grantss A documentary series on the operations of the 57th Fighter Group in 1944. Stationed in Corsica, their missions largely consisted of low-level attacks on the Italian mainland, far behind the frontline. Their targets were German supplies and the infrastructure carrying it. This was part of Operation Strangle, the idea of which was to weaken the German front-line forces through depriving them of supplies, thus helping the Allied offensive through Italy. The 57th Fighter Group flew one of the greatest fighter-bombers of the war, the iconic Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.Superb documentary, directed by famed Hollywood director William Wyler (with John Sturges as co-director). Wyler's previous contribution to the Allied war effort was the equally-superb "The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress". Through clever placement of cameras on the Thunderbolts - behind the pilot looking forward, in the instrument panel looking at the pilot, in the wings, under the wings, in the undercarriage bay - we get a unique and illuminating perspective of the missions the 57th Fighter Group flew. Captures well the essence of their operations, and the dangers.The human side is well told - we see the pilots during their down time, learn something about them and understand how they lived and the rigours they went through.On that note, the movie is quite unique for a wartime documentary in that it shows the horrors of war. We see Allied casualties, including the charred remains of a P-47 pilot whose plane crashed.Wyler himself was one of those casualties, suffering total deafness due to filming much of the action from a noisy B-25 bomber. Unfortunately, WW2 ended before Wyler managed to have the movie released. It ended up only being released in 1947.

Robert J. Maxwell It's a pretty brutal picture of the pilots of the P-47s that flew out of Corsica on ground attack missions to the Italian mainland. There are reasons why it shouldn't have been shown at home. American boys injured, crashing and dying; barns and auxiliary buildings blown up just in case they might be harboring something inimical to our interests. I don't know if it would have been stifled or not. John Huston had all sorts of problems with his "Battle of San Pietro" because it showed American dead being folded into mattress covers.That it WAS, in fact, made during the war is reflected in the sometimes bitter commentary, suggesting that the Italians and Germans deserved everything they got. There are some "good Germans" on Corsica, followed by a shot of a dilapidated graveyard.It's all color footage. We follow the young men around as they get out of bed and prepare themselves for another mission. The narration, by Lloyd Bridges, explains what's going on in a clipped, hypermasculine way. "Time for the briefing. Don't know what mission it is. Don't always care." The maps and associated graphics are simple enough for a child to understand.The missions involved bombing, rocket launching, and strafing, and the P-47 appears to have been built for it. It was a huge, powerful, fast single-engine, single-seat fighter that could carry an enormous load of ordinance and could take a punishing amount of damage. It carried eight .50 caliber machine guns, and we see a good deal of strafing from the gun cameras. A line of spurts tracks a target and envelopes it in dust. A shot, not shown here, that I've seen only once, has a hapless French farmer on a cart galloping his horse down a country road. Cart, farmer, and horse disappear in the cloud. And what carries much of the impact is not the farmer being killed, because we've seen humans shot and killed so often we've been desensitized. It's the horse, the poor innocent horse.There is another documentary about a pilot, Quentin Annenson, who flew P-47s in the European theater. Annenson narrates the film himself in his quiet Minnesota accent. It's longer, more personal, more detailed, and utterly gripping.

Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Thunderbolt" is a 42-minute documentary that was made shortly after World War II. There are some big names associated with this project such as James Stewart, Lloyd Bridges, William Wyler or John Sturges. It is about airplanes during the days of war and how American pilots were good enough to make a lasting impact thanks to ability and technology. Sometimes, it also gets concrete in terms of particular strikes during these days of war. I myself am more interested in the political aspects of these dark days than in technical factors. Also, this film got a tad too patriotic occasionally for my taste. It is not a bad film by any means and can be informative if you have an interest in the subject, but it's just such a particular area that most probably won't. All in all, I was not impressed watching this.

MartinHafer 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.