in the RAF after spotting his old girlfriend, played by Betty Grable.No one could have played the role of Tim Baker except for Tyrone Power. The character is such a bounder and such a complete jerk that without those devastating good looks, that devilish smile, that way of taking a woman in from top to bottom with those eyes, and all that charm, he would have been unlikeable. It's easy to see why Grable is so crazy about him, but you can't help being angry with her nonetheless as she spurns handsome, kind, and gentlemanly John Sutton for this gum-chewing womanizer. Like the later Crash Dive, which Power made before going into the Marines, the third angle of the love triangle is again Power's boss. In the original film, Grable ends up with Sutton, but preview audiences objected fiercely, so it was changed. The ferocious war does humble the Power character somewhat, though, particularly when his plane crash lands in Holland and they all realize the Germans are there, and his involvement in the Battle of Dunkirk. There are some exciting war scenes in the last forty minutes of the movie. Reginald Gardiner is a standout in the supporting cast, sparring with Sutton and Power with some of the best dialogue in the film.It's always amazing how long our country managed to stay out of the fray. This is a propaganda film, of course, urging the U.S. to get into the war. A few months later, the U.S. had no choice.